Senate Republicans Block Obama Nominee for Interior Post

Senate Republicans Block Obama Nominee for Interior Post
The Washington Post
Capital Briefing
By Paul Kane

On a party-line vote, Senate Republicans blocked President Obama's nominee to be deputy Interior secretary amid a fight over the agency's new rules on oil and gas drilling, the first administration appointee to be turned back on a floor vote.

The nomination of David J. Hayes, a natural resources lawyer with vast experience in federal lands issues, fell just short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate and move to a final vote, only the second time this year that the GOP held together on a major action to block the president's agenda or his nominees on a filibuster vote.

Hayes received 57 votes, but he has more support than that. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) switched his vote to 'nay' in a parliamentary move that allows him to bring up the nomination again under fast-track rules should the administration reach an accord with Republicans. In addition, three Democrats who would support Hayes were absent -- Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), John Kerry (Mass.) and Barbara Mikulski (Md.).

Republicans acknowledged beforehand that the vote was not a rejection of Hayes, who already served for two years as deputy interior secretary in the Clinton administration, but instead was a statement of opposition to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's cancellation earlier this year of leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah wild lands. Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) rallied the opposition to Hayes, suggesting that the eleventh-hour lease auction for drilling -- which happened with just six weeks remaining in the Bush administration -- was already agreed to and should have gone ahead as planned.

Salazar, who was in the Capitol lobbying his former Senate colleagues, called the GOP action "a tired vote of bitter obstructionism."