[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 81 (Tuesday, June 2, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5916-S5917]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     NOMINATION OF REGINA McCARTHY

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, as chairman of the Environment and Public 
Works Committee, I look forward to the Senate's vote this morning on 
the confirmation of Regina McCarthy to be Assistant Administrator of 
the Office of Air and Radiation at the Environmental Protection Agency. 
I am happy to report to the Senate that my ranking member, Senator 
Inhofe, supports her as well, and he wanted to make that point.
  The Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation plays a crucial 
role in developing and improving programs that better protect public 
health and the environment, and she also will help address critical 
threats to our families and our communities. Regina McCarthy is very 
qualified to be Assistant Administrator. She comes to this position 
with a stellar record of achievement. During her hearing before the 
EPW, she impressed us all with her deep firsthand knowledge of clean 
air policy. She has three decades of experience in public service. She 
has a unique record of accomplishments in addressing air pollution at 
the State level in Massachusetts as well as Connecticut.
  Here is the thing: She will bring a spirit of bipartisanship to this 
critical EPA office that is focused on protecting public health and the 
environment. In Massachusetts, Regina McCarthy served under Governors 
Cellucci and Romney, both Republicans. She served as Assistant 
Secretary for Policy at the Office of Environmental Protection and 
Deputy Secretary of the Office of Commonwealth Development. In 2005, 
Republican Governor Jodi Rell of Connecticut--another Republican--
appointed Regina to be Commissioner of Connecticut's Department of 
Environment. So Regina's ability to work with people on both sides of 
the aisle is clear. She wants to solve the serious air pollution 
problems facing our families and communities, and I believe her 
experience in a bipartisan world will greatly help her.
  California faces some of the most dangerous air pollution in the 
country. My State is a magnificent State, but it has its problems 
because we have the busiest ports in the Nation. We actually are 
responsible for taking care of 40 percent of the Nation's imports, and 
those goods are brought into our ports by ships that, unfortunately, 
still use--many of them--a highly polluting fuel called bunker fuel. 
And when we look at the rates of cancer across this Nation, you see 
clusters of cancer at all of our ports, and a lot certainly at our 
ports in California.
  I worry very much about those families. We have been able to work in 
a bipartisan way--although not quickly enough, in my view--to make sure 
that these ships get away from this bunker fuel, and actually we are 
working very hard with the Obama administration, as we did with the 
Bush administration, on international treaties to move us away from 
this very polluting bunker fuel. So we are making great progress there, 
but we still have a lot of the trucks at our ports. We are working 
closely with, in this case, Los

[[Page S5917]]

Angeles, where they have a very cutting edge program to move away from 
the dirty trucks, and we are fighting hard to get that program to move 
forward.
  So we look at the ports and we know there are problems, and we look 
at the highways, and we know there are problems. In my State, and other 
States, where we have valleys, the dirty air is trapped into those 
areas. So as a Senator from California, I welcome Regina McCarthy to 
this job, because, frankly, we need to do much more about the quality 
of the air, or lack of same, across the country.
  The California Air Resources Board estimates that diesel emissions 
contribute to 2,000 premature deaths each year, and that the health 
costs of diesel emissions are billions of dollars each year. So I want 
to say again, we are talking about 2,000 premature deaths each year 
when we talk about dirty air. We are not just saying we are upset 
because you can start to see the air and it looks terrible; we are 
saying that this dirty air is being breathed in by our kids, by our 
grandkids, by pregnant women, by people with disabilities, and only the 
strongest survive on this. So we know it is a problem, and Regina 
McCarthy gets it. Her job isn't to be a robot, her job is to understand 
that the situation is dire here--2,000 premature deaths a year because 
of dirty air. And that is just from diesel emissions. So we need an 
assistant administrator on air who has the experience, the expertise, 
and the ability to work with communities large and small, to work with 
industry, and to work with government to find lasting solutions.
  One of the opportunities we have here, separate and apart from the 
enforcement of the Clean Air Act--which will be under her domain--is to 
pass global warming legislation which will move us away from the dirty 
sources of fuel toward clean energy and, by the way, create long-
lasting clean energy jobs which will stay here and boost our economy 
forward.
  We have a lot of work ahead of us on this committee which I am so 
privileged to chair, and certainly right here in the Senate, and we are 
going to call on Regina McCarthy. She is well qualified, she has the 
ability to work with communities and industry, and she is the right 
person for this job.
  I am disappointed that we had a colleague of ours hold her nomination 
up, you know, week after week after week. It should have been done. But 
today it looks good that we are moving forward. I hope we can do it by 
voice vote, and again I want to point out that in terms of Regina 
McCarthy's nomination, Senator Inhofe, the ranking member on the 
committee, supports her for this job, as do I. And I think that is the 
best thing I could say for a nominee, because oftentimes we find 
ourselves at loggerheads. But in this case, we are together.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, I urge approval of her, and I hope we 
can do this by voice vote.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. BOXER. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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