Shake-Up on the Energy Committee

With Sen. Murkowski's defeat and three other retirements, the Senate energy committee will soon have four Republican vacancies.

Senator Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) stunning defeat in her state’s GOP primary has left a lot of folks scratching their heads about the outcome and asking questions.

Did she fail to take her opponent seriously?

Why didn’t she go on the attack sooner?

Does Sarah Palin have a collection of Murkowski family voodoo dolls?

Is Joe Miller actually Joe the Plumber in disguise? The list goes on and on.

A more pertinent question is this: What does the Murkowski defeat mean for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee, where she currently serves as the top ranking Republican?

Because Senator Murkowski worked well with ENR Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), some in the media have speculated that her defeat will mean the committee will become more partisan.

That will really depend on who replaces her as the ranking Republican, and how the GOP leadership fills the three other Republican vacancies created by the retirements of Senators Brownback (KS) and Bunning (KY), and the primary defeat of Senator Bennett (UT).

Based on seniority, Senator Richard Burr (NC) is next in line to succeed Murkowski as the top Republican on the ENR Committee. There is little to suggest that Burr would be any less willing to work constructively with Bingaman than Murkowski has.

Burr is more of a traditional conservative who embraces conservation and stewardship. He is not a radical libertarian type that ignores those traditionally conservative obligations.

Senator Burr has shown solid concern for the stewardship of the nation’s public lands and he supports full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). On energy, Burr has been a strong advocate of nuclear energy as a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels. He supports efforts to address nuclear waste issues and to explore utilizing reprocessed nuclear fuel.

One could easily argue that he might be a more constructive force than a senator who hails from a state like Alaska, which is so heavily dependent on revenue from oil development.

The key to having an ENR Committee that can actually advance forward-thinking solutions to our energy and natural resource challenges is for the GOP leadership to fill the vacant spots on the committee with thoughtful, stewardship-minded senators who can work in a bi-partisan manner.

That means not stacking this committee with radical libertarian, anti-public land types and climate change deniers—like the House GOP leadership seems to do with its Natural Resources and Energy and Commerce Committees.

The reason voters are so fickle is because those they send to Washington seem incapable of rising above politics and solving the big problems facing our nation. None of those problems are bigger than energy security and climate stewardship.

The composition of the Senate ENR Committee for the next Congress will likely determine if our elected officials are up to the task.