The US House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday voted to subpoena the Obama administration as part of its investigation into the decision to impose a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the wake of 2010's Macondo spill and the development of a stream protection rule aimed at coal mining operations.
"It is unfortunate that we have reached this point today, but the Department [of the Interior] has left us with no other choice," Representative Doc Hastings, Republican-Washington, told the panel's business meeting. "It's especially disappointing given President Obama's pledges of unprecedented transparency and openness. The administration is not only failing to uphold this promise, but is actively preventing Congress from carrying out its oversight authority."
The committee voted 23-17 to give Hastings -- its chair -- authority to issue subpoenas on the two issues. Hastings said the subpoenas could target Interior and other agencies and individuals within the administration.
Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey, the committee's senior Democrat, called the vote a "blank check for two investigations that have been shooting blanks for months."
Markey said the committee's Democratic staff prepared a report that found Republican "allegations about the Stream Protection proposed rulemaking are without merit." And Interior's Office of Inspector General found no evidence of wrongdoing in the editing of the drilling report.
"Using subpoenas to score political points in a policy dispute is inappropriate. Subpoenas are a tool of last resort, not a weapon of political retort," Markey said.
The committee in 2011 began an investigation into the Office of Surface Mining's work on a new Stream Protection Rule to replace the 2008 Stream Buffer Zone Rule after estimates of potential job loss numbers were leaked from an early working draft.
The 2008 rule allows coal mine waste and spoil within 100 feet of intermittent and perennial streams under certain conditions. OSM expects to release a proposed rule and accompanying environmental impact statement later in 2012.
Hastings has sent seven letters to Interior officials since February 2011, requesting various documents and materials. In January, he threatened to subpoena the documents if his requests were not met.
The committee is particularly interested in obtaining more than 30 hours of digital audio recordings of meetings between Interior officials and contractors reviewing the proposal's potential environmental impacts.
"If there is nothing to hide, then why are these recordings being withheld? What was said that Congress can't be allowed to hear?" Hastings asked.
Markey said Interior has provided more 13,000 pages of documents related to the Stream Protection Rule investigation and more than 1,000 documents as part of the panel's investigation into the drilling moratorium report.
Republicans also argue that a subpoena is needed to obtain documents on a decision Interior made on a May 2010 report recommending a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in federal waters.
House Republicans say the report "was edited to make it falsely appear as though the moratorium was supported by a panel of engineering experts."
The report was issued after the completion of a 30-day safety study ordered by Obama in the wake of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
The study, which makes a number of recommendations, including improvements to equipment and procedures, also called for the drilling halt. The report said its recommendations were reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.
Soon after, the experts protested the language, saying that while they agreed with many of the recommendations in the report, they did not agree with the moratorium.
"A moratorium was added after the final review and was never agreed to by the contributors," the experts said in a letter.
An investigation by the Interior inspector general found that the White House, in reviewing the report, reordered language in the executive summary. That revision resulted in "the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer reviewed."
The IG report concluded that while the report's executive summary "could have been more clearly worded," the department did not break any law.
Interior spokesman Adam Fetcher said the department has been responsive to the committee's requests in both investigations and intends to "continue to cooperate with the committee's legitimate oversight interests."
"However, we also have expressed serious and long-standing institutional concerns about the committee's efforts to compromise executive branch deliberations, particularly regarding pending executive branch decisionmaking," Fetcher said in an email.
After the meeting, Hastings said that the subpoenas would not be issued immediately in the hope that Interior would comply with the original requests during Congress' upcoming two-week recess.
In response to concerns expressed by Democrats during the meeting, Hastings said "all members will be kept apprised and informed either simultaneously or in advance of subpoenas being issued."
