Senate Republicans Block Committee Vote on Obama’s Nominee to Lead E.P.A.

By JOHN M. BRODER, NYT

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans continued a campaign to delay confirmation of President Obama’s second-term cabinet nominees on Thursday, blocking a committee vote on Gina McCarthy, the president’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

The action came a day after Republicans on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee threw a wrench in the nomination of Thomas E. Perez to be labor secretary, delaying it for at least a week.

In both cases, Republican committee members said the nominees had failed to adequately respond to their questions.

The eight Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee, led by the ranking member Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, boycotted a committee meeting to protest what they called Ms. McCarthy’s “unresponsive answers” to more than 1,000 written questions about E.P.A. policies and internal practices.

Democrats were unable to muster a majority to move the nomination without any Republicans present and were left to fulminate in a near-empty committee room over what several of them called Republican obstructionism. Committee Democrats are likely to regroup and try to approve Ms. McCarthy’s nomination along party lines, but it is unclear whether they could clear a 60-vote threshold on the Senate floor.

(More here.)