Markey on Natural Resources Republican Subpoenas: Blank Check for Investigations that are Shooting Blanks

WASHINGTON (March 28, 2012) – Natural Resources Republicans are blithely attempting to issue subpoenas to the Obama administration today for two Republican investigations that are without merit, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass) said today.

Rep. Markey, the top Democrat on the panel, issued the following statement, and the Democratic staff on the committee re-released a report on one of these politically-motivated Republican investigations, showing it to be baseless:

“The motion before us is a blank check for two investigations that have been shooting blanks for months.

“What began as narrow inquiries about specific questions has ballooned into the catch-all request we have before us today. When the Majority learned their original allegations lacked substance, they simply decided to ask the broadest questions they could imagine. Just because we’re discussing streams, rivers and the Gulf of Mexico, is not an invitation to go on a fishing expedition.

“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.

“If you need something to investigate, we have some ideas. Oil company profiteering and unsafe drilling practices cost billions per year and even cost lives. And yet despite much higher stakes, the Majority continues to ignore these issues.

“Under the motion, the Chairman does not even have to give the Minority a chance to review the actual subpoenas on these matters before they are issued. Such blank-check subpoena authority would be outrageous under almost any circumstances. But it is especially outrageous in this case.

“I say that for the following reasons.

“First, the Committee’s Democratic Staff prepared a report several weeks ago showing that the Majority’s allegations about the Stream Protection proposed rulemaking are without merit. And DOI’s Office of Inspector General has already thoroughly investigated the editing of the offshore drilling report and found no evidence of wrongdoing.

“Second, contrary to the Chairman’s statements, the Department of Interior has undertaken extensive efforts to comply with the Majority’s document requests. The Department of Interior has provided roughly 13,000 pages of documents on the Stream Protection rulemaking, and the Committee has received 1,000 pages of documents on the offshore drilling report, or 22 times more pages than the length of the report itself.

“Third, the few remaining documents we are aware of which are still being withheld are not relevant or are not needed. In both cases, Committee Staff were allowed to review relevant documents in private. Your staff know what these documents say, which means they also know these documents say nothing of import.

“Finally, the Majority has not communicated with the Minority about which documents it is seeking or why. The Majority issued a memorandum only to the Republican Members of the Committee about the proposed subpoenas. In fact, the motion before the Committee was not even provided to the Minority until late yesterday morning. We started to worry that we’d have to follow your lead and blindly issue a subpoena for it.

“Mr. Chairman, the Majority’s investigations have been going on for over a year, but you and I have not spoken about them once. I have twice written to you asking for the documents you have obtained from the Administration and other sources. Under House Rules, any documents provided to the Chairman in response to an official communication are the property of the Committee as a whole and are supposed to be available to any Member. Unfortunately, you have not responded to my requests for these documents or for related information. Instead, the Minority independently obtained documents from the Department of Interior. But the Minority still does not have access to any documents the Majority may have obtained from other sources.

“When I was Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, I consulted with my Ranking Member before we moved an investigation to the point of issuing a subpoena. I did so only after extensive discussions and consultations with the Administration. We narrowed our request only to essential documents. In the end, we only issued one subpoena for a single document. Our subpoena vote was bipartisan. To this day, it remains the only subpoena that I have issued, and this is my 36th year in Congress.

“As the Obama Administration can tell you, I am not shy about legitimate requests for documents. But the Majority’s escalating requests seem to be more about harassing and tying up the Administration rather than finding answers to important questions.

“I urge my colleagues to vote no on this motion to authorize subpoenas.”