A trio of Democrats, their Senate careers waning, are seeking to build environmental legacies on promoting clean energy, ensuring access to clean water, and combating climate change.
Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Tom Carper (Del.) and panel members Ben Cardin (Md.) and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), with 18 months before their announced retirement, have long track records as bipartisan negotiators on clean water and infrastructure matters.
“I want to make sure we do another great WRDA bill, and of course I’m very focused on the Great Lakes,” Stabenow said in a brief hallway interview. Stabenow was referring to the bipartisan, biennial Water Resources Development Act, which funds Army Corps of Engineers’ projects and drinking and wastewater programs.
Each have played prominent roles, including behind the scenes, on major policies, such as crafting the federal response to the Flint, Mich., water crisis in 2015. The panel has also been at the center of historic levels of spending for clean energy, water, climate, and infrastructure projects in the past two years.
Environmental groups and other lawmakers hope any successors can continue to maintain the panel’s reputation of working across the aisle. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), who has turned his perch atop the Budget Committee to focus on climate issues, is one to watch for the top Democratic spot — though a lot can change in 18 months.
Political headwinds will test the panel’s comity next year as 34 Senate seats come up for election, 23 of them held by Democrats or independents. The GOP needs a net gain of two seats to take control of the chamber, or one seat if a Republican wins the White House.
In the meantime, the retiring trio has a long to-do list.
While Stabenow is focused on WRDA and the Great Lakes, Carper has cited oversight over the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law (Public Law 117-58) and Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act (Public Law 117-169) among his top priorities. He also sees as paramount passing bipartisan legislation to improve permitting for clean energy initiatives. Any permitting overhaul must have engagement and input from disadvantaged communities, he said.
Cardin is focused on sustaining the environmental health of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, and ensuring Americans, particularly those with low incomes, can get safe drinking water.
By the time their terms wind down next year, Carper, Cardin, and Stabenow together will have roughly 100 years of experience in the US House and Senate combined.
“They are giants, true legislators,” said Aaron Suntag, a former auto, energy, and environment aide to Stabenow who now is a principal at Public Strategies Washington, managing the firm’s energy and environment practice.
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‘Pragmatic’ Problem-Solving
Panel Republicans, including ranking member Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), have worked with Democrats to address “forever chemicals” in drinking water and have tried to find consensus on a permitting overhaul.
“We have a lot in common,” Capito said in May of Carper, who despite representing Delaware is a native West Virginian and often speaks of his love for the state.
Democrats like Carper, Cardin, Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), and Jeff Merkley (Ore.) are “pragmatic” and “sincere” problem-solvers, said Sen. Kevin Cramer (N.D.), the top Republican on the transportation and infrastructure subcommittee.
Cramer said he hopes Capito will lead the committee in 2025, but appreciates the way Carper has set the tone during his tenure. “He is just such a gentleman,” the Republican said. “He is over the top sappy sometimes; he’s got a pastoral quality about him.”
Carper showed his tenacity shepherding a fee on industry methane emissions that remained in the Inflation Reduction Act against opposition from groups like the American Petroleum Institute, which represents the oil and natural gas industry.
“There’s nobody else who could have had the conversation with Joe Manchin to get that first pollution fee passed into law,” Whitehouse said in May, referring to Carper and the powerful West Virginia Democrat who leads the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “Once the Biden administration starts implementing it seriously, we’ll see what a big difference it makes.”
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Hill Reputations
Stabenow, known as a fierce negotiator for Michigan, fought hard for electric vehicle tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, and worked with then-Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) on the Flint crisis.
Cardin, who spent years in the House and Senate advocating for cleaner, more affordable drinking water, successfully pushed through a measure in 2021 along with fellow committee member Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) to create a pilot program assisting low-income homeowners with water bills.
The retiring Democrats also have reputations for recruiting and retaining staff.
“One of the signs of a member that is really focused on good stuff is when they have staff that stick around, and all of them they just have super-experienced staffs,” said Carol Andress, the Environmental Defense Fund’s associate vice president of congressional affairs and climate policy.
Future Bench
The three retiring Democrats leave behind other senior lawmakers who boast strong environmental policy chops and progressive street credibility, particularly among outside groups: Independent Bernie Sanders (Vt.), and Democrats Whitehouse, Merkley, and Ed Markey (Mass.).
Committee observers are watching Whitehouse for the Democrats’ top spot on the Environment and Public Works Committee for now.
“Everyone in the community loves Sen. Whitehouse,” said Collin O’Mara, National Wildlife Federation president and CEO, who is close to Carper. Whitehouse now leads the Budget Committee and has been using that position to link economic and climate policy, and hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for pollution and emissions reductions.
If Democrats still control the Senate after the 2024 elections, Whitehouse will have multiple leadership options, including the environment panel and the Judiciary Committee, where he’s a senior Democrat and leads a subcommittee.
Whitehouse told reporters shortly after Carper’s retirement announcement in May that he had made “no decision” yet on whether to pursue the top Democratic spot on the EPW panel in 2025.
Sanders currently leads the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and is widely expected to stay in leadership there. Merkley is chairman of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee.
“They sit in a very different spot on the political spectrum than Carper,” Mae Stevens, a former Cardin aide, said about other senior Democrats on the panel. Stevens is now a senior vice president at Banner Public Affairs and leads the firm’s water practice. But she said future Democrats should be able to replicate the Environment and Public Works Committee’s bipartisan efforts.
“The ‘E’ part of EPW is sometimes pretty cranky, but the PW part is usually more bipartisan,” she said.
Whitehouse is “probably more of a lightning rod for businesses than he is for Republicans,” said the Environmental Defense Fund’s Andress. Markey has a similar profile, she added.
Rising Stars
Sen. Alex Padilla (Calif.) is among the junior environment committee members to watch on the Democratic side. He leads the panel’s Fisheries, Water, and Wildlife subcommittee, and focused his first hearing as chairman, in May, on water affordability and systems.
Padilla has only been in the Senate since 2021 and “to have that gavel is a big deal,” Stevens, the former Cardin aide, said. His committee will influence crucial measures in the 2024 WRDA bill affecting clean water and drinking water, including provisions related to pipes.
Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly, who has been laser-focused on the drought plaguing the Colorado River Basin, is another rising star, according to Suntag. Kelly sits on Environment and Public Works and the Energy and Natural Resources; he helped secure $4 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act last year at the eleventh hour to address severe drought in the West.
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Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), running to succeed Carper in the Senate, also has a history of working on water issues in her state, and could end up on the panel if she wins her race next year.
Outside the panel, Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) has stepped up pressure behind the scenes to have Carper include stronger input from disadvantaged communities on permitting. Duckworth had to give up her seat on Carper’s panel to pursue her interests on the Committee on Foreign Relations. In a recent interview, she said she’s “not quitting her work on” environmental and public works.
Duckworth said she talked recently to a foreign minister about how to do environmental justice in Germany, including the “nuts and bolts of requiring cumulative effects in consideration for permits.”
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