Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. HEINRICH. I rise to speak on the pending nominations.
I appreciate the majority leader scheduling this vote to confirm Mr. Norman Bay to be a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
FERC is one of the lesser known but perhaps one of the most important independent agencies in the Federal Government. It has jurisdiction over interstate transmission of electricity, oil, and natural gas, as well as licensing of hydroelectric power.
I believe Mr. Bay will be an outstanding member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. I urge all of my colleagues to support his nomination today.
Since 2009 Mr. Bay has been the Director of the Office of Enforcement at FERC, where he has gained extensive experience in the regulation of energy markets. The Office of Enforcement is responsible for market oversight and surveillance and for implementing the antimanipulation authority Congress enacted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This authority provided FERC new tools to combat the type of market manipulation that produced the devastating power crisis a decade ago across the West.
Under Mr. Bay's leadership, FERC has increased transparency in its work, while bringing a number of enforcement actions that have helped protect the integrity of the energy markets and provided $300 million in relief to consumers--$300 million back into the pockets of energy consumers.
He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School and has had a long and distinguished career of public service. Before joining FERC, he taught law at the University of New Mexico. He also served as an assistant U.S. attorney and in 2000 was nominated by the President to be the U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico. He was confirmed in that position by the full Senate by unanimous consent.
Mr. Bay is an outstanding public servant with extensive experience in the field of energy markets. I am confident he will judiciously implement FERC's statutory responsibility of oversight of our Nation's energy infrastructure, competitive markets, and reliability.
At his confirmation hearing in May, members of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee had a chance to question Mr. Bay extensively on his work at the FERC and his views on regulatory policy. Senator Pete Domenici, a former chairman and longtime member of the energy committee from my home State of New Mexico, spoke at the hearing in strong support of Mr. Bay's nomination. Senator Jeff Bingaman, another former chairman of the energy committee from New Mexico, wrote a letter in support of his nomination.
The Senate must give consent to the President's nominees to be members of the FERC. The Senate is fulfilling that responsibility with this vote today. However, there should be no misunderstanding--Congress gave the President alone the responsibility of designating a member of the Commission to be the Chairman of the Commission. The law enacted by Congress in 1977 remains very clear: The President, and not the Senate, determines who will serve as Chairman of the Commission.
I believe Mr. Bay will be fair, balanced, pragmatic, and a consensus-oriented member of the FERC. He will decide cases on the merits, based on the facts, based on the law and on the record.
I am pleased to support the nominations of both Commissioner LaFleur and Mr. Bay to be members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. I hope the Senate will vote today to confirm them both.
I yield the floor.
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