After Months of Republican Obstruction, Biden and Stone-Manning Must Act Boldly on Public Lands

With the U.S. Senate slated to vote as early as today on the nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), government watchdog Accountable.US demanded that senators vote in favor of the American people -- not the interests of Big Oil executives -- and called on the administration to take bold action on its climate and conservation agenda without further delay.

"It's no surprise that lawmakers like Senator John Barrasso, who has long been in Big Oil's pocket, are leading the charge against confirming Tracy Stone-Manning and the President's other outstanding Interior nominees," said Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US. "Big Oil's allies in the Senate will continue to obstruct the President's conservation team and their plans to protect our public lands at every turn. The Biden administration has no choice but to take bold action on monument protections and public lands leasing reform without further delay."

Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, whose campaign coffers overflowed with oil and gas industry money in the 2020 cycle, has led the charge against Stone-Manning's nomination. An Accountable.US analysis found that Barrasso took nearly $20,000 of his almost $70,000 total 2020 election cycle contributions from the oil and gas industry during the last quarter of 2020, when he was still expected to chair the Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee in a Republican-controlled Senate. Barrasso even bragged on FOX News late last year that Biden's nominees would "have to run the gauntlet" in front of his would-be committee.

Nine of 10 Republican senators on the ENR committee also co-sponsored legislation to block Biden's executive action pausing new leases for oil and gas drilling around the same time at least one industry group, Western Energy Alliance, began litigating against Biden's policy. With Biden's widely-popular agenda to protect public lands and fight the climate crisis on the line, will lawmakers vote in favor of Americans, or their own pocketbooks?