Senator Maria Cantwell on Sally Jewell: “I know that science will be her compass”

Edi­tor’s Note: The fol­low­ing is the text of Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell’s speech on behalf of Inte­ri­or nom­i­nee Sal­ly Jew­ell, deliv­ered on the floor of the Unit­ed States Sen­ate ear­li­er today. (Jew­ell was con­firmed by a vote of 87–11). Video of the speech is avail­able on YouTube. Our thanks to Sen­a­tor Cantwell for shar­ing her remarks with our read­ers here on The Advo­cate as a guest post.

Mr. Pres­i­dent, I join my col­leagues from the North­west to come to the floor this after­noon to speak in sup­port of the nom­i­na­tion of Sal­ly Jew­ell as Sec­re­tary of Inte­ri­or. And, like my col­leagues from the North­west, I want to express how much we appre­ci­ate her will­ing­ness to serve and how proud we are of her lega­cy and inter­est in a vari­ety of issues so far. And, obvi­ous­ly, the Depart­ment of Inte­ri­or — with its broad range of ser­vices — is so impor­tant to us, includ­ing every­thing from our Nation­al Parks, to our wildlife refuges, to off­shore drilling lease man­age­ment, to the impor­tant sci­ence done by the US Geo­log­i­cal Ser­vice and many oth­er things.

In fact, I read that the Depart­ment of the Inte­ri­or was called the “Depart­ment of Every­thing Else.” As a nom­i­nee, Ms. Jew­ell came before our com­mit­tee and I want to thank her fam­i­ly for their will­ing­ness to sup­port her — and their efforts to come to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Because Sal­ly is the exact type of lead­er­ship we need at the Depart­ment of Inte­ri­or. She rep­re­sents a bal­anced per­son who knows how to help a grow­ing busi­ness like she did, and served on the Uni­ver­si­ty Board of Regents, and also worked on the non­par­ti­san Nation­al Parks Con­ser­va­tion Association.

She has done every­thing in busi­ness from deal­ing with oil fields in Okla­homa to com­mer­cial bank­ing to — of late — run­ning REI, one of our most suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies in the Pacif­ic Northwest.

So I know she has the kind of lead­er­ship that it takes to fig­ure out these issues – about best use of pub­lic lands or the vig­or­ous chal­lenges the Depart­ment faces when it comes to mod­ern­iz­ing the bureau­cra­cy or think­ing about cli­mate change at the same time you are talk­ing about deep-water drilling.

So it’s a myr­i­ad of things that we have to forge through and Sal­ly Jew­ell is the right per­son with the right bal­ance to get that done.

Hav­ing grown up in Wash­ing­ton where over forty per­cent of our land is pub­lic land, Sal­ly under­stands these West­ern issues – whether it’s water rights or salmon recov­ery or under­stand­ing the impact on water lev­els, fire sea­son, wildlife on BLM lands, or the impor­tance of access to hunt­ing and fish­ing – I guar­an­tee, because she grew up there, Sal­ly Jew­ell under­stands these issues.

And I know that she’s been involved in many orga­ni­za­tions to express that. And that has been a good train­ing ground for her. I’m con­fi­dent because she is trained engi­neer, she’s going to bring a very prag­mat­ic can-do atti­tude to the Inte­ri­or Department’s man­age­ment and prob­lem-solv­ing effort.

I know that sci­ence will be her com­pass and I know that she is not going to have an ide­o­log­i­cal bent. But she’s going to have a get it done men­tal­i­ty. Giv­en the impor­tance of the Inte­ri­or Department’s agen­cies and very chal­leng­ing mis­sion, I’m excit­ed that we are going to have some­body with the busi­ness back­ground and a sci­ence back­ground at the Depart­ment of Interior.

So I hope that our col­leagues will vote today to move Ms. Jew­ell out of the Unit­ed States Sen­ate so that we can get her into the Depart­ment of Inte­ri­or. So that she can begin this impor­tant job and con­tin­ue to move our nation’s agen­da for­ward. As the Chair­woman of the Indi­an Affairs Com­mit­tee I look for­ward to work­ing with Ms. Jew­ell on all the issues relat­ed to Indi­an Coun­try as well.

There is much to accom­plish, much to address and I think that her back­ground is exact­ly what we need. So I hope my col­leagues will move quick­ly on this issue.

And I thank the Chair­man, Sen­a­tor Wyden [of Ore­gon], for his lead­er­ship in mov­ing her nom­i­na­tion through the process.