Stansbury in October. Photo: Steven St. John/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Rep. Melanie Stansbury sees the House Oversight panel as "ground zero" to fight DOGE.
Why it matters: The New Mexico Democrat — a former staffer at OMB, CEQ and the Senate ENR Committee — has a deep knowledge of the budget and environmental review process.
- She's fresh off an unsuccessful run for ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee. She also served on Oversight's energy and regulatory subcommittee.
The big picture: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's so-called Department of Government Efficiency is already gearing up for hearings to investigate spending, staffing, diversity initiatives and to "dismantle the federal agencies," she said.
Zoom in: She also questioned the effectiveness of permitting proposals to unleash energy production that could get renewed by Republicans this session.
- Projects hitting NEPA roadblocks are almost always caused either by legitimate environmental, tribal or community concerns or by agencies that need more resources — not the underlying law itself, she said.
- "The idea that you would dismantle or put onerous statutory requirements on agencies that don't have the appropriate operational resources to do the work to begin with is not going to fix the problem," Stansbury said.
Between the lines: Stansbury, who says she supports geothermal energy, opposed the CLEAN Act, which requires Interior to hold annual geothermal energy lease sales and respond to geothermal drilling permit applications within 30 days.
- She said the bill — which 35 Democrats supported — established impossible timelines, which will inevitably lead to "lawsuits when the federal agencies can't comply with a statutory timeline that does not fix the problem."
