Senate confirms Fudge to lead housing agency, Regan for EPA

Fudge, a veteran lawmaker, will lead the housing agency agency just as Congress has passed new benefits for renters and homeowners who have suffered economic losses amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

Regan, who has served as North Carolina's top environmental regulator since 2017, will help lead Biden's efforts to address climate change and advocate for environmental justice, two of the administration's top priorities. He is the first Black man to run the EPA. 

Fudge, who has represented parts of Cleveland and Akron in the House since 2008, is a former mayor and a longtime advocate for assistance for the needy. 

She said at her confirmation hearing in January that her first priority would be protecting the millions of people who have fallen behind on rent or mortgages due to loss of income during the pandemic, telling senators that "we cannot afford to allow people in the midst of a pandemic to be put in the streets." 

Shortly after she was confirmed — and minutes before she resigned — Fudge took the last vote of her House career in support of the USD 1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, which will provide billions in housing assistance to low-income households. 

Fudge was confirmed 66-34, while Regan was also approved by a 66-34 vote. The Senate also confirmed federal Judge Merrick Garland as attorney general Wednesday. 

All three nominees won bipartisan support for their nominations, although Republican Leader Mitch McConnell voted against Regan. McConnell backed Fudge and Garland. 

"These aren't the nominees that any Republican would have picked for these jobs," McConnell said ahead of the votes. "But the nation needs presidents to be able to stand up a team so long as their nominees are qualified and mainstream." 

McConnell voted against Regan's nomination and announced he will oppose New Mexico Rep Deb Haaland, Biden's choice to be interior secretary. The two nominees both support "far-left policies that crush jobs" in his state and across the country, the Kentucky Republican said. 

Regan and Haaland "both report straight to the front lines of the new administration's left-wing war on American energy" and would "unbalance the balancing act between conservation and the economic comeback we badly need," McConnell said. 

He cited Regan's support for the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, and Haaland's support for the Green New Deal, a far-reaching, if nonbinding set of proposals to address climate change and reduce economic inequality. 

Timing for a vote on Haaland's nomination has not been set. 

Republicans who opposed Fudge's nomination argued that she was also out of the mainstream. Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey criticized some of Fudge's past comments about Republicans, saying they could have a "toxic and detrimental impact on the working relationship that ought to be a constructive relationship" between Congress and the Biden administration. 

Toomey referenced a statement Fudge made last year when GOP senators moved to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg after blocking Obama's nominee — Garland, the newly-confirmed attorney general — four years earlier. 

Fudge at the time called Senate Republicans "a disgrace to this nation" and said they "have no decency, they have no honor, they have no integrity." 

At her confirmation hearing, Fudge did not walk back any of her previous statements but described herself as "one of the most bipartisan members in the House of Representatives." 

Democrats argued that Fudge's experience was right for the times. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who lives in Fudge's district, noted that Ohio suffered a disproportionate number of foreclosures even before the 2008 economic crisis.