Effectively, what happened then was a year of good, strong committee work by the Energy Committee is now being held hostage in a fight in another com… - Lisa Murkowski

After the hearing that we all watched last week, last Thursday, it became clear to me, or it was becoming clearer that that appearance of impropriety has become unavoidable. And I've been deliberating, agonizing about what is fair. Is this too unfair a burden to place on somebody that is dealing with the worst, the most horrific allegations that go to your integrity, that go to everything that you are. And I think we all struggle with how we would respond. But I am reminded there are only nine seats on the bench of the highest court in the land and these seats are occupied by these men and women for their lifetime and so those who seek one of these seats must meet the highest standard in all respects at all times and that is hard.

As you may recall, we had the American Energy Innovation Act on the Senate floor at the end of February just before the pandemic took hold. Again, I mentioned the collaborative process that went into building that bill. We spent a lot of time in the Energy Committee working through a lot of the issues that had some conflict and to reduce that conflict so we could get a good, strong bipartisan product. As a consequence, we have a bill that contains the priorities for more than 70 Senators. It is supported by more than 200 organizations. We incorporated 18 amendments on the floor working through that process. The Senate ultimately denied cloture on March 9. This was just before the shelter in place and the work from home orders began. We hit a wall there. The unfortunate reality is we hit that wall. We were derailed with this important legislative effort not because of an impasse that we had with the contents of our bill, but it was an unrelated dispute from another committee. It was not something that, as chairman, I could have anticipated. There was no warning that it was going to be an issue for our bill. In fairness, we didn't have any power as the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to work it out for this other committee. We were hamstrung by it.

John was very clear that you had to earn his respect. Respect was not something that came with the title. The fact that you were a U.S. Senator didn't mean you had earned his respect. And I know because I felt that in my early years here in the Senate. I came through an appointment, and I think John McCain was just going to wait to see if I was able to prove myself, and he ultimately decided, apparently, that I had. He came up to me one day--we were actually walking down the aisle there, and he came up and he said: You know, you are OK, kid. And for that, that was high praise.