Jeff Bingaman: “This land is effectively exempt from nearly all requirements of federal law and outside review and scrutiny.”

In December 2010 U.S. Senators Tom Udall, Tom Harkin, and Jeff Bingaman requested an independent study from the National Academy of Sciences on whether chimpanzees are necessary as invasive research subjects.

I would certainly like to thank Senator Bingaman, who just retired just very recently, for the strong support that he has shown me over the years, and including support for this nomination.

He has demonstrated, on numerous occasions, his ability to find solutions to very difficult problems and to find solutions that could gain the support of Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike.

I think all of us, if we were choosing a Secretary of Energy, would want to choose somebody with those attributes.