EDITORIAL: McCain’s methane-rule vote: Politics over policy?

May 16--A surprise deciding vote cast by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., raises questions about his motivation. His vote stopped a GOP push to overturn an Interior Department rule, imposed late in the Obama administration, that the energy industry and all but two other Senate Republicans opposed.

Finalized in November by Interior's Bureau of Land Management, the rule requires capturing methane from oil and gas wells that's otherwise burned off. The House already had voted under the Congressional Review Act to overturn the rule, which the industry opposed as duplicating "state regulations in place throughout the West" and decreasing "energy production on federal lands," raising costs and eliminating jobs, according to The Associated Press.

All Senate Republicans were on board with overturning the rule except Susan Collins of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who'd made their stance clear in advance -- and Mr. McCain, whose unexpected vote sealed the overturn effort's defeat, 51-49. Afterward, he said "the BLM rule may be onerous" but overturning it "would have prevented the federal government, under any administration, from issuing a rule that is 'similar'" under the Congressional Review Act, according to The Washington Times.

Perhaps McCain's vote expressed principled public health and environmental concerns. But many will see it as McCain taking another shot at the Trump administration, putting politics before policy for his own purposes.

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