The House Natural Resources Committee today voted 23-17 along party lines to authorize subpoenas that would force the Interior Department and other agencies to turn over documents related to two panel investigations.

At issue are the Office of Surface Mining's forthcoming stream protection rule and an Interior report that recommended a temporary ban on deepwater drilling after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Committee Republicans are looking into allegations of wrongdoing in both cases and say the administration is failing to cooperate.

"The Obama administration has an obligation to be open, honest and forthcoming in its decisions and actions," Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said. "The secrecy and refusal to comply with simple requests can no longer be tolerated."

Critics of the drilling moratorium accuse the White House of tampering with language in the report to imply a group of independent scientists supported the proposed drilling ban, though they never endorsed it. An Office of Inspector General probe found no evidence of wrongdoing.

"However," Hastings said, "in its brief, quick report, the inspector general was unable to independently verify whether the report's authors intended to mislead the public."

When it comes to OSM's stream protection rule, Republicans accuse Interior of pushing former contractors to change baseline economic impact information. The GOP wants a series of recordings of meetings between agency officials and former contractors working on the rule. Interior leaders have denied the allegations.

Hastings said the panel is looking into "whether political implications are unduly influencing the process, the dismissal of the contractor, and the impacts the rewritten regulation would have on jobs, the economy, and coal and energy production in America."

Interior has said it provided several thousand pages of documents and has allowed lawmakers to review others in private.

"In response to the committee's inquiries over the past year," said Interior spokesman Adam Fetcher, "we have repeatedly testified, responded to the committee's requests, produced thousands of pages of documents and made clear that we intend to continue to cooperate with the committee's legitimate oversight interests."

He added, "However, we also have expressed serious and long-standing institutional concerns about the committee's efforts to compromise executive branch deliberations, particularly regarding pending executive branch decisionmaking."

Although the panel approved the subpoenas, Hastings may not issue them right away.

"Sometimes actions like these will yield the department giving us the information," he said in an interview. "Obviously, since we are going on a two-week break, we will see if that yields anything. And then we will proceed accordingly."

Democrats called the subpoena vote a witch hunt and a waste of time. They say today's vote gives Hastings broad powers to compel information beyond the documents cited.

"The motion before us is a blank check for two investigations that have been shooting blanks for months," ranking member Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said at the hearing. "Just because we are discussing streams and the Gulf of Mexico does not mean we should go on a fishing expedition."

Democrats also complained about a lack of GOP openness about their investigations and being unable to see the subpoenas before voting on allowing the chairman to issue them.

"The Republican majority has provided no reason for going forward with this motion," said Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), ranking member of the Mineral Resources subpanel. "All we have is irrelevant, unsubstantiated and false charges."

Holt called the subpoena vote "worse than a waste of the valuable time of this committee."

And Markey said "the majority's escalating requests seem to be about harassing and tying up the administration."

But GOP members said the administration should turn over documents if it has nothing to hide and should list documents it claims are privileged by law. They see this as another front in fighting what they call the administration's war on coal and other resources.

"We have been met with nothing more than disregard for legitimate oversight," said Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), head of the Mineral Resources Subcommittee.

Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), the top congressional critic of the stream protection rule, said, "We shouldn't and we can't lose sight of the tens of thousands of men and women whose jobs are on the line."