Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Veto our only defense

Sunday, April 23, 2000 | 9:29 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

Should we have a veto ceremony for the nuclear waste bill?

The simple answer would be, of course. Any time there is a veto of a bill that would stick the nation's mile-high pile of high-level nuclear waste in our back yard, that would be a time for a ceremony. Actually, that would be a time for a party.

Ever since President Bill Clinton took office, he has steadfastly maintained his position that any decision about what to do with the country's growing nuclear waste should be based on the best that science has to offer rather than the worst of what our political system can deliver. So far what the Congress of these United States has been able to deliver is the potential of thousands of trucks and trains, full of the deadliest poison known to man, rolling across the country and into and through Las Vegas on its way to a 19th century burial less than 100 miles from the busiest tourist destination in the world.

And, until now, just the threat of a presidential veto -- coupled with the demonstrated ability of the Senate to sustain that veto -- has been enough to keep the Republican leadership in both houses of Congress from testing the president's commitment. But, as we are learning all too often, the hardball politics of money, money, money has finally proved too much for the GOP faithful to overcome. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott both have succumbed to the siren song of dancing for dollars and pushed their colleagues to vote for a nuclear waste bill that will have the trucks rolling our way faster than you can say, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

By the way, I didn't make those words up. They come directly from the Constitution of the United States, a sacred document whose framers wanted to make sure that each and every American citizen would enjoy those inalienable rights. Obviously, even though the Republican majorities are proud to carry the Constitution around in their pockets and upon their sleeves, they conveniently forget its proscriptions when it comes to doing what the nuclear power industry dictates to them. In short, the millions of dollars that the nuclear waste industry has poured into the GOP coffers have finally begun to pay off. So emboldened are the Republicans that they are willing to risk a veto to show their sycophancy to an industry that has lost its way and wants to take Nevada with it.

The truth is that, even though generations of Nevadans will pay by far the highest price in terms of health and safety should the dump actually get built at Yucca Mountain, there are tens of millions of other Americans who live along the highways and railways of this nation who will also be subject to the kind of accidents that will result in death and destruction in their own lives. That's the most puzzling part of this very sad chapter about corporate greed and political indifference in America. It is one thing to try to trample the rights of a couple of million Nevadans who are thought to be expendable by the Republican-controlled Congress, but to run roughshod over 100 million-plus Americans from New York to Los Angeles and Maine to Florida, those who will suffer interminably when the inevitable accident occurs, makes no sense at all.

The Republicans recently held their own kind of ceremony, which was designed to pressure President Clinton into signing the bill that would make a wasteland of Nevada. Their thinking must have been that creating an environment in which the rest of the country might question why the president would favor one state over the other 49 was good politics, even though it was lousy for our democracy. The fact of the matter is that by vetoing this bill, President Clinton will not only be protecting one state from being improperly put upon against its wishes by the rest of the country, but he will also be protecting those who live in those other states from being used by an industry that cares nothing at all about the health and safety of America -- wherever it lives.

We live in what will be the greatest century yet in American life. The scientific discoveries that will be made in the coming years will dwarf the significance of what has already been discovered. And that, my friends, is saying a mouthful. Doesn't it make good and common sense to charge 21st century science with the task of finding a solution to the nation's nuclear waste problem instead of being too willing to accept 19th century answers just because they are politically expedient? Of course it does.

So why don't the Republicans understand that? Why is it that our own senators, Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, have to cobble together most of their Democratic colleagues to sustain a Clinton veto when states' rights and other theories of government suggest that the GOP should be first in line to support Nevada's position?

The answer is simple and it has to do with money. And any Nevadan who for a minute thinks this is about anything other than the billions of dollars the nuclear power industry has at stake, well ...

If, for some reason, President Clinton signs the nuclear waste bill or allows it to become law without his signature, Nevadans will know all too soon the level of betrayal that this Congress and the nuclear industry has foisted upon us. If, on the other hand, President Clinton vetoes the bill as promised and our senators can muster the votes needed to sustain that veto, each of us will live to comprehend the incredible good fortune Nevada has had to have Bill Clinton as its friend.

With or without a ceremony, it will be a time for celebration for Nevada. It will also be the time to realize what life will be like in the nuclear waste world without Bill Clinton and his veto. I am having a difficult time comprehending such an eventuality.