Editorial: Disgusting display of raw power

Thursday, March 23, 2000 | 9:34 a.m.

In a demonstration that neither legislative body in Congress has a lock on making bullheaded, egregious decisions, the House voted 253-167 Wednesday to make it easier to send high-level nuclear waste to Nevada. This legislation already passed the Senate, 64-34. Fortunately, despite the majority vote in both houses, there still weren't enough votes to override a presidential veto, which Bill Clinton has promised.

The bill would allow nuclear waste to be sent to Nevada by 2007 -- even though this is years before a repository possibly could be built. Meanwhile, the bill would result in much weaker safety standards having to be met before a repository is built -- despite scientific evidence showing how dangerous it would be to bury waste in Nevada.

This also was a despotic display of power by the GOP House leadership, which refused to allow Nevada's two representatives, Republican Jim Gibbons and Democrat Shelley Berkley, to offer sensible amendments to the bill. Still, Berkley and Gibbons, similar to Nevada Democrats Harry Reid and Richard Bryan in the Senate, were able to secure enough votes to sustain a veto. Considering the president's veto pledge, the only plausible reason a vote was taken was to return a favor to the nuclear power industry, a big campaign contributor to Republicans.

And for anyone who still wonders how important it is to have a president who understands the concerns of Nevada, no one need look any further than the issue of nuclear waste storage. If Clinton hadn't been elected in 1992, nuclear waste would have been in Nevada years ago.