Columnist Benjamin Grove: Nevadans busy with more than Yucca

Benjamin Grove

Friday, April 26, 2002 | 5:10 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawmakers in the last few weeks have focused on a swirl of action in Congress on Yucca Mountain, as a final vote draws near on the nuclear waste project.

But Nevada's four-member delegation is quietly working on a slate of other issues. Here's a sampling of what else your lawmakers are up to:

Gibbons spends about 12 hours a week in secretive "Intel" meetings, as the members call them. He spent most of the afternoon Wednesday talking over the U.S. effort to play catch-up in the spy business. One topic was aligning the nation's universities and agencies to educate a new generation of speakers skilled in a variety of dialects, he said.

"You can't just take a 6-1 guy, who looks like a white American (and) who doesn't speak Pashtun or Farsi, and put him in an al-Qaida camp," Gibbons said.

With a growing list of reports about alleged terrorist activity, the committee labors under pressure. It takes time to train linguists and recruit foreign ones. And Gibbons noted there is a big difference between interpreters and experienced interrogators.

Novice linguists at Camp X-ray in Cuba are struggling to question evasion-trained al-Qaida and Taliban suspects, the Washington Post reported last week. "The detainee is in full control," a Guantanamo Bay linguist told the Post. "He's chained up, but he's the one having fun."

The Intelligence panel is sifting through complex budget requests from an "alphabet soup" of agencies like the FBI, CIA and DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. Gibbons can't disclose numbers, but it's a sure bet Intel will be recommending a boost for some of those agencies in the next round of budget battles. Gibbons will be among those leading the charge.

The 6-year-old Mike O'Callaghan Federal Hospital at Nellis Air Force Base doesn't offer enough services, Berkley argued. And the crumbling Addeliar Guy III Ambulatory Care Clinic, a primary care center for veterans, is being shuttered for repairs. "The fact that the ceiling is literally falling down on the heads of my veterans demonstrates to me that we have got an opportunity here," Berkley said.

But hospitals aren't cheap and the VA Department since the mid-1990s has focused more on its outpatient clinics. The last new VA Hospital, built in Detroit in 1991, cost $266 million, a VA spokeswoman said. For the 2003 fiscal year, Principi has asked Congress for just $194 million for all major construction projects in his vast health network, including 163 hospitals and more than 800 clinics.

Principi's department should consider closing half-full hospitals in the East to pay for newer ones where veteran populations are growing fastest, specifically Arizona, Florida and Nevada, Berkley said. That would be highly controversial, but Berkley insists, "It sounds like common sense to me."

Much of the pressure is on Ensign to corral GOP senators. But last week Ensign also joined an effort to make low-income housing more affordable. He co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., that renews a Federal Housing Administration program lowering FHA loan down payments.

Reid, the No. 2 Senate Democrat and majority whip, has been focusing Senate attention on environmental issues and re-asserting himself as a vocal critic of President Bush.

"The desert of Nevada is not just for dumping things," Reid said at a pre-Earth Day event in which he slammed Bush for a variety of anti-environmental moves, including his Yucca Mountain endorsement.

Reid also directed much of the action on the Senate floor during a six-week debate on a sweeping energy bill, and he helped broker a deal to include tax credits for renewable energy producers as part of the package.

The renewable energy legislation should pave the way for new wind, solar and geothermal (heat from the earth) power plants in Nevada, Reid said.

By the time the Senate passed the bill 88-11 on Thursday, some of the renewable energy incentives had been watered down, but others remained intact. The bill must be reconciled with a House version.