Ensign urges colleagues to block Yucca vote

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, June 13, 2002 | 10:56 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- With his battle to persuade Republican senators to oppose Yucca Mountain all but lost, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has shifted strategies and is now trying to rally them behind an effort to block a Yucca vote from happening at all.

A Senate vote on Yucca is expected this month or next, and a majority -- including all but two of the Senate's 49 Republicans -- is expected to approve Yucca.

GOP leaders on Wednesday allowed Ensign to make his well-known anti-Yucca pitch in the Senate Republicans' weekly policy luncheon, where issues are debated behind closed doors.

Ensign made a few familiar arguments: that Yucca is not a safe site to store the nation's nuclear waste; and that transporting waste to Yucca is dangerous.

But Ensign spent most of his allotted time urging his colleagues to support him in a parliamentary maneuver he and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., are planning.

By Senate tradition, only the Majority Leader -- currently Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D. -- has been allowed to call for a vote. Only in rare instances has federal law allowed any senator to call for a vote. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act is one such law.

Daschle has vowed not to call for a Yucca vote, but a Senate Republican -- it's not known who -- is expected to call for a vote. At that point, Ensign and Reid plan to object on the grounds that the action would break Senate tradition and undermine the power of the leader.

"Do we really want that if we have the majority next year?" Ensign wrote in a briefing paper he handed to Republican colleagues.

"My argument was that you are setting a dangerous precedent," Ensign said in an interview after the closed-door meeting.

Ensign and Reid say their best hope is that 51 senators agree with their argument, and that they vote to not vote.

Ensign may only need to convince a few Republicans if Reid can rally the vast majority of the Senate's 50 Democrats behind their plan.

Ensign said one GOP senator pledged support for Ensign's vote-blocking effort. Ensign would not name the senator.

But several Senate Republicans who emerged from the meeting said few if any other senators had bought into Ensign's argument. The law clearly allows any senator to call for a vote in this rare instance, Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said.

"While it is contrary to Senate tradition, it is not contrary to Senate rules," said Murkowski, a leading Yucca advocate.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said he sees no support for Ensign's parliamentary tactic.

"We have to deal with this (Yucca) site, and I say, 'Let's get it up (for a vote,)' " Burns said.

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., was non-committal on Ensign's argument. "I need to look at that before I commit," he said.

In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, blasted Ensign's plan.

Craig said calling for a vote on Yucca would not forever undermine the Majority Leader because in rare cases in recent years senators have been allowed to move forward without the leader's support.

"Exercising a senator's right under the statutory authority in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act should be considered extraordinary -- and not a general assault on the normal prerogatives of the Majority Leader," Craig said. "The law expressly permits someone else to act so Congress can work its will before a statutory deadline (July 25) passes."

A vote by the full Senate will be the last congressional hurdle for Yucca Mountain, the controversial proposal to haul the nation's nuclear waste from 131 temporary storage sites to the Nevada mountain for permanent burial. The House approved Yucca last month.

Asked if it felt lonely in a room full of senators almost unanimous in their support for Yucca, Ensign said, "absolutely."

In other Yucca news, the pop band the B-52s became the latest group to lend their star power to the fight against Yucca. Singer Kate Pierson and bassist Sara Lee planned to meet today with Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and staffers for Sens. Max Cleland, D-Ga., and Zell Miller, D-Ga., and urge them to vote against Yucca. The band has roots in Georgia.

The B-52s, known for its single "Love Shack," plan to urge their audiences to oppose Yucca, said Erica Hartman of activist group Public Citizen, which helped arrange Pierson and Lee's visit to Capitol Hill. The B-52s kick off a tour June 21 at the Horseshoe casino in Robinsonville, Miss.

A number of rock stars and Hollywood celebrities have lent their names to the Yucca fight. Actors James Cromwell ("Babe," "Sum of All Fears") and Mike Farrell ("M*A*S*H," "Providence") have appeared on Capitol Hill in the last month, urging Senate opposition to Yucca. Farrell compiled a list of 70 stars who object to Yucca, including Richard Dreyfuss, Tim Robbins and Barbra Streisand.