Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2003 | 9:40 a.m.
Environmental groups are targeting Sen. John Ensign in their campaign to defeat a controversial energy bill championed by the Bush administration.
Environmental groups say the bill, which advocates say would reduce reliance on foreign energy sources, would provide a huge impetus to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump through more than $5 billion in subsidies to the nuclear industry. Groups that are targeting Ensign include the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Coalition, the National Environmental Trust and other environmental, consumer and labor groups.
Ensign has said he is against the bill but voted to end a filibuster Nov. 21, arguing that he wanted to open up debate on the issue. A vote for "cloture" to kill the filibuster, however, fell three votes short of the 60 needed in the Senate and the bill did not come up for a vote.
The bill is expected to come before the Senate again in January. This time, opponents believe the bill would pass and go to the White House for the president's signature.
"We're hopeful that Sen. Ensign will have had a chance to see how bad this bill is for Nevada," said Brian O'Donnell, associate director of the Wilderness Society's support center in Durango, Colo.
Through a spokesman, Ensign reaffirmed his position Monday to end the filibuster and bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
Ensign's fellow Republicans in the House and Senate support the bill. Reps. Jon Porter and Jim Gibbons supported the bill, which passed the House along mostly party lines.
Rep. Shelley Berkley and Sen. Harry Reid, the Democrats in Nevada's congressional delegation, both have opposed the bill.
O'Donnell said Ensign's vote to end the filibuster is critical.
"If we don't win on the cloture motion, then it will become law," O'Donnell said. "Ensign is really going to be key on this. If Ensign holds the line on this, than they're really going to be stuck."
Other environmentalists agree, promising a campaign to focus on the Nevada senator.
"The cloture vote in the Senate is an up or down vote on Yucca Mountain," said Dan Geary, Nevada spokesman for the National Environmental Trust.
Ensign's press secretary Jack Finn suggested that the vote to end or support the filibuster was not about Yucca Mountain alone.
"The statement that a vote for cloture is a vote for Yucca Mountain is almost too ridiculous for comment," Finn said. "The senator felt, much like the vote for judicial appointees, the Energy Bill deserved a straight up-or-down vote."
Ensign still believes the up-or-down vote is important, Finn said. The bill is not all bad, he added.
"There are a lot of good things in it, a lot of good things for Nevada in it, but there was just too much in this bill," Finn said. "It was too big, too broad and he would have voted against it."
Nevada's other Republicans on Capitol Hill have seen enough positives in the bill to outweigh the subsidies for Yucca Mountain. Rep. Jim Gibbons voted for the bill, despite support for the nuclear industry, because it included broad support for renewable energy, including tax breaks for underground, geothermal energy.
"The congressman ardently supported the geothermal provisions," said Amy Stanbauer, Gibbon's spokeswoman. "Geothermal production is a huge boom for Nevada. To be able to tap into those resources is vital in terms of promoting clean, renewable alternative energy in this country.
"It is time to tap our own domestic capabilities to meet our own domestic needs," she said.
Porter's spokesman Adam Mayberry agreed.
"It would provide for the first time a national integrated energy plan that enables us as a nation to become less dependent on foreign oil," Mayberry said, calling the support for renewable energy sources that Nevada has in abundance "unprecedented."
"We have never made such a financial commitment to renewable energy before."
But opponents characterize the bill as a pork-laden product of insider politics. The bill would limit environmental lawsuits, free up coastal and federal lands for oil drilling and create more air pollution, they argue.
The bill has been a flashpoint for environmentalists since the Bush administration solicited opinions from energy industry lobbyists just a few months into his term.
Environmentalists have tried to open up the records of the closed-door meetings between Vice President Dick Cheney and the energy lobbyists since shortly after President Bush took office.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear arguments from the Bush administration about why it should not be required to turn over the records of Cheney's energy task force.
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