Columnist Benjamin Grove: Nevada delegation’s fingerprints on several bills

Benjamin Grove

Friday, May 9, 2003 | 5:21 a.m.

FIVE MONTHS into the 108th Congress, lawmakers are tackling an ambitious legislative agenda: tax cuts, spending bills, energy legislation, the medical malpractice crisis and judicial nominations.

Lost in the shuffle of roughly 3,500 bills introduced in Congress this year -- that's about 70 per legislative working day so far -- is legislation that rarely draws media attention, ranging in topic from wood preservatives to prison porn. Here are a few bills you may have missed that were introduced by Nevada lawmakers.

Another Ensign bill is aimed at reducing the number of people who keep jaguars, cougars, tigers and other big cats as pets. The bill bans the interstate sale of the animals. Licensed animal handlers such as Siegfried and Roy would be exempted, Ensign aides noted.

Ensign also introduced a bill that would create a 50-hour workweek for federal prisoners, launch a prison drug-testing program and ban federal prisoners from having sexually explicit materials, microwaves, non-educational TV or music with vulgar or violent lyrics. Ensign has been pushing the legislation since he was in the House in the 1990s.

"Our prison system today is failing largely because we have become too concerned with the comfort of criminals," Ensign said after re-introducing the bill in March.

Reid also introduced a bill that would change Internal Revenue Service codes to classify gold and silver bars and coins as investments rather than collectibles. The difference is that investors would pay 20 percent instead of 28 percent in capital gains taxes when they sold the metals. One goal of the legislation is to spur more people to consider scrapping risky stock investments for the security of precious metals -- and to make the Nevada mining industry happy.

"Silver," Gibbons' Wood Preservation Safety Act of 2003 says, "has great potential as a viable, safe and cost-effective alternative as a wood preservative."

Gibbons' bill directs the Agriculture Department to spend $8 million at its Forest Products Lab in Wisconsin to study the effectiveness of silver-based biocides as a wood preservative.

A resolution introduced by Rep. Lane Evans, D-Ill., expressing the sense of Congress that states should require driver's license applicants to demonstrate an ability to show caution when driving near potentially visually impaired people.

A resolution introduced by Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., expressing the sense of the House that a commemorative postage stamp be issued on the subject of autism awareness.

A resolution introduced by Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., proposing a constitutional amendment authorizing Congress to ban U.S. flag desecration.

The beer bill was authored by Rep. Phil English, R-Pa., who, incidentally, gave Porter $1,000 in March, nine days after Porter signed onto the legislation. (Porter campaign adviser Mike Slanker noted that the timing was coincidental -- senior GOP House lawmakers at that time were writing checks to a Republican freshman as part of a fund-raising event.)

English is a new donor to Porter's campaign fund. But the National Beer Wholesalers Association, which gave Porter $5,000 13 days after he signed the bill, is not. The beer lobby gave Porter $10,000 in the 2002 election cycle.