Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Q+A: Chris Dodd

( Editor's note: This is one in an occasional series of interviews with presidential candidates about issues of importance in the West.)

After 33 years in Congress, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut has decided to get out of the bleachers and into the presidential game.

One of eight Democrats running for president, Dodd hopes his foreign policy experience and authorship of influential legislation such as the Family and Medical Leave Act will distinguish him in a crowded field.

Last week, on his third trip to Nevada, Dodd met small groups of voters across the Las Vegas Valley.

The Sun caught up with Dodd after a town hall meeting in Pahrump.

Q: You voted for Yucca Mountain. What's your stance on the issue now?

I voted in favor of having a permanent storage site. And that was before they had developed a dry cask system, which really made this material a lot safer than before , when it was sitting in these pools.

At some point we're going to have to deal with this waste question, but it needs to be stored in a place that is safe. Certainly, after the number of years looking at Yucca Mountain, the conclusion has been that this is not a safe place. It's the wrong site for many reasons, and because of the geology and transportation issues.

So you're in favor of expanding the use of nuclear power?

I grew up less than a mile away from the oldest nuclear power plant in the country on the Connecticut River. I don't rule out nuclear power, particularly if you're serious about global warming.

Coal is not an answer. And you can't do it with wind and solar power alone. So we're going to have to rely on a technology that offers us some real alternatives that don't run the risk of being a polluting energy source.

Some day we'll still need to find a storage site, but in my view it ought to be a retrievable place , too. The technology may get good enough where we extract the material and defang it so that it poses no threat no matter where it's stored. And if we harness this correctly, it's what we ought to be offering some of these smaller, developing countries so they can have more of an independent energy source and not have to be bribed by Hugo Chavez or some of the Persian Gulf countries that control their destiny.

You've said if elected, the country would be free of Persian Gulf oil in a decade. What would the Dodd energy policy look like?

The technology's there. We need to start acting like we care. We need to set an example. Oil is used for just 1 or 2 percent of electrical generating power on the grids. So we need to get our cars right. This is inexcusable. Even today in Michigan, a majority of people believe that fuel-efficiency standards ought to be adopted. Had they been adopted 10 or 15 years ago, Detroit might still have a bright future.

Do you support the Employee Free Choice Act, and if so, does it have a chance of passing the Senate?

I do support the bill, and I hope it has a chance. Even the Republican chairman of the Federal Reserve Board has pointed out that one of the reasons the country has such an income disparity is the decline in union households. We need to recognize that we're losing our middle class. The reason we were able to build one is because there were people out there with the right to collectively bargain and to argue for better working conditions and better wages. People were able to own homes, raise their kids and send them to college. That did not happen miraculously.

You've suggested that America needs tougher trade agreements to compete in the global economy.

These are not trading agreements. I call them enterprise agreements. All we're doing now is giving companies the right to create a platform in some developing country with no commensurate obligations to the people in those countries to improve the conditions of the people who are going to work there. This is very harmful to us in the long run.

Our trading agreements ought to be demanding of these nations who want to be able to sell their goods and services here. We need to insist that these countries commit to improving wages and conditions so that people can start to grow out of poverty and afford America's goods and services as well.

At the same time we need to incentivize people to stay here. Our tax code, the Export-Import Bank (of the United States), the Overseas Private Investment Corp. are all built-in incentives to leave the country. I'm not opposed to providing alternatives to help people in developing countries, but I want to see us do at least as much for people here.

You're in Nevada. Are you a gambler?

I'm running for president. (Laughs.)

Any plans to hit the tables?

Well, the best table is the craps table, and I know that in terms of odds for the consumer, but I'm not a gambler.

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