Washington memo: Reid says injuries won’t derail his plans

By Amber Phillips

Friday, Jan. 23, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Amber Phillips, the Sun's Washington correspondent, wraps up the week in politics with Nevada's congressional delegation.

The State of the Union wasn't the only major event on Capitol Hill this week.

From talk of "meaningless ribs," to a call to "punish cheaters" in the National Football League, Nevada's congressional delegation had a busy — and interesting — week. Here's a roundup:

Sen. Harry Reid: "I plan to run"

Democrat Sen. Harry Reid said a New Year's Day exercise accident hasn't changed his plan to run for a sixth term in 2016.

Reid spoke to reporters Thursday in his first news conference since breaking bones around his eye and four ribs and suffering a concussion when an exercise band snapped at his home in Henderson.

Among the highlights: Reid said that if he were considering a lawsuit against band's manufacturer, "I wouldn't broadcast that." The former boxer also said his four broken ribs were "meaningless."

"I take some Tylenol," Reid, 75, said.

Sen. Dean Heller chimes in on "Deflate-gate"

Nevada's Republican senator spent the week introducing his priorities for this Congress — and spouting off on the National Football League's "Deflate gate" controversy.

In the Veterans Affairs committee, Heller repeated his call for fixing the Department of Veterans Affairs' backlog of disability benefits. In his first Finance Committee hearing, Heller called for "a cleaner, simpler tax code" that can help Nevadans in their "slow [economic] recovery."

And Heller, who also sits on the Senate Commerce panel, called on the National Football League to take "decisive action" to "punish cheaters" after the NFL determined New England Patriots used deflated footballs in their AFC Championship win against the Indianapolis Colts. It's not clear how the Patriots' balls became deflated.

Now that his party is in the majority, Heller also got to wield the gavel that keeps the Senate moving.

Rep. Dina Titus works to speed up veterans benefits

Las Vegas Democrat Rep. Dina Titus also focused her week on veterans issues, specifically how to fix the Department of Veterans Affairs' lengthy appeals process for disability claims.

Titus reintroduced legislation to form a task force of stakeholders in the veteran community to figure out how to speed up the VA's appeals process for disability claims.

Veterans waited an average 1,255 days in 2012 to receive an appeals decision, and Titus said Nevada veterans had roughly 1,400 appeals awaiting an answer.

As Congress pressures the VA to speed up its decision making on disability claims, Titus said she was concerned the result would be more rejections and thus longer wait times for veterans in the appeals process.

"I raised concerns that we were trading a claims backlog for an appeals backlog," she said.

Titus is ranking member of a congressional committee with jurisdiction over veterans' disability issues. She said in December she wanted to spend this session pushing for quality-of-life changes for veterans beyond last year's reform of troubled VA health care clinics.

Nevada's House Republicans support pro-life bill

Nevada's three House Republicans voted this week to prevent federally funded abortions.

They joined a majority of their party in supporting the bill, which leaders brought to the House floor on the 42nd anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision protecting a woman's right to have an abortion.

Outside the Capitol, thousands of anti-abortion marchers waved flags and walked to the Supreme Court to protest Roe v. Wade as part of an annual March for Life.

Republicans had planned to vote on a bill restricting abortions after 20 weeks, but leaders pulled it after female lawmakers in the party raised concerns the message could alienate women voters.

Neither piece of legislation has a chance of becoming law while President Barack Obama is in power.

The three Nevada lawmakers also joined Heller in introducing a bill requiring just Congress to approve national monuments. Currently, the president or Congress can create national monuments, and Nevada's Republicans want to take away that privilege from the White House.

"With a quick stroke of the pen, the executive branch can lock up millions of acres of public land without consulting the public or their representation in Congress," Heller said in a joint statement with Nevada's House Republicans.

In December, Congress approved creating a 22,000-acre national monument to protect prehistoric fossils in a patch of federally owned land 20 miles north of the Strip, known as Tule Springs.