Thursday, April 22, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Reid planning delay tactic

Senator's choice for Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel held up

WASHINGTON -- Announcing he has run out of patience, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he will block bills and nominees for environmental posts until the Senate schedules a hearing for one of his aides to join the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

President Bush nominated Gregory B. Jaczko two months ago to fill a vacancy on the energy regulatory board, but the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has not set a confirmation hearing.

Reid held up more than three dozen of Bush's nominees to homeland security, Justice Department and overseas positions for more than a month last fall until White House officials agreed to put forward Jaczko for the NRC.

Reid revived that strategy this week, notifying the Senate late Tuesday that, "I will not let anything else move, period," out of the Environment and Public Works Committee until Jaczko gets a hearing.

Jaczko, 33, is a physicist who has been Reid's chief adviser on science issues and the Yucca Mountain Project. He is up for a five-year term as one of five NRC commissioners who will judge the Energy Department's bid to establish a nuclear waste repository at the Yucca site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The nominee is opposed by the nuclear industry, which charges his association with Reid, the project's chief critic in Congress, will bias his judgement. A spokesman for the industry's lobbying organization, the Nuclear Energy Institute, declined to comment Wednesday.

Reid said he has spoken with Democrats on the environment committee about boycotting upcoming business meetings to prevent a quorum.

A similar boycott last year delayed consideration of Bush's pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, former Utah governor Mike Leavitt.

Jaczko "was cleared by the White House. He should be cleared by the committee," Reid said Wednesday. "It's not as if I got some derelict for this job, some party hack."

Reid's threat aims to pressure Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the environment committee chairman, into moving ahead with Jaczko's nomination.

Will Hart, an Inhofe spokesman, said the chairman does not plan to speed Jaczko. While Inhofe, a supporter of the Yucca project, has met with Jaczko, "he does not have an opinion at this time," Hart said.

Hart said Democrats have themselves to blame. He said Reid and Vermont Independent Sen. James Jeffords last year demanded that Inhofe hold off on moving a nominee for a second NRC vacancy, Republican nominee Adm. John Grossenbacher, so he and Jaczko could be confirmed in tandem.

But after Jaczko's nomination was stalled for months at the White House, Grossenbacher withdrew and took a job in the private sector.

Inhofe "intends to keep his commitment and will schedule a hearing when we have a new Republican nominee," Hart said.

The White House has not nominated a replacement for Grossenbacher, and it was not clear Wednesday when one will be named.

"There were many qualified candidates. (Democrats) chose to go with (Jaczko)," Hart said. "They fought their battles and chose not to move things forward on anyone else. You have to lie in the bed you made."

Reid said White House resistance to Jaczko last year "is not my fault, for heaven's sake. Had they not held up so long, the admiral would not have dropped out. Partisan politics held up two qualified men."