The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is refusing to release an unredacted version of its safety evaluation reports on Yucca Mountain, leaving the conclusions unknown to the public. The agency notified Heritage that it had rejected an appeal under the Freedom of Information Act. The NRC’s decision comes eight months after Heritage first requested volumes II and III of the Yucca report in October. The NRC released more than 1,400 pages in February, but redacted the conclusions. Heritage appealed in March. (Full text of the letter is below.) The NRC’s reports on …
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) said there is bipartisan support in Congress to move forward with the nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain, noting that lawmakers could reaffirm that decision in a vote this summer. Upton, speaking at The Bloggers Briefing this afternoon, criticized the actions of Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko, whose opposition to the Yucca Mountain project was the subject of a harsh inspector general report earlier this month. “I’m convinced there is bipartisan support for Yucca and I suspect we’ll have a vote on …
If you knew a dangerous virus was about to hit America and that you could beg the government for a vaccine, you’d probably do it, wouldn’t you? That’s just what states and businesses alike are doing right now in preparation for Obamacare. But rather than seeking a vaccine, they’re asking for waivers from the law’s onerous requirements. To date, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has approved 1,372 Obamacare waivers, covering 3.1 million Americans. Yesterday, The Daily Caller reported that among HHS’s most recent round of 204 Obamacare …
A lifetime appointment to the federal bench is now selling for $700,000. At least that was the cost for Rhode Island judicial nominee Jack McConnell, who has donated that sum of money to Democrats in the two decades before President Obama tapped him for federal district court. McConnell faces a Senate confirmation vote as early as today, setting the stage for a high-stakes showdown that could open the floodgates for a series of other controversial nominees such as Goodwin Liu, Edward Chen and Louis B. Butler Jr. Obama’s selection of …
This morning a number of House Republicans, joined by Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Mike Lee (R-UT), met outside the Senate to demand action from their Senate colleagues and the White House to prevent a government shutdown. The press conference, one of six over as many days, is designed to put the spotlight on the failure of the Senate to help prevent a looming government shutdown. Reading from a prepared statement, organizer Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) kicked off the event by placing the blame for the lack of a deal …
You would think liberals in Congress have nothing better to do with their time. Amid a war in Libya, an effort to aid earthquake and tsunami-stricken Japan, a continuing war in Afghanistan, rising gas prices and endless unemployment, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Democratic leadership in the U.S. Senate are refusing to accept a modest agreement to fund the federal government through the end of the fiscal year. And time is running short. What’s Senator Reid wrangling over? A mere $51 billion in additional budget cuts, which amounts to a few …
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) just doesn’t have a strong grasp of the facts when it comes to Social Security and the debt. Yesterday, at a campaign rally calling on Congress to “Back Off” Social Security Reid again repeated his line that: “Social Security has not contributed one penny to the debt or the deficit.” As FactCheck.org has certified, this is just plain false. The reality is that Social Security added $37 billion to the debt last year and will add another $45 billion to the debt today. Reid and the …
This year Social Security will pay out $45 billion more in benefits than it collects in taxes. And this is not the first year Social Security has had an operating deficit. Last year, Social Security paid out $37 billion more in benefits than it collected in taxes. And this year is far from the last that Social Security will run an operating deficit. Looking forward, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Social Security will run a more than $600 billion operating deficit over the next ten years. Every year between …
Sen. Harry Reid’s (D–NV) comments yesterday about cowboy poetry may have received the most attention on the Senate floor yesterday morning, but his pleas for the failed Head Start preschool program were just as preposterous. Arguing against the omnibus spending bill under consideration, the Senator said: Here are some of the consequences. … It will kick 200,000 Head Start students, the poorest of the poor—little boys and girls trying to get started in life—it will kick them off their ability to learn to read and do elementary math. Hundreds in …
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) may cause a government shutdown. Senator Reid is employing a procedural strategy to deal with the House-passed long-term Continuing Resolution (CR), H.R. 1, that may make it more likely that the federal government will shut down when the government runs out of money on March 18. Remember this when we get closer to March 18 and both parties blame each other for failing to pass an appropriations bill to fund the government through September 30 of this year (the end of Fiscal Year 2011). …
