William Bryan: “I do not, Mr. President, want to take much time to talk about the merits of S. 104 because, as we will point out later…”

“I do not, Mr. President, want to take much time to talk about the merits of S. 104 because, as we will point out later, S. 104 is a very bad piece of legislation and, in my view, is a policy disaster. It is unnecessary. There are provisions that would preempt Federal and State law, standards, viability, transportation--there are many, many things that could be said about the legislation, and I will address each of those arguments with some particularity. I must say that I am constrained to address the issue of the lawsuit, because we hear a lot about the lawsuit. The lawsuit was decided before our votes were cast last year on S. 1936, but I think it is curious and revealing, revealing as to the true motives of this bill. Nothing in S. 104 deals with the lawsuits. This Senator believes that ratepayers who are in a position where they may incur additional expense for storage because of the unavailability of a permanent repository in 1998 are entitled to relief. I do not think ratepayers ought to pay twice.”