Political Quotes

“I remember when I was a kid the old western movies were out there. My mother never told me much about nuclear waste, but we used to watch the western movies. And if they had to stop the train that had the stuff in it from getting to the good guys, first of all they sent the Indians after it. We have to confer with the Indians. We passed that amendment tonight. Then they switched it off on the spur so it cannot go down the track. Well, we can do that. But really the question is here how many bureaucracies do we have to have to stop nuclear waste from getting to a place of safe storage? Well, Mr. Chairman, we have the Department of Defense, first of all, that has some of this nuclear waste. They are involved in this thing. We have DOE, Department of Energy, who prescribes the safe way to transport this, to bundle it, to package it, to store it. And then we also have the Department of Transportation. Now, I understand that the sponsors of this amendment certainly would like to stop nuclear waste from going to a safe destination where we can have a final resting place for this stuff that is stored in scores of States and scores of places, in people's backyards, backyards in our communities next to natural resources. We need to find a safe place to do it. But if they are going to stop that from happening, what they really do here is say, well, let us let FEMA do this now. Mr. Chairman, FEMA has never had any experience in nuclear waste.”