Rand Paul: “while nuclear power has conferred a considerable benefit upon power users in this country, today, we confront the…”

“while nuclear power has conferred a considerable benefit upon power users in this country, today, we confront the symptoms of a federal government run Constitutionally amok which requires our serious attention. As a Congress, we are faced with the decision of whether to further ignore the federal government's constitutional limits and ultimately confront additional future symptoms of such action or acknowledge the necessary consequences of such an extra-Constitutional activity and act to correct the initial ``enumerated powers doctrine'' transgression. In 1982, the federal government entered into an agreement with nuclear power industry to take possession of their nuclear waste and properly dispose of it in 1998. It should be noted that it is now March 2000 and the federal government has quite simply breached its contract. More importantly, it should be noted that the federal government had no authority to enter such an agreement in the first place. These facts, of course, did nothing to prevent the federal government from collecting from utility companies and their customers tax revenues for placement in a trust fund to accomplish their illegitimate and unfulfilled promise. Lack of constitutional authority also did nothing to stop the federal government from squandering more than $6 billion of that trust fund without having collected one gram of nuclear waste.”