William R. Richardson: “let me just make it clear what my amendment does and why I think it is a preferable choice to what my colleague from…”

“let me just make it clear what my amendment does and why I think it is a preferable choice to what my colleague from Indiana is doing. My amendment would, first of all, establish a laboratory operations board for the purposes of providing attention to the reform that is needed at the DOE national laboratories. But what my amendment would do is cut lab personnel by 15 percent, not 30 percent. What my amendment would do is strip about $1.4 billion in excess costs in the DOE labs. My amendment would apply to what the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Roemer] is doing to the civilian labs. What is happening right now at the Department of Energy is cost cutting is already going and taking place. It happened at Los Alamos Laboratories just this last weekend when I had close to 500 of my personnel that are being laid off. I think that, in the interests of good science, we should not, as politicians, be making these decisions. These should be scientific decisions. The amendment offered by the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Roemer] would lay off close to 14,000 people out of the DOE lab system, scientists, engineers, technical experts. The Department of Energy can live with my amendment. What my amendment does is simply implement and recognize the cost cutting that already is going on at DOE.”