Political Quotes

“Utility bills will go up because of this legislation. Taxes will go up because of this bill. Utility profits and stocks will also go up. Is there a connection? It is an outrage that the American people will pay the price with their health, with higher utility rates and with higher tax dollars to dispose of waste which comes from commercial nuclear reactors. The Gibbons amendment seeks to mitigate this unfair condition by ensuring that there will be enough money in the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for the safe disposal of high-level nuclear waste generated at commercial nuclear reactors. Let the nuclear utilities pay the bill for the nuclear dump, not the American taxpayers. Mr. Chairman, the utilities exist for us. We do not exist for them. We give them the right to operate in the public interest, and we have the responsibility to protect the American taxpayers. There is a rather notorious nuclear reactor in northeast Ohio called the Perry Nuclear Power Plant. More than 20 years ago I stood on the grounds where Perry was being built to protest this project. It was supposed to have been 2 reactors at a price of $1 billion, and it turned into one reactor at a price of $6 billion. Guess what? The reactor was built on a fault line. Since then the nuclear utility company has gone down into the dumper and the stocks have gone down. It has almost gone bankrupt. But the taxpayers and ratepayers of northeast Ohio have had to suffer the consequences.”