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opinion coleman
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Delegation Must Be Unified on A National Lab Mission
By Michael Coleman
Journal Washington Bureau
No one questions Sen. Pete Domenici's dedication to New Mexico's national laboratories, but in the race to replace him, the candidates' love for the labs is the most contentious issue yet.
Republican Reps. Steve Pearce and Heather Wilson have sparred repeatedly over funding for Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories in their primary election battle. Wilson accuses Pearce of voting to slash the labs' budgets, while Pearce accuses Wilson of mischaracterizing his vote.
Meanwhile, Rep. Tom Udall, a Democrat who is unopposed in his primary, openly voted for a bill that would cut the labs' funding last year. But he maintains he meant his vote as a signal to the labs that they must alter their nuclear mission or face irrelevancy in the post-Cold War era. Udall has said he voted that way knowing — rightly, as it turned out — that Domenici would restore the money in the Senate.
Domenici, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is legendary for funneling massive amounts of money from Washington to both Los Alamos and Sandia. They don't call him St. Pete at the labs for nothing. But he's leaving office. And with a Democratic Congress ready and able to shrink the nation's nuclear footprint, lab workers have understandable angst about the future.
In their pitch for votes, all three contenders for Domenici's seat solemnly vow to roll up their sleeves and work hard for New Mexico's laboratories, which employ a combined 21,000 people and draw billions of federal dollars to the state each year.
But questions and confusion remain about who voted for or against the labs' budgets, and when.
Therefore, a review is in order. Let's look at the evidence, starting with Udall, since his controversial vote last summer triggered the initial round of political finger-pointing.
The vote in question, on the Energy and Water Appropriations bill, was to slash $400 million from Los Alamos and Sandia's budgets. Udall, never a proponent of nuclear weapons, has for years urged the labs to shift their scientific emphasis to climate change and developing renewable energy.
“This is one of the biggest challenges facing our country, and I want LANL and Sandia to be a big part of that,” Udall told me last year, adding it would be crazy for a politician to jeopardize jobs in his own district. “There is a real opportunity here.”
Nevertheless, he voted for the bill to cut the money. But he then offered up an amendment to restore $192 million to the NNSA budget to beef up LANL's stockpile stewardship program. The House shot it down, but thanks to Domenici's work on the Senate Appropriations Committee, both labs eventually got the money they needed — as Udall had predicted.
Now for Pearce. Wilson has been hammering her primary rival for a lab budget-related vote. “... Steve Pearce ... voted for deep reductions in lab funding that would have cut thousands of jobs in New Mexico,” Wilson said in an answer to a written questionnaire the Journal gave to each candidate last month.
Pearce did vote June 20 for an amendment to the Energy and Water Appropriation bill (which pays for the labs) that would have slashed $1.3 billion from the top of that budget. The measure, which Wilson and Udall voted against, failed.
Pearce spokesman Brian Phillips vehemently denies that his boss specifically chose to target the labs.
“That's not true — it's not even close to true,” Phillips said.
He said Pearce, tired of wasteful government spending, decided that shaving a cool billion off of the energy and water budget, which also funds the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other programs, made good fiscal sense. It was up to the Bush administration as to where to make the cuts, Phillips said.
“The administration has leeway as to what they cut,” he said. “We are vehemently opposed to cuts at (the labs).”
That might be, but there was no guarantee the labs' budgets wouldn't get nicked if the measure had been adopted, especially at a time when sentiment toward LANL in Washington is less than warm and fuzzy.
Finally, Udall's campaign points out that neither Wilson nor Pearce can claim complete immunity on votes that could decimate the labs, either.
Marissa Padilla, Udall's spokeswoman, points out that last December, the House voted to consolidate all of the appropriations bills, including the one containing the lab money, into a Foreign Relations Appropriations bill. The measure passed, but without the help of Pearce and Wilson, who both voted against it. But since it passed, the bill moved to the Senate, which also passed it and eventually sent it to the president, who signed it.
“It's impossible to claim you supported the final LANL and Sandia intact budget if you voted against (the amendment),” Padilla points out.
As confusing as the legislative smoke and mirrors on Capitol Hill sometimes gets, one thing is perfectly clear: New Mexico's congressional delegation better get on the same page when it comes to votes that pay for New Mexico's laboratories.
Starting in January, St. Pete won't be around to work his budget miracles. And unless a unified delegation is fighting hard for the labs' money and mission — no matter what it might be — the entire state will suffer.
E-mail to mcoleman@abqjournal.com
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