Shelley Berkley

Ms. BERKLEY

Ms. BERKLEY. Yes. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak with him about an issue that I have a great passion for. I believe that the Democratic agenda, which puts families first, is absolutely pivotal to the success of my district. I would like to tell the Members a little bit about the district that I represent, because in order to understand how important educational issues are to the people of southern Nevada, Members need to know a little bit about the district that I represent. I have the fastest growing district in the United States. We have the fastest growing school-age population in the United States. There are 5,000 new residents that come to Las Vegas, Nevada, every single month, and there is no end in sight to the growth. We have to build a school a month in order to accommodate the growth, in order to make sure that our students have a place to go to school. So the issues that we are discussing in our education agenda are absolutely pivotal to the success of our schoolchildren in southern Nevada. There are certain areas that are of particular importance, and I would like to highlight those. The fact that I do have the fastest growing school age district in the United States and one of the largest school districts in the United States, with 210,000 students going to school in Las Vegas, Nevada, that means that school construction is absolutely necessary in order for us to make sure that our kids have a place that they can go to school. We need to get them out of the portables, get them out of the trailers and get them into a classroom environment where they can thrive. So the school construction component that has been proposed by the Democrats is very, very important for our needs in southern Nevada. Also, the fact that we want to modernize our schools. What is the use of having a belief that we need to have computers in every classroom and connect everybody in the United States to the Information Highway if we have schools that are obsolete and do not have the ability to bring in the technology that is so important? This is especially true for a community like southern Nevada where we have some schools that are a little bit older. In order to accommodate the technology which is going to take us into the 21st century and that our children absolutely must be trained to be educated on, that is a very, very important issue for us. Mr. Speaker, another important issue is the hiring of new teachers. Next school session, when our schools open up next September, we are going to be 700 teachers short of the amount that we will need in order to teach the number of students that we have in southern Nevada. So the President's initiative to hire an additional 100,000 teachers, that is very important for southern Nevada and I suspect for many school districts across the United States. The two perhaps most important issues in my mind are the after-school programs and the summer school programs. For a large number of my school population, they are going home to empty houses. They are latchkey kids, because their parents are working, and we have a working class environment in southern Nevada. So these kids are coming home to empty homes with nobody to help them, nobody to take care of them. If we can provide after-school programs for these kids, it actually satisfies two needs that we have in southern Nevada. One is that it gives them a wholesome place to come after school, but the second thing is it gives them an opportunity to get additional mentoring so that they can learn the material that they have to learn in order to pass to the next grade. Mr. Speaker, we are opposed to social promotion, but if we are opposed to social promotion we are going to have to do something to help these kids so that they can, in fact, be promoted with the rest of their class. That is why summer school programs are so important as well.

Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, with the help of the gentleman from North Carolina, and hopefully with the help of those across the aisle, we can work together in a bipartisan way to make sure that all of these children in our great country have the same opportunities that the gentleman and I had when we were growing up.

Ms. BERKLEY

Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to tell you a story that explains why I am a passionate supporter of the Patients' Bill of Rights. This story, which is only one of many that I heard during my campaign, illustrates why health care plans must be held accountable if their financial decisions overrule the sound medical decisions of a doctor. This story is about a constituent who lives in my Las Vegas district. The man is a dialysis patient. He was scheduled for dialysis treatments twice a week, but over time he became toxic in between treatments and was continually sent to the emergency room during treatments. A third session became critical for his very survival. Rather than dealing with the ordeal of gradually becoming toxic and rushing to the emergency room because two treatments a week simply were not enough for him, the patient's doctor determined that without a third dialysis treatment the patient would be faced with a life- threatening situation. But the patient was told by his insurance company that his diagnosis called for only two treatments per week. The patient was basically told: Tough luck, pal. Even though your doctor has diagnosed that there are three dialysis treatments necessary for your survival, we will only cover two of them. So the doctor called the health plan; he explained the situation. He graphically described how the health of the patient was in serious jeopardy without another dialysis treatment. Over the phone the doctor told a health care plan manager that the quality of the patient's life, in fact the patient's very life itself, was at issue. The HMO said no to the doctor's request. They said the diagnosis called for only two dialysis treatments and that that could not be changed. The doctor said, ``How can you say that? I am the diagnosing physician. The patient is standing right in front of me. My diagnosis calls for three dialysis treatments a week in order to save this patient's life.'' In this case, the doctor prevailed. The patient got the necessary treatment, and the story had a happy ending. But there is a lesson to be learned here. A doctor should never have to argue to be allowed to provide critical care to his patient. In too many cases the balance has swung too far in favor of the bottom line. It has been said that there is too much emphasis on dollar signs rather than vital signs. I agree. The Patients' Bill of Rights holds health plans accountable legally if they reject sound medical diagnoses and treatment plans in order to boost profits. We owe this fundamental protection to our constituents, and I urge that we pass the Patients' Bill of Rights as soon as possible.

Ms. BERKLEY

Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I come before my colleagues to give voice to the well-founded fears and concerns of the citizens of the Las Vegas Valley, which is my home district, and the citizens of the entire State of Nevada. Over one and a half million Nevadans live within an hour or so drive from the so-called temporary high level nuclear dump proposed in H.R. 45. This bill would dump over 70,000 tons of an incredibly lethal substance at one location in southern Nevada. Those Nevadans, mothers like myself, fathers, sons, daughters and grandparents, deserve the same health and safety protections as every American. H.R. 45 would deny equal protection under the law to the citizens of Nevada and to future Nevada generations. But I will also discuss how this bill places Americans in all parts of this country at risk. When one lives in a State that has been singled out as the target for a nuclear payload, he gives close attention to the issue. Nevadans know just how toxic, how dangerous, how menacing high-level nuclear waste really is. To give my colleagues some idea, a person standing next to an unshielded spent nuclear fuel assembly would get a fatal dose of radiation within three minutes. Under H.R. 45, the concentrated level of deadly radiation in one place in my home State staggers the imagination. H.R. 45 would force all of the Nation's high-level waste on the people of one State, a State where there is not even one nuclear reactor. For nearly two decades the nuclear industry and the Department of Energy have tried to convince Nevadans that high-level nuclear waste transportation and storage is safe. Their argument basically is, we will just stuff this stuff right into metal cans, screw the lids on tight, and there is nothing to worry about. Well, what is wrong with this picture? Well, if those cans of nuclear waste are so safe, why do they have to be shipped from all parts of the United States into the State of Nevada? That question has haunted Nevadans for years, and our concerns have intensified with H.R. 45. This bill would unleash high-level nuclear waste onto the Nation's highways and rail lines. It is this issue, the transportation of high- level nuclear waste, that binds Nevadans with all Americans as potential victims of H.R. 45. Americans from all parts of the country would be exposed to unacceptable and unnecessary risk because they live near highways and railroads where nuke trucks and trains would roll. Moving nuclear waste to Nevada would require well over 100,000 long-haul shipments. Nuclear waste will be speeding around the clock every day for nearly 30 years on our roads and rails. This should sound a national alarm. The deadly cargo will intrude on 43 States and hundreds of cities and towns across our nation. Fifty million Americans live within just a mile and a half of shipping routes. The waste will rumble through Birmingham, Alabama; Laramie, Wyoming; Portland, Maine; and the suburbs of Los Angeles; Miami, Florida; Kansas City; and St. Louis, Missouri. In short, nuclear waste will be on the move all over the country all the time for 30 years. The Department of Transportation counted more than 99,000 incidents in which hazardous materials were released from trucks and trains from 1987 to 1996, causing 356 major injuries and 114 deaths. The Department of Energy has described a plausible crash scenario involving high impact and fire that would contaminate an area of 42 square miles with radioactive debris. It is truly horrifying to picture this happening in a populated area. We have been repeatedly told that shipping nuclear waste across the country and stashing it at a dump site is safe. But let us take a brief look at the history of how the Federal Government has handled nuclear projects. The lands around nuclear installations at Hanford, Washington, Rocky Flats, Colorado, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Fernald, Ohio, are contaminated. The GAO concluded that 124 of our 127 nuclear sites have been mismanaged by the DOE. Nevadans do not buy this ``don't worry, be happy'' attitude towards radiation, and for good reason. I grew up in Nevada. Nevadans were proud to volunteer for the patriotic chore of playing host to above- and below-ground nuclear weapons testing, but the Federal Government never leveled with us about the risks. In the 1950s the Government produced films advising that if people just stayed indoors as clouds of fallout drifted through communities, everyone would be safe. As a safety measure, the Government suggested that a quick car wash would eliminate any pesky radioactive contamination. It seems harmless enough if it were not for the evidence of a disturbing increase in cancer that later traumatized these same communities. Harmless? Perhaps, if above-ground testing did not spread radioactive elements across the country. Supposedly safe above-ground nuclear tests were stopped when it was proved that radiation was winding up in the bodies of American children through the milk they were drinking. Underground testing was supposed to be the safe answer, or so the Government said. The radioactivity would be trapped underground, never to get out, except that some of the underground shafts burst open, spewing radiation into the air. Now scientists are finding that plutonium thought to be trapped in these test shafts is moving through the groundwater at alarming speed. So I have a healthy skepticism about Federal nuclear programs. My healthy skepticism persuades me that H.R. 45 is, in fact, a Trojan horse for permanently dumping high level nuclear waste in Nevada. Make no mistake, there is nothing temporary about H.R. 45. This bill is a political vehicle to get the waste to Nevada, to be conveniently parked next door to Yucca Mountain, the site of a failing effort to justify a permanent dump. The past year has been marked by a quickening pace of scientific evidence that clearly eliminates Yucca Mountain as a safe place for nuclear waste. Water will saturate the dump. Those who thought Yucca Mountain would be dry for 10,000 years are stunned to discover that water is filtering through at an alarming rate. Yucca Mountain has been, is and always will be jolted by earthquakes. In recent days seismologists described swarms of earthquakes that rocked the area. To visit Yucca Mountain is to feel the earth move. A growing number of scientists fear that a Yucca Mountain dump intended to isolate deadly radioactivity forever may well explode into an environmental apocalypse of volcanic eruptions. It is not nice to fool Mother Nature. Where earthquakes, water and volcanic activity are permanent dangers, we must not build a high level nuclear dump. The nuclear power industry should immediately cancel the Yucca Mountain project. The billions of dollars coming from ratepayers would be better spent finding a sensible and safe solution to nuclear disposal. Instead we have H.R. 45. This bill exists because the nuclear power industry sees that the only way to keep the Yucca Mountain project alive is to build a temporary dump next door. With the waste site up at the temporary dump near Yucca Mountain, there would be a powerful motivation to make Yucca Mountain work out somehow. Under those circumstances I fear that the health and safety of current and future generations would be jeopardized for the sake of expediency. As the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board has clearly stated, a temporary facility at the Nevada test site could prejudice later decisions about the suitability of Yucca Mountain. H.R. 45 has its roots in expediency over public health and welfare. H.R. 45 throws out existing radiation safety standards and replaces them with dangerous levels of radiation exposure that would be, quote, acceptable. The temporary dump cannot meet the current standards, so H.R. 45 permits Nevadans to be exposed to four to six times the amount of radiation allowed at any other waste site. H.R. 45 allows exposure 25 times the level set by the Safe Drinking Water Act. EPA administrator Carol Browner said H.R. 45 would authorize exposures to future generations of Nevadans which are much higher than those allowed for other Americans and citizens of other countries. Congress in 1982 called for nine potential nuclear storage sites to be assessed. By 1987, due to political considerations, not scientific findings, Yucca Mountain alone was targeted for site characterization. As it became increasingly clear Yucca Mountain is not suitable under stringent and responsible law that Congress passed in 1982, the rules have been repeatedly relaxed in favor of Yucca Mountain and against health and safety. And now comes H.R. 45, a bill which achieves nothing but risks the health and safety of current and future generations of Nevadans. The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board advises that there are no compelling reasons to move the nuclear waste in short term. H.R. 45 would be a terrible and needless mistake. If passed, it would be fought in courts by Americans across this country. I would stand with them in court or on the roads and rails if necessary to stop this disastrous policy.

Ms. BERKLEY

Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Chairman, during rollcall vote No. 16, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''