Obama Weakened Nuclear Safety Bill After Consulting With Firm

New York Times:

When residents in Illinois voiced outrage two years ago upon learning that the Exelon Corporation had not disclosed radioactive leaks at one of its nuclear plants, the state's freshman senator, Barack Obama, took up their cause.

Mr. Obama scolded Exelon and federal regulators for inaction and introduced a bill to require all plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of even small leaks. He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was "the only nuclear legislation that I've passed."

"I just did that last year," he said, to murmurs of approval.

A close look at the path his legislation took tells a very different story. While he initially fought to advance his bill, even holding up a presidential nomination to try to force a hearing on it, Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon and nuclear regulators. The new bill removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[theuniversal]

Obama weakened the bill because it was the weakened version was the only one that had a chance of getting passed, and getting it passed was better than the status quo.

But do the Hillarians really want to turn this into an integrity contest? Because if the nomination comes down to which candidate is working for lobbyists, Hillary Clinton will lose in a landslide.

[Petwagger]

I live in Illinois, Senator Obama's home state.
I live with 3 nuclear power plants within a 25 mile radius, a high level waste storage facility, a nuclear laundry and a possible site for a reprocessing plant for spent nuclear fuel under the Global Nuclear Energy Patnership.
For those of us who live in this area, we have legitimate concerns about health and the environment.
We have repeatedly asked Senator Obama to come listen to our concerns, and his office staff has excused themselves and the Senator with excuses that we cannot comprehend.
We are asking ourselves several questions:
How could the Senator not have time to listen to us, but time was allocated so that the bill that did not pass, could have the language changed with input from the nuclear power plant owners and the nuclear regulators?
How is it that a presidential candidate from the state with the largest number of nuclear power plants in the U.S. cannot or will not meet wtih those from the communities that share their environment with the power plants?
We would like our voice to be heard.
We would like that voice to have come from the Senator from Illinois who is running for President.

[Anie]

More to the point, why wasn't this NY Times story about Obama and Exelon even linked by Huffington Post (while being on their site)?

Why did the Rezko story have a comments area that was linked to, instead, an anti-Bill Clinton story.

Since HuffPost did not link to the important NY Times article they store (automatically perhaps), only 5 people or so have even found it and I had to search the storage space to find it as I was concerned about balanced coverage here. I'm assuming Arianna doesn't know this is happening though. I'm hoping this site doesn't do things like this intentionally. HuffPost has been an important site we want to be able to trust.

[bauersox]

This is an example of the favors Barack Obama does for people who contribute heavily to his campaigns. This is a very important story and it should be more widely-featured on the blogs because it points out the disparity between what Obama claims and what he actually did. The NY Times article on Obama's cozy relationship with the nuclear energy business is at:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03exelon.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[bauersox]

This is an example of the favors Barack Obama does for people who contribute heavily to his campaigns. This is a very important story and it should be more widely-featured on the blogs because it points out the disparity between what Obama claims and what he actually did. The NY Times article on Obama's cozy relationship with the nuclear energy business is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03exelon.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[JPar]

A Quixotic Quest by the Junior Senator from Illinois. It appears that the infamous knucklehead, Senator James Inhofe (remember Jim’s discourses on global warming is the greatest hoax ever foisted upon mankind?) managed to mug Obama and kill this bill.

It looks like Obama, looking for a graceful way out, traded the tough terms of the proposed legislation for industries undertaking that they would dramatically increase their reporting.

Think of it this way: a young boxer Obama got taught a boxing lesson by a wily old timer, Inhofe. Much like Muhammad Ali vs Leon Spinks #2, if you will.

Or think of it in terms of that old saw: “Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy”.

Or if you are cynical, you can revert to the Bismarckian view: “Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.”

But there is a more serious issue here. The NYT article states:

“Mr. Obama scolded Exelon and federal regulators for inaction and introduced a bill to require all plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of even small leaks. He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was ‘the only nuclear legislation that I’ve passed.’”

I would like to see or hear an actual tape of that statement.

Legislators typically use the term “propose or sponsor legislation”.

It is hard to believe that any legislator is so illiterate as to say she/he “passed legislation”. Seems to me that if those words were uttered by him – and so far after many hours of searching I’ve not been able to dig up any corroboration that he used the words “I passed” - it was a slip of the tongue brought on by too many campaign nights of getting four hours of sleep.

No legislator in America is so dimwitted as to try to intentionally pawn off a ‘dead on arrival’ bill as something they "passed".

[Trace8089]

Another example of St. Obama talking big and doing nothing.