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The Everything 118th Congress Thread


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Congress takes aim at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: ‘It’s déjà vu all over again’

 

Politico reports that congressional promoters of “advanced” nuclear plants are blaming the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as the main obstacle to their deployment. The report singles out Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin (D-WV) and cites his and his colleagues blocking the reappointment to the commission of Jeff Baran, who tended to lean toward safety more than his fellow commissioners, as the start of a campaign to bring the agency to heel. Such crude bullying of a safety agency, especially by people who don’t understand what it involves, is so obviously improper as not to need further comment. But there is more to the story.

 

The triggering event for Sen. Manchin’s ire appears to be the faltering of NuScale, the leading firm touting the development of small modular reactors (SMRs), and the most likely to succeed commercially. The NuScale reactor design had some hiccups in satisfying the NRC’s requirements for a license, but its fundamental problem was its inability to attract customers. That commercial failure darkens the prospects of the rest of the nuclear industry’s stable of “advanced” designs, whose variety makes licensing more difficult. Safety is a subtle business (think of the Boeing door problem) and depends on design details.

 

More fundamentally, at risk is the dream of the nuclear industry and the US Energy Department—spun out in hearings before the Senate Energy Committee—of building large numbers of such reactors and exporting them around the world, with the United States regaining undisputed global leadership in nuclear technology.

 

If this beautiful dream isn’t working out, somebody must be at fault, and who better to blame than the nuclear licensing authorities for paying too much attention to safety. If you think this way, the obvious fix is to reorient the NRC. Legislation to do that (ADVANCE Act, S-1111) has passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support. As Sen. Shelley Capito (R-WV), the act’s chief sponsor, put it: “we must establish regulatory pathways for next-generation nuclear designs to be approved quickly and without burdensome unnecessary costs.”

 

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5 hours ago, TradeTheBeal! said:

This is honored GOP tradition at this point.

 

 

When are we finally going to get a congress member with some culture who filibusters by reading the script of The Bee Movie or Shrek into the Congressional record?

Edited by GhostofSparta
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3 minutes ago, Jumbo said:

republican congress= sick stupid dangerous disgusting meatsacks

 

House turds are looking to do hearings with hur 

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/politics/house-republicans-robert-hur/index.html

 

 

I have hopes that, considering how pretty much every single "hearing" the House GOP has conducted has either fizzled out like a damp sparkler or blew up in their faces, that this one will as well. A number of Democratic House members have been extraordinary at picking apart supposed "smoking gun"-type testimony and documents in order to show how baseless the claims are and how useless the hearing really is...gotta keep faith that they'll keep doing it if this becomes a hearing as well.

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1 hour ago, TradeTheBeal! said:


Yes, as we’ve discussed before…the “I’ll raise your taxes so homeless tweakers can get the same health care as your mom” platform is an unbeatable political juggernaut.

 

Hey those junkies deserve clean needles same as the rest of us. 🤪

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Race to succeed George Santos in Congress reaches stormy climax in New York's suburbs

 

An unusual special election in New York City's suburbs on Tuesday could be a bellwether in the fight for control of Congress.

 

Former U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, faces off with Republican Mazi Pilip, a county lawmaker, in a race for a House seat that became vacant when George Santos was expelled from Congress.

 

The contest, being fought in a district that includes Long Island suburbs and a small corner of Queens, has offered a preview of the political strategies both parties might use in the fall, with the campaigns testing messages on immigration, abortion and public safety. New York is expected to host a handful of congressional battleground races this year and the special election could provide clues on how crucial districts might lean.

 

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7 hours ago, Captain Wiggles said:

 

Hey those junkies deserve clean needles same as the rest of us. 🤪

 

They also might not be junkies if they had access to mental healthcare early on.

 

Not sayin I agree with Bernie.  But am sayin, as with many things, a better way needs to be found.  What we are doing isn't working for a large portion of our population.

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And only the second time any cabinet secretary has been impeached.

 

Not since the Grant administration I believe. The dude that was impeached then was taking like $20k payoffs a month. 

 

Great job Republicans. This will solve that immigration problem yall keep ****ing about I'm sure. 🤣

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16 hours ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

🥱

 

Now Congress has to take up more time for a ridiculous trial in the Senate. Unlike the impeachments of Trump, who should have been kicked out of office by the Senate, never to be allowed to run for president again and throwing the country into his tailspin, we have to suffer through this Senate trial. Mayorkas will never be convicted and thrown out of office. 

 

I hate to say it and I will: the Republicans in the House of Representatives are a joke and that includes my representative. 

 

 

Edited by LadySkinsFan
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Perhaps electing the Christian fundamentalist that nobody had ever heard of wasn't the best course of action.

 

Republicans admit it. Kevin McCarthy has never looked so good.
House GOP insiders view the new speaker as a man perpetually without a plan.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/14/johnson-faces-waves-of-buyers-remorse-00141407

 

Quote

For nine months in his speakership, Kevin McCarthy seemed like a man with a title but no power — desperately improvising to keep his job amid factions ready to turn on him in an instant.

 

Now, in his fourth month in alleged power, Speaker Mike Johnson has accomplished what once seemed unthinkable: making McCarthy seem like a skilled strategist and master of the House.

 

Interviews with multiple Republicans over the last few days across multiple House factions — people who consider themselves on Johnson’s team, as well as those who were never enthusiastic about his rise — describe a speaker who seems to be winging it on major questions of strategy, messaging and basic vote-counting.


Dismay over Johnson’s seemingly limp grasp on the speaker’s gavel has even produced a new trend of sorts: McCarthy nostalgia.

 

“Kevin would have a strategy, he’d shop it around, then he’d make a play call,” a senior Republican lawmaker said. “The more I’m around Johnson, the more it’s clear to me he doesn’t have a plan.”

 

Some are even going on the record. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a libertarian gadfly who was never considered a McCarthy ally, openly pined for the former speaker last week after Republicans suffered another embarrassing floor defeat.

 

“Getting rid of Speaker McCarthy has officially turned into an unmitigated disaster,” he tweeted.

 

It’s not getting any easier for Johnson. To start, there’s the $95 billion supplemental spending bill funding aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that arrived Tuesday from the Senate.

...

His response to the Senate bill threatens to cement a reputation for dithering in the face of tough decisions. Other members of the GOP leadership team are left entirely in the dark about what he’s thinking until he makes a decision, leaving it difficult to message key policy issues to the public and prepare the rank-and-file for tough votes.

 

“I’m as confused as ever about what he wants,” one senior GOP aide said about the foreign aid questions. “He hasn’t given us any direction. … I think right now he’s in survival mode.”

 

Added another, “Not sure what the speaker wants to do on that — as with most things, he’s all over the place.”

 

More at link. 

 

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