WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Representative Jon Porter (R-NV) testified at the House Budget Committee in opposition to the Bush Administration’s plan to divert revenue from the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (SNPLMA) to the U.S. Treasury, the proposed Nuclear Repository at Yucca Mountain, and a proposal that would require Casinos to garnish winnings from “deadbeat” dads.  To follow are excerpts from his testimony:
 
“…The goal of SNPLMA is to protect and preserve Southern Nevada for future generations. Since being signed into law, SNPLMA has been amazingly beneficial for Clark County.  These funds have paid for the development of much-needed parks and trails in one of the fastest growing communities in the nation, and SNPLMA funds have helped in building and maintaining visitor facilities in some of the most visited national parks and conservation areas in the nation. 
 
….As a Congressman who represents a state with approximately ninety percent federal land, I am here to say that SNPLMA helps to “free up” federal dollars for other areas, such as the Florida Everglades, Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks, and our Grand Canyon.  This law also allows Southern Nevada to use SNPLMA, as opposed to Federal dollars, to protect endangered or threatened species. We simply do not need to rely as strongly on other Federal funding sources to support all of the Federal lands we have in Southern Nevada.
 
…Transporting 77,000 tons of nuclear waste across Nevada, through your community and mine, is a dangerous and bad idea.  We are talking about storing the most deadly substance known to man in a geographical site that has been proven unsafe.  I have been fighting Yucca Mountain for 20 years, and will continue to make known the facts of this unsafe program.  I urge this committee to be prudent in making any decision with respect to this project.
 
… This “deadbeat dads” proposal has a commendable goal but uses dubious tactics.  No one condemns any effort to avoid child support payments more then me.  But mandating the gaming industry to garnish winnings from those listed in a government database raises serious privacy questions.  Do we really need to create a new federal bureaucracy to process this information?  What we ought to do is provide the individual states and localities with the resources they need to locate and penalize those “deadbeat dads.”

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