The President and Congress Claim to be Looking for Waste in Government. Hint: Look Under the Big Rocks.

(This posting is from a subscriber who has been a philosophical leader and inspiration to us all in Washington over many years, as you can tell by his pseudonym at the bottom of the reading. Anyone interested in posting a similar rumination is more than welcome to do the same...we have all the great names from history reserved for you under which you can express your ideas, thoughts and, most importantly, some smart, effective and salient solutions to our nation's huge problems)

Public officials repeatedly called for the elimination of waste in federal programs. That’s a good thing. Yet, the budget just submitted to Congress calls for the biggest waste of your tax dollars ever committed. That’s a bad thing.

If Congress agrees to abandon the Yucca Mountain project, a $13.5 Billion project that has been underway since the mid-1980s, kiss goodbye to hundreds, if not thousands of jobs, the near-term hope to reduce energy dependence and tons and tons of your tax dollars. Under a number of presidents and under both political party’s control of the Congress, Yucca Mountain has been declared by the US Congress to be the ideal permanent storage place for spent nuclear fuels.

For almost two decades, research and preparations have been underway to make Yucca the burial place for nuclear waste. Now, without new evidence to show it is not desirable or anything else to justify the decision, the Obama Administration comes along and scraps $13.5 Billion worth of work already paid for by your tax money.

Some cynical types might think that the Administration’s action are related to the fact that Yucca Mountain is located in Nevada, the home of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Would they be so crass as to think that Mr. Obama is trying to curry favor with the Senate Majority Leader?

In the meantime, unemployment and the housing bust now drowning Nevada gets one more punch in the eye as the employees and corporations dedicated to making Yucca work get the rug pulled out from under their feet. Oh, and by the way, all of that talk about building new nuclear energy plants all over the country as part of the plan to develop energy independence from foreign oil, well, it was just talk. Now, there is no storage plan for the spent nuclear rods. So, the probability is no new nuclear plants.

And, so, unless the Congress rejects the Obama budget recommendations, these spent nuclear rods are going to be left in your back yard by the thousands instead of in one safe repository specifically built to handle them.

The whole thing is just yucky, if you ask me.

Yoda