House Votes to Pull Plug on Super Collider
The superconducting super collider smashed into fiscal and political reality Thursday when the House voted overwhelmingly to kill the $8.3-billion project as a “pure science” luxury that a nation bent on serious deficit reduction no longer can afford.
The 280-141 vote cut across party lines and pitted passionate arguments for scientific research against those for deficit reduction.
Voting against the giant Texas-based atom smasher were 108 Republicans, 171 Democrats and one independent.
While proponents said they still hope to resurrect the super collider in the Senate, replaying events of last year when it was rescued from a similar defeat in the House, most lawmakers predicted that Thursday’s vote will finally doom a project scorned by one critic as a “scientific Tyrannosaurus rex . . . roving its way through a Jurassic Pork.”
Opponents of the collider won 48 more votes than a year ago. Their cause was boosted by reports of more cost overruns and wasteful spending, combined with mounting pressure for spending cuts.
Last year, the House voted, 232 to 181, to shelve the project.
The super collider would be housed in a 54-mile oval tunnel south of Dallas, providing a powerful particle accelerator that would allow physicists to examine the properties of matter and energy and possibly unlock clues to the origin of the universe.
Energy Department officials said that $1.6 billion already has been spent on the project, which is one-fifth complete.
Arguing that the collider could end up costing more than $11 billion, Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), a member of the Appropriations Committee, echoed the frustration felt by most members as he bellowed into the microphones: “Enough is enough!”
The super collider “may be nice to have some day, but for now, we need to put it on the shelf until we can afford it. . . . Other needs are more urgent,” he said.
Obey and others cited a leaked report by the Energy Department inspector general’s office, which criticized the department’s financial oversight of the project and found $216 million in unnecessary and unreasonable subcontractor expenses.
“The whole spending history of this project can be summed up with a phrase from a Grateful Dead song: ‘Trouble behind, trouble ahead,’ ” said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.). “The American taxpayers are taking it on the chin once again, and they are tired of it.”
Boehlert and Rep. Jim Slattery (D-Kan.) sponsored the amendment to cut the super collider funds from a $22-billion spending bill for the Energy Department and other agencies.
The bill, which for the first time in 10 years cuts overall funding for the Energy Department, was later passed, 350 to 73.
Reflecting the end of the Cold War, the bill also for the first time allocates more money for cleanup and waste management at nuclear weapons facilities managed by the Energy Department than it does for the production of the weapons themselves.
The bill appropriates $6.19 billion for environmental cleanup and waste management activities at nuclear weapons facilities in 1994 and only $5.74 billion for other weapons-related activities--22% less than last year.
In a victory for environmentalists, the House also voted, 267 to 162, to strip from the bill $62 million in funding for an advanced liquid metal nuclear reactor, which opponents had criticized as a wasteful attempt to revive the breeder-reactor technology that Congress abandoned a decade ago when it killed the Clinch River breeder reactor.
But it was the vote over the collider that provoked the most passionate debate. Proponents of the collider said the project is indispensable to U.S. efforts to stay in the forefront of scientific development and opponents, like Obey, dismissed it as a “turkey” that was actually hobbling scientific endeavors by drawing away funds from other research projects.
“This may be the most important scientific project of our lifetimes,” Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento) told his colleagues. “It is far more important for us economically to be exploring the innermost corners of matter than to be visiting the far reaches of space,” he said.
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), also argued for the bill, citing the story of a constituent whose cancerous eye was saved by surgery with a special proton beam, one of the early spinoffs from the research into the super collider.
Proponents of the project said they still hope the collider will be saved in the Senate, which last year supported it and ultimately won funding in a conference committee at which House and Senate legislation was reconciled.
But while that scenario could be repeated this year, opponents predicted that the new dynamics of deficit reduction in this year’s bill will kill the super collider for good.
“We saw the handwriting on the wall,” one House aide said, when funding for the space station--another science project that has enjoyed far more support than the collider--barely squeaked through the House on Wednesday.
Changing political dynamics also could work against the super collider in the Senate. Last year, the project succeeded largely because of the support it received from two powerful Texans--then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen and former President George Bush.
While he is still lobbying hard for the project, Bentsen has far less ability to influence the matter now that he is Treasury secretary.
While President Clinton supports the super collider, his efforts to push the project have been less energetic than those of Bush.
In the end, opponents said, the difficult votes that lawmakers face this year over tax increases and spending cuts are likely to outweigh scientific arguments in determining the fate of the collider.
“This is a symbol of our resolve to reduce the deficit,” said Rep. Peter Hoagland (D-Neb.).
Vote on Super Collider
Here is how members of the California delegation voted on an amendment to kill the superconducting super collider project. A vote for the amendment is a vote to eliminate the collider. Democrats for--Becerra, Beilenson, Berman, Condit, Dellums, Dooley, Edwards, Eshoo, Farr, Filner, Hamburg, Harman, Lantos, Lehman, Martinez, Miller, Pelosi, Roybal-Allard, Stark, Waters, Waxman, Woolsey Republicans for--Baker, Calvert, Doolittle, Herger, Huffington, Kim, McCandless, McKeon, Pombo, Rohrabacher, Royce Democrats against--Brown, Dixon, Fazio, Matsui, Mineta, Schenk, Torres Republicans against--Cox, Cunningham, Dornan, Dreier, Gallegly, Horn, Hunter, Lewis, Moorhead, Packard, Thomas Democrats not voting--Tucker
