If you live in Ohio’s 10th congressional district, you have a choice this fall: Democrat Sharen Neuhardt or Republican Mike Turner.
According to Congressman Turner’s campaign website he spends his days in Washington “reigning in out-of-control spending”. But like so many other things that have come from the Turner campaign, this statement is very far from the truth. Instead, Turner has spent the past year fighting to get $6 Billion in funding for a nuclear plant in New Mexico that no one needs or even wants, except a handful of his campaign donors.
Back in May, the House and Senate Finance Committees agreed to cut funding for a $6 Billion nuclear facility in New Mexico. According to Joe Newman at POGO, “The committees agreed with a Pentagon and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) recommendation that the proposed facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was unnecessary.”
But just when it looked like there might actually be some bipartisan support for cutting wasteful and unneccesary spending, Mike “small government” Turner surprised everyone by fighting to KEEP the funding.
Turner single handedly added a provision to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to restore funding for the lab by moving it from the Department of Energy’s budget to the Department of Defense’s – even though they said they didn’t want or need the plant. And he threw an extra $100 million in unrequested funds just for the heck of it.
Again, 6 BILLION (plus 100 Million) dollars in funding for a project everyone said was unnecessary.
So why, you might ask, is a congressman from Ohio SO concerned with a nuclear facility in New Mexico?
Money, of course.
According to POGO again, Turner’s campaign “has received at least $70,000 from companies that either have ties to the Los Alamos National Laboratory” – including “Bechtel and Babcock & Wilcox, which manage the Los Alamos lab”.
Fortunately for people who actually DO care about “reining in out-of-control spending”, Congress passed a “Continuing Resolution” last Saturday morning that provided no funding for the facility.
Mike Turner, we think, should focus a little more time and energy fighting for his own district and its workers, instead of on huge, expensive and unnecessary projects over a thousand miles away that would help only his campaign donors.
Voters in the 10th district should keep this in mind when they cast their ballot this year.
