By George Lobsenz
Rep. David Hobson announced this week he will retire from Congress next year, changing the dynamics of the House energy and water appropriations subcommittee, where the Ohio Republican has been a major force on key Energy Department nuclear weapons and cleanup issues.
As ranking Republican on the energy and water panel, Hobson has had an unusually close bipartisan partnership with Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.), chairman of the energy and water panel, in pressing DoE on a range of management problems. In particular, the two lawmakers typically acted in unison on sensitive policy issues related to new warhead development and operational issues in the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous DoE agency that runs the department’s nuclear weapons complex.
They presented the same united front on NNSA issues when Hobson was chairman of the energy and water panel and Visclosky served as the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat from 2003 to 2006 in a Republican-controlled Congress.
The retirement of Hobson, who has served in Congress since 1990, clears the way for Rep. Zach Wamp (Tenn.) to become ranking Republican on the energy and water panel in 2009, assuming Democrats retain control of the House in the 2008 elections and Wamp does not opt for another assignment.
Wamp, who represents the district including DoE’s Oak Ridge site, would appear likely to be less confrontational than Hobson in challenging DoE to fix its management problems.
Hobson has been highly critical of DoE’s performance on several fronts. Most notably, as chairman of the energy and water panel, he played a surprising lead role for a senior GOP lawmaker in congressional action to block the Bush administration’s plans for development of a robust earth-penetrating nuclear missile, which he called unwise and provocative.
Instead, Hobson and Visclosky gave initial backing to NNSA’s proposed “reliable replacement warhead (RRW),” which the agency says is needed to update the aging U.S. nuclear stockpile.
But while helping to give birth to the RRW, Hobson and Visclosky have since tempered their support for the new warhead, saying the Bush administration needs to better explain the strategic role of the RRW and how it will help shrink the nation’s weapons complex and arsenal.
Hobson and Visclosky also led congressional efforts to force DoE to seek bids on contracts for numerous large DoE laboratories that had been run for decades by one operator. In particular, they authored legislation requiring DOE to bid out the contracts for Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories, the nation’s two main nuclear weapons labs, after serious safety and security problems surfaced under the labs’ longtime operator, the University of California.
Hobson and Visclosky also pressured DoE over huge cost overruns and delays on key nuclear cleanup projects, forcing the agency to seek independent reviews and tighter controls on contractors.