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Levin aide: congressman lands Appropriations subcommittee seats; reintroduces spent-fuel and Purple Heart bills
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Summary
A representative for Congressman Mike Levin told the Carlsbad legislative subcommittee that Levin has been named to two House Appropriations subcommittees and has reintroduced bipartisan bills on spent nuclear fuel prioritization and Purple Heart veterans’ education benefits.
Salome Tash, representing Congressman Mike Levin’s office, told the Carlsbad legislative subcommittee that Levin has been appointed to two House Appropriations subcommittees and has reintroduced two bipartisan bills that could be relevant to coastal and military-connected communities.
Tash said Levin is serving on the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Energy and Interior Department water-resource projects, and on the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee, which oversees discretionary spending for the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects. Tash said the appointments “build on a lot of the work the congressman’s been doing … related to sand replenishment with the Army Corps of Engineers” and that Levin had recently met with representatives from Camp Pendleton to discuss prioritized projects.
Tash described two reintroduced bipartisan bills. The first, the Spent Fuel Prioritization Act, would prioritize removal of spent nuclear fuel from decommissioned sites in high-population, high-seismic-hazard areas where continued storage poses a national-security or public-safety concern; Tash cited San Onofre as an example of a site that the bill’s sponsors hope to elevate in priority. She said the bill is not written to prefer a permanent repository or a consolidated interim storage site but is designed to identify priority sites for removal.
The second bill Tash described was the Purple Hearts for Veterans Act (listed in the briefing as HR 790), which aims to close an eligibility gap in post-9/11 GI Bill transferability by allowing veterans who receive a Purple Heart after discharge to transfer unused education-assistance benefits to dependents. Tash said the proposal has a Senate companion and was presented as bipartisan.
Subcommittee members did not take formal action on these federal legislative items; they thanked staff and said they would watch for opportunities to support or provide local examples to congressional staff.
