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Craig is No Scientist, But He Plays One in Senate by Jim Fisher Lewiston Tribune, October 21, 2005

Almost as amusing as Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's lectures on balancing the federal budget -- as he votes for tax cuts and spending hikes that drive it further out of balance -- is his insistence that he knows what constitutes "good science."

He's been at it again recently, asserting the Fish Passage Center in Portland, Ore., should be closed because it does not conduct good science. The center collects and distributes information on salmon and steelhead runs for the Bonneville Power Administration.

This page does not pretend to say whether Craig is right about the center. But it knows Craig's opinion of what is good or bad science has a history of coinciding with the positions of the interests that finance his election campaigns.

It also knows he can be wrong.

The most vivid recent example of that was Craig's charge that the Environmental Protection Agency's plan to clean up toxic waste from decades of mining and smelting in Idaho's Coeur d'Alene Basin was scientifically bogus. The plan had drawn opposition from the mining companies that are expected to pay part of its cost and a handful of hysterics from Wallace to Coeur d'Alene.

In 2002, Craig said the plan "makes no damn sense." Last year, he told EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt, now secretary of Health and Human Services, the agency should "come to its senses in north Idaho."

"There are some environmental issues there," he said of heavy metal contamination extending scores of miles downstream from the mining district, "but they have largely been addressed, and Mother Nature is doing the job of healing herself throughout the basin."

To prove he was right, Craig joined other members of Idaho's congressional delegation in earmarking $850,000 for a study of the plan by the country's most prestigious scientific authority, the National Academy of Sciences. In July, the academy concluded the EPA's plan was generally sound, but did not go far enough in protecting the population from toxic substances.

Craig knew better than to dispute the academy's repudiation of his judgment. But that hasn't stopped him from applying his scientific expertise to other matters, like rescuing Idaho's dwindling salmon runs. Prudent Idahoans will give his scientific pronouncements the same weight they do his contributions toward a balanced budget.