Cite as: 505 U. S. 144 (1992)
Opinion of White, J.
centives from surcharges collected by States with low-level radioactive waste storage sites and rebated by the Secretary of Energy to States in compliance with the 1985 Act's deadlines for achieving regional or in-state disposal, see §§ 2021e(d)(2)(A) and 2021e(d)(2)(B)(iv), and the "access incentives," which deny access to disposal sites for States that fail to meet certain deadlines for low-level radioactive waste disposal management, § 2021e(e)(2). The Court strikes down and severs a third component of the 1985 Act, the "take title" provision, which requires a noncomplying State to take title to or to assume liability for its low-level radioactive waste if it fails to provide for the disposal of such waste by January 1, 1996. § 2021e(d)(2)(C). The Court deems this last provision unconstitutional under principles of federalism. Because I believe the Court has mischaracterized the essential inquiry, misanalyzed the inquiry it has chosen to undertake, and undervalued the effect the seriousness of this public policy problem should have on the constitutionality of the take title provision, I can only join Parts III-A and III-B, and I respectfully dissent from the rest of its opinion and the judgment reversing in part the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
I
My disagreement with the Court's analysis begins at the basic descriptive level of how the legislation at issue in these cases came to be enacted. The Court goes some way toward setting out the bare facts, but its omissions cast the statutory context of the take title provision in the wrong light. To read the Court's version of events, see ante, at 150-151, one would think that Congress was the sole proponent of a solution to the Nation's low-level radioactive waste problem. Not so. The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980 (1980 Act), Pub. L. 96-573, 94 Stat. 3347, and its amend-atory 1985 Act, resulted from the efforts of state leaders to achieve a state-based set of remedies to the waste problem. They sought not federal pre-emption or intervention, but
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