Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
■ The Senate neared a bipartisan deal on conservation and park spending.
Vote set this week on $2.8B annually for parks, conservation
WASHINGTON — At a time of national crises, the Senate has been able to come together on a topic both parties celebrate: the great outdoors.
While the country copes with the coronavirus, an economic downturn and a reckoning over racism, lawmakers have reached bipartisan agreement on an election-year deal to double spending on a popular conservation program and devote nearly $2 billion a year to improve and maintain national parks.
If approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump, the Great American Outdoors Act would be the most significant conservation legislation enacted in nearly half a century.
The bill, set for a Senate vote this week, would spend about $2.8 billion per year on conservation, outdoor recreation and park maintenance.
“Americans have been spending a lot of time indoors” as a result of the pandemic, said Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., one of the bill’s chief sponsors. “They are ready to get into the great outdoors.”
Gardner and Sen. Steven Daines, R-Mont., have pushed for the bill, first convincing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that he should take it up, then persuading Trump at a White House visit.
McConnell told the two senators, who are both seeking re-election this year, that he would not consider the bill unless Trump was on board.
At a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in late February, Gardner and Daines made their case.
“This is a legacy thing,” Gardner told Trump, pointing to a portrait of
Theodore Roosevelt that dominates the room.
At a hastily called news conference to announce the deal, Daines and Gardner were joined by 10 other senators from both parties as eager lawmakers jumped to back a rare bill destined for approval in the slow-moving Senate. That was in early March, days before the pandemic derailed Congress from most legislation not related to the virus.
It’s three months later, and the bill is set for approval as early as Tuesday.
While widely supported, the outdoors bill faces sharp opposition, mainly from Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and other Gulf Coast senators pushing to ensure it includes revenue sharing for their states from offshore drilling. A separate group of conservatives opposes new federal land acquisitions.