How a conservation fund helped sink Trump’s budget-trimming efforts
WASHINGTON: The Senate last week narrowly rejected US$ 15 billion in spending cuts sought by conservatives that would have trimmed budgets across the federal government. But it was slashed to a single programme - a conservation fund that does not directly cost taxpayers a dime - that helped do the bill in.
On Wednesday, two Senate Republicans - Richard Burr of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine - joined every Democrat to reject a measure that attempted to chip away at the compromise US$ 1.3 trillion spending package brokered by the two parties in March.
Burr voted against the bill because it would have pulled back funding promised to a programme called the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
The LWCF is a half- centuryold programme that provides money to federal, state and local governments for the acquisition of land and waters to bolster parks, forests, wildlife refuges and other public areas. The fund is often used to consolidate “checkerboarded” public lands that are intermingled with private holdings, which are often difficult for government agencies to manage and for hunters and other outdoor enthusiasts to access. Such purchases are nearly entirely paid for by a portion of the money the government collects from oil and natural gas leasing on the outer continental shelf.
Burr’s vote against the rescissions package is an early sign of a political tussle that may lie ahead. The LWCF is set to expire at the end of September, and Burr along with a bipartisan group of western senators - including Republicans Steve Daines of Montana and Cory Gardner of Colorado and Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington and Jon Tester of Montana - held a news conference in front of the Capitol on Wednesday urging Congress to make the programme permanent. The LWCF received a three-year extension in 2015 after lapsing that year.
“I sort of feel like every time we get together with this deadline looming that we’re on a reeducation programme about what LWCF is,” said Burr, who along with Cantwell introduced a bill last year to permanently reauthorise the programme.
Because it is paid for with oil and gas revenue - and not directly by taxpayers - the programme is popular among some Republicans. In fact, there is a bipartisan push in both the House and Senate to set up a parallel fund, also fi nanced through energy revenue, to do US$ 11.6 billion worth of repairs and other maintenance work needed in national parks.
Although LWCF’s revenue comes mostly from offshore oil and gas operations, Congress determines the level of appropriations each year. That amount, though, has “fluctuated widely” since the fund was created in 1965, according to the Congressional Research Service. Of the US$ 36.2 billion in revenue collected through its history, only US$ 16.8 billion - less than half - has been appropriated to it by Congress.
Recent history suggests keeping and funding LWCF may face stronger head winds in the House than in the Senate. A House bill to make LWCF a permanent programme has garnered 228 co- sponsors, more than enough to pass the measure. But most of its backers are Democrats, meaning House leaders may not necessarily put the bill to a floor vote.
Meanwhile, the Senate has already once passed a larger bipartisan energy bill that included permanent reauthorisation for LWCF. The House, however, did not take up that package.
“Now we’re just looking for what is that right vehicle and right opportunity that we know the House will take action on as well,” Cantwell told reporters last week. “The Senate has been very united.”
Even if Congress allows the LWCF to continue, that does not mean it will fully fund it. “Authorisation is one thing, and we need to authorise it,” said Tester, “but that may be just the kind of keep-the-wolves-awayfrom-the door thing. Now we got to fund it.” — WP-Bloomberg