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Budgeting Woes Likely To Hit The National Park Service

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With the U.S. House of Representatives, if not the entire Congress, determined to shrink the federal deficit as quickly as politically feasible, expect the National Park Service to take a pretty good hit.

Figures released by the House Appropriations Committee last week identified a $51 million cut in the Park Service's budget, and when President Obama's FY12 budget proposal comes out this week it very likely will show a decrease in the agency's funding.

With an overall budget of around $2.2 billion, $51 million might not seem like much, but remember that the Park Service has a maintenance backlog of about $9 billion, so any cut could be tough to handle.

According to the World Socialist Web Site, the president's budget will reduce the Park Service's construction budget and feature "reductions in battlefield preservation grants, Native American Graves Protection Act grants, and Heritage Area funds for the National Park Service."

With that writing on the wall, at least one park advocacy group, Friends of Acadia, is trying to rally public support to lobby Congress on behalf of the parks.

Specifically, the friends group is warning that cuts in the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund could jeopardize efforts to buy a 37-acre tract with the boundaries of Acadia National Park.

Friends of Acadia and Maine Coast Heritage Trust have been working together to protect 37 acres of undeveloped land on Lower Hadlock Pond, to hold them until Acadia National Park can obtain funding to acquire the lands in February 2012. These undeveloped lands are within the Acadia’s boundary and important to the park because several trails traverse the parcel and the pond is important habitat for birds and aquatic species. Additionally, the lands help preserve the watershed for Mount Desert’s water supply.

Acadia National Park needs $2.35 million in order to purchase the entire 37 acres for inclusion in the park. President Obama’s FY 2011 budget included $1.76M for this project, and all four members of Maine’s delegation supported the project. However, Congress is operating under a continuing resolution through March 4, 2011, and has not yet taken action on the FY 2011 Interior Appropriations Bill. The House of Representatives recently released its FY 2011 appropriations recommendations, reducing LWCF levels to $348M, which would jeopardize the FY 2011 funding for Lower Hadlock Pond in Acadia. Please contact your Representatives today to encourage them to fully fund LWCF, including the $1.76 million for Acadia that was in President Obama’s FY 2011 budget.

 

To write to members of Congress, please visit: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml.

Meanwhile, over at Defenders of Wildlife, President Rodger Schlickeisen doesn't deny the need for fiscal control in Washington. But he does question some of the choices being made.

"The public should be able to trust Congress to demonstrate a sense of fairness and rationality in the cutting process. The House leadership’s Continuing Resolution proves otherwise," he said in a statement released Saturday. "Vital programs that keep our air and water clean and protect our wildlife and public lands have been axed while massive subsidies for big international oil corporations remain in place. Where’s the sense in that?

“It’s clear that the House leadership’s budget-cutting zeal is confined to programs that they oppose on ideological grounds, including environmental protection," continued Mr. Schlickeisen. "Unwarranted taxpayer subsidies for the biggest special interests are left untouched. Stewardship of our nation’s magnificent and unique natural heritage should rank far above fiscal handouts to the favored undeserving, but apparently not in the minds of this House leadership. If they have their way, future generations will have to pay for not only an enormous budget deficit but also a lost natural legacy. ”

Among the cuts he questioned were those aimed at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, efforts to maintain water flows into California's Bay Delta, and federal protection of gray wolves in the Rocky Mountains.

“Do the American people want cuts? Yes," said the Defenders president. "Decimation of our precious environment and natural resources? No. Clearly, the new House majority is using the Continuing Resolution as an opening salvo in an extremely broad and dangerous attack on our country’s most important environmental safeguards. We can only expect the proposals to get worse when the measure comes before the full House.”

Comments

With all due respect for you both, the careing image has been used in Politics so much that it needs serious examination.  As long as their words make you feel cared for is all that's needed in many cases while some having real answers to the endemic problems get labeled as "uncareing."  The image of all those people standing on their rooftops and dead bodies floating after Katrina while the busses sat in the parking lots is an extreme but appropriate example of results of careing politicians pervading the idea that they and their party are the party of careing.  The victims had become dependent and paid the price. There are talking points around that of course, blame Bush but that, in my eyes is just more of the "uncaring" PR which is alive and well today.  I say all these things as respectfully as I can because the political discourse has gotten so ugly and hurtful to what's best, I believe, that looking at our leaders true motivations is the only way for all of us to put a stop to it.  It could be said that I'm getting off topic but I have no doubts that this discourse has everything to do with how, at the top, directives go on down the chain of command in Washington that affect the Parks and everything else.  
I have no doubts that you really do care about our Parks, as I hope you think the same of me.
Thanks


Rick B.  You do realize that after the Bush tax RATE cuts tax revenues rose by 50% over the next 5 years while unemployment went down. Our problem is spending not tax rates.


ecbuck--

You do realize that Bush inherited a budget surplus and left a huge deficit? Bad wars will do that for you, even if they are off-budget as he and his team kept them.

Rick


To continue the thread, Rick, President Clinton is an unusually good opportunist.  It can be argued quite well that after two years of his administration the mid-terms happened and after 40 years his party lost both the House and the Senate.  This led to, welfare as we know it, is over, a balanced budget which led to improvement of people's plight and some undeserved bragging rights on one hand but deserved that he was able to change his direction.  It could also be argued that what could have happened with control of all three branches of government as we had the first two years of this administration is something more similar to what we have than what happened back then.  There is frequently more to the story than what politiicians like to crow about at building their own legacy.  President Clinton is supreme at that while (If I can add some uncharacteristic snark:) "feelng your pain."  


Yes Rick, I am well aware that Bush & Congress overspent.  I will be the first to criticize him and them for that.  Nevertheless, his tax rate cuts led to record tax receipts.  The problem is spending - not revenues and its true whether it is the Republicans or Democrats doing the spending.


"The problem is spending - not revenues and its true whether it is the Republicans or Democrats doing the spending."

C'mon.  This is obviously a values issue, not a pragmatic one.  Whether the problem is spending or revenue--or both--depends on what you understand to be the role of government and what exactly it should spend it's money on.


No it's not a values issue.  It's an economic issue of which we have plenty of evidence that capitalism beats socialism.  Our "role of government" is pretty well spelled in something called the Constitution - and its primary purpose was to limit government.  A document and system that built the greatest nation on earth.


A values issue?  Role of government and what IT should spend IT's money on?   IT's money??
Some classic examples here in your post.  You could be outside the two party system here.


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