There is a place to start coming together on the federal budget, and Sen. Patty Murray is well-suited to lead the way as chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee and a leader in the current, difficult budget negotiations. Shutting down the government — and our national parks — is simply not a reasonable choice.
In addition to disrupting long-planned vacations, relocating weddings, and spoiling other events, communities surrounding Olympic National Park lost nearly $4 million in visitor spending during the shutdown. Businesses surrounding Mount Rainier lost up to $1 million. But the shutdown was part of a long-term trend of broken budgeting harming national parks and threatening the visitor experience and the economic health of surrounding communities.
Our national parks offer an instructive lesson about why budget brinksmanship and the indiscriminate across-the-board sequester cuts demand a new approach. Sen. Murray is choosing the right fight in seeking a compromise that will end this damaging policy.
While the entrances to our national parks have been reopened, there are still “closed” signs on some campgrounds, visitor centers and historic structures and nearly 2,000 fewer rangers to help visitors due to sequestration. The ever-shrinking budget — down 13 percent since 2010 just to operate our national parks — is shortsighted and unsustainable.
Studies show that our national parks generate a $10 return for every $1 invested. National parks in Washington state alone support more than 3,800 jobs and produce upwards of $260 million in economic activity, according to 2011 reports.
It’s time to reinvest in our heritage. Nine in 10 voters — Republican, Democrat and Independent — do not want national park funding cut. Sen. Murray has reflected this bipartisan support with a budget that allows room for investing in national parks, which enjoy broad support, are economically important and are being harmed by the sequester.
Time will tell if the budget conferees also take this common ground into consideration and find the compromise necessary to end the damaging sequester.
Rob Smith is the Northwest regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. This essay first appeared in The Olympian.
Comments
beacdumb... I really honestly hope to never live a life as miserable as the one that your described worldview seems. Here's hoping for a better tomorrow for you, with fewer terrible people doing awful things to you.
On a completely related note (to the original post), what's been left unsaid is that, if the two parties agree on spending levels for the next year or two, even if the "sequester" caps are in place, the appropriations committees can actually go through and allocate money in a more sensible way.
However, as long as the government is operating under stopgap continuing resolutions, the cuts will continue to fall in the deliberately painful across-the-board fashion. That's why it's important for Senator Murray and Represenative Ryan (who is actually the CHAIRMAN of this conference committee, a fact also left deliberately unsaid by the misleading NPCA opinion piece) to come to any agreement, even if it does not completely relieve the BCA spending levels. I hope we can all at least agree on this point.
RickB, those doing well under the status quo are always going to try to marginalize, belittle, and attempt to paint as disgruntled kooks, those who speak truth to power.
Sorry Perp. I've spent most of my life being the guy paying the price for pointing out the Emperor's New Clothes. I've just done my best to work myself out of being a victim. I found out that when I found myself to be a Perpetual Victimal, there may well be steps that >> I << could take to improve my lot.
None of this has much to do with the parks.
Perp sesonal--"Truth to power" or truth as the way you view it? Sounds pretty egotistical to me if you think you hold the key to absolute truth and freely dispense it to those in positions of authority.
Rick
Careful folks, let's be a little careful. We seem to be losing the "constructiveness" of the dialog....
Sadly, it doesn't seem likely at this point that any compromise will be reached in the budget talks. As a result, we're likely to see more and more releases such as the one from Lassen Volcanic about the closing of its visitors center through the winter. What will be the next cutback? Some might shrug at a shuttered visitor center, but what if some parks institute rolling closures ... three days closed, four days open, three days closed, four days open.
Will states start complaining to their congressional representatives and demand that they be allowed to staff the parks as some states did back in October? Will this blow fresh wind into Rep. Don Young's proposal to allow states to take over management of national parks?
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I'm not sure why you find this piece misleading. I think it is pretty factual.
Just an FYI, Murry and Ryan are both the Chair of their respective committees and leaders of this committee, though Murray, being both senior and in the Senate, which has 22 memebers on the committee to the House's 7, is probably considered more the head of the joint-committee than Ryan.