Up to Date.. 2-8-09 – Action on LWCF re-authorization through S 47
Here is a summary of Senate action on S 47, Public Lands legislation with LWCF reauthorization included ( 40% state share and permanent reauthorization ).
A plurality of senators yesterday voted to kill two amendments to a broad public lands package that would have threatened the overall legislation’s survival.
The Senate adjourned for the week before it could finish work on S. 47, the “Natural Resources Management Act,” and will next vote Monday evening on the package of more than 100 land and water bills. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filed a motion to end debate on the legislation last night.
Earlier in the day, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) offered a measure that would have gutted the centerpiece of S. 47 — permanent reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
In a 68-30 vote, 29 Republicans joined Democrats in voting to table, or kill, Lee’s amendment to temporarily reauthorize LWCF through Sept. 30, 2023.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) encouraged members to table the measure, which she and panel ranking member Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) feared would jeopardize the carefully crafted, bipartisan package. Referring to the legislation’s permanent reauthorization of LWCF as well as reforms to the program, the Alaska Republican said, “What we have collaborated to build at this point in time is a necessary fix to address the continuation of the LWCF, and I would ask for members’ support.” Manchin also urged his colleagues to keep the public lands package “clean” and the negotiated agreement intact so it can pass the House after it leaves the Senate.
Lee, who objected to bringing the lands package to the floor late last year, called LWCF a “broken program” that has been used primarily “for more federal acquisition” while the government fails to properly care for the land it already manages. A permanent renewal of LWCF would deny lawmakers “any leverage, any real opportunity regularly to reform the program in the future,” the Utah Republican said.
Senators also shot down 66-33 an LWCF-related amendment from Oklahoma Republican Sens. James Lankford and Jim Inhofe, as well as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), which would have required 5 percent of LWCF funds used for federal land acquisition to go toward the deferred maintenance backlog on federal lands. The federal government “should actually take care of deferred maintenance when we buy it, so we’re not adding property with deferred maintenance on it on day one,” Lankford said in floor remarks.
Murkowski said she “reluctantly opposed” the Lankford amendment because it would be “detrimental” to the package’s survival. But she said she appreciated the Oklahoman’s effort to address the multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog on public lands and wanted to “make sure that we all take this on as an issue to address in a way that is rational, sound and reasonable going forward into the future.” Manchin sympathized with Lankford but said the timing wasn’t right for his amendment. The LWCF language in the bill “has been carefully negotiated, not only in the Senate but between the House also,” the Democrat said.
“Only in Washington, D.C., and in the federal government would we say, ‘We want to do something but we can’t do something, my hope is we will do something,'” Lankford said. “This is one of these dialogues that we’ve had for a long time — how can we deal with deferred maintenance that is $16 billion and growing, and there is no plan to shrink it?” S. 47 already contains language that speaks to some of the concerns from Lee and Lankford. The legislation would reform LWCF’s funding allocation levels: It would allocate 40 percent of money to the fund’s stateside program, 40 percent to the federal government and 20 percent for other necessary activities, which could include deferred maintenance needs.
Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, pushed hard to include those changes during last year’s negotiations on the package. During the votes yesterday, Lee and Murkowski were huddled for a long time talking at the front desk in the chamber. Manchin popped over briefly, and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), one of the package’s four main negotiators in the previous Congress, watched closely nearby. In addition to the cloture vote on S. 47, senators on Monday might also consider another Lee amendment that would add language to the Antiquities Act requiring congressional approval of new national monument designations or expansions in Utah. Lee tried unsuccessfully last year to include similar language into the public lands package (E&E Daily, Dec. 20, 2018).
