The Senate easily approved a bipartisan public lands package Wednesday by a 73-25 vote in what Republican supporters see as a major conservation achievement that will aid vulnerable members in the upcoming election.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the bill’s main Republican sponsors, Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado and Steve Daines of Montana (both in tight reelection fights), blocked debate on amendments in the lead-up to the vote to ensure passage.
That helped prevent the derailment of the bill, but it also provoked the ire of coastal Republicans and conservatives.
“We are abusing our constitutional privilege,” Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said in a lengthy floor speech last week. “We are doing this for no other purpose than for our own convenience. No wonder they can’t stand us,” he added, alluding to Congress’s poor public approval rating.
Still, the vast majority of Republicans and Democrats supported the Great American Outdoors Act, which has a good chance of becoming law because President Trump has endorsed it. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced matching legislation in the House, and the Democrat-controlled chamber is expected to move on it soon.
“This a shining example of Democrats and Republicans coming together to put politics aside and do what’s best for conserving America’s great natural resources,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, a leading Democratic co-sponsor of the bill, ahead of the vote Wednesday.
“It’s good politics, but it’s better government,” Manchin added later in a press call with reporters.
The public lands package provides full and permanent federal funding to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which distributes money to federal, state, and local governments for buying land and waters to improve national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, and other public areas.
It marks only the second time the fund has received full federal funding, $900 million annually, since the program’s creation in 1964.
While the fund uses offshore drilling revenue from energy production on federal waters, not taxpayer money, to pay for the projects, some conservatives balked at providing mandatory, permanent funding for it without subjecting it to the annual appropriations process.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, led the charge of coastal senators who argued that the bill distributes an unequal amount of funds to inland states.
He unsuccessfully sought to amend the bill, removing a cap on how much offshore oil and gas revenue can go to Gulf Coast states, to allow for more funds to buffer against sea-level rise and worsening hurricanes.
“We’re going to spend billions. But we’re going to spend billions in the wrong way, repairing damage on the coast that could have been prevented if we’d spent millions now,” Cassidy said during a floor speech last week.
A second component of the bill would create a separate fund to pay for a $12 billion maintenance backlog in national parks and other federal lands, using energy revenues to pay for repairs to broken bathrooms, visitor centers, roads with potholes, trails, and campgrounds.
“The Great American Outdoors Act is a combination of two things that have taken a long time for this Congress to pass,” Gardner said Wednesday.
Trump, who has expanded fossil fuel development on public lands and rarely talks about conservation, has nonetheless pledged to sign into law what he called a “HISTORIC” bill for our “beautiful public lands,” crediting Gardner and Daines for the achievement.
Gardner said the maintenance portion of the bill alone would support more than 100,000 jobs and provide a lifeline to Western states with public lands whose recreation economies have been harmed by the loss of tourism from the coronavirus pandemic.
“We can restore faith in our government to come together, work together, and inspire each other,” Gardner said.
