Senate Takes Down “For Sale” Sign On Public Lands!
congresswatch | Land
Hunters, anglers and recreationists across Montana breathed a sigh of relief recently when lawmakers recently declared two Bush administration proposals to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land dead in the water. At the end of June, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a key spending bill that excluded the provisions. In May, the U.S. House took the same action, passing its version of the spending bill without the public land sale proposals.
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President Bush's proposed 2007 budget sought to sell off Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands to fund a rural schools and counties program and to reduce the national debt. The Forest Service alone listed 300,000 potentially salable acres, including 13,948 acres in Montana. The Bush Administration plan was foiled after the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill, funding the Interior Department and Forest Service in 2007, which omits the public land sale provisions within both federal agencies.
Both of Montana’s U.S. Senators opposed the sale of public lands. In March, Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill with a creative alternate funding plan that withholds a portion of federal payments to contractors in lieu of taxes. Under the provision, 3 percent of payments by the federal government to federal contractors for goods and services would be withheld and put in a trust fund that would pay for the Rural Schools Act. The federal government currently does not withhold taxes when it pays government contractors, and critics say a large number of those contractors never pay their federal taxes. Senator Conrad Burns, chair of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, said he did not expect any attempts to revive the measures, but did not offer an alternative funding plan for rural schools and counties.
Please thank Senator Baucus for standing up for public lands and protecting Montana’s irreplaceable fishing, hunting grounds and wildlife habitat!
Thank Sen. Burns for opposing the sale of public lands, and urge him to support Sen. Baucus’s measure.
