Land and Corporate Welfare
INTERIOR VOTES
The U.S. Senate is set to take up the Interior Appropriations bill, funding the Forest Service and other federal land management agencies, when they reconvene for business Tuesday, July 27.
Whether you have called before or not, this is the right time to dial your Senators at (202)224-3121 and express your support for important amendments that will impact policy for the coming year on our National Forests and other public lands. You do not have to give a bill number, just refer to the "Interior Appropriations Bill."
Here are the key amendments. Adding a phrase, striking a phrase, it may seem a little complicated -- but the bottom line is, we urge you to FAVOR each amendment.:
BRYAN/FITZGERALD AMENDMENT -- Senators Richard Bryan (D-NV) and Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) will seek to remove from the Interior Appropriations bill $33 million in corporate welfare handouts for logging subsidies and timber road construction added in committee by Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA). If the amendment passes, $20 million of the savings will go for fish, wildlife, and road maintenance/decommissioning; the remaining $13 million will be outright taxpayer savings.
This is the best opportunity Senators have to vote for clean water, fish and wildlife protection, and better overall stewardship of the National Forests. Why send the Forest Service more money for logging than they request, and then turn around the cut funds that the agency needs to repair and decommission roads, and restore fish and wildlife?
ROBB/CLELAND AMENDMENT -- Senators Chuck Robb (D-VA) and Max Cleland (D-GA) will seek to strike from the Interior bill a rider (Section 329) that would prevent the Forest Service from conducting wildlife surveys on the National Forests, in order to have information from which to make responsible land management decisions.
DURBIN AMENDMENT -- Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) will offer an amendment to uphold the requirement that public land grazing permitees follow environmental laws while they're permits are being renewed.
MURRAY/DURBIN AMENDMENT -- Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) will seek to strike from the Interior bill a rider (Sec. 336) that would extend the 1872 Mining Law to allow certain mining operations to dump toxic mining wastes on federal land.
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For more information, contact American Lands, 726 7th Street, SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. 202/547-9105. wafcdc@americanlands.org
What's your opinion on the corporate welfare provisions in the Interior Appropriations bill? Tell your Senators! And tell The Progress Report what you think:
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