Excerpts
House Republicans fighting the Obama administration’s environmental agenda are finding themselves making decisions that threaten the party’s carefully nourished relationship with the hook and bullet crowd.
Anglers and hunters once courted by President George W. Bush don’t like what they’re seeing in the GOP’s mad dash to cut spending and have made their feelings clear in meetings this month with top aides to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
As the Republican leaders no doubt know, this is not a crowd to mess with. The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation estimates that nearly eight in 10 hunters always vote in presidential elections, while six in 10 go to the polls in off years.
The outdoorsmen typically lean Republican, but Democrats say they could capitalize with a constituency that’s also known to be pretty independent minded.
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Back in power, House Republicans may have poisoned the well with their austere spending strategy, including the fiscal 2012 interior and environment spending bill that is on track for approval Tuesday in the Appropriations Committee.
Under the legislation, the Interior Department’s overall budget would fall $720 million from fiscal 2011. A popular land and water conservation fund would see a more than 80 percent cut to $62 million, while funding for the North American Wetlands Conservation Act would get a 47 percent reduction to $20 million. State Wildlife Grants would also be cut 64 percent to $22 million.
Wildlife-themed riders are also sprinkled throughout the bill, including language that allows chemical companies and large agriculture operators to skirt pesticide permit requirements and enforcement of certain mountaintop mining rules. Conservation groups are complaining the language will dirty rivers and streams they use for recreation.
Other riders include a prohibition on judicial review of Interior’s decision to delist wolves in Wyoming and the Great Lakes region from the Endangered Species Act, as well as a zeroing out of funding for the Fish and Wildlife Service to list new species and designate critical habitat under the law.
“In the past, conservation has been a bipartisan issue. Democrats and Republicans have always agreed about hunting and fishing,” said Whit Fosburgh, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, one of four conservation groups that took issue with a GOP-sponsored rider that blocks the Environmental Protection Agency from updating Clean Water Act policies dealing with fish and wildlife habitat.
“I think you’re seeing a divide that’s starting to open up that hasn’t always existed in the past and we hope won’t exist for very long,” Fosburgh added.
This is what happens when you insist in sticking ONLY with the spending side of our Federal Budget. If it's worth it (whatever) then you increase revenue to pay for it.
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