An old-school green deal

This bill passed the Senate with a vote of 92 to 8, which in these partisan times seemed like a huge margin of victory. Why do you think it got such strong support?

It reflects an older style of legislating. This is traditional logrolling—or you might even say pork-barrel legislation. There are provisions that affect members of Congress throughout the country, almost without exception. Every state is somehow affected. Some provisions of the bill will benefit hunters and anglers, while others benefit backpackers and mountain climbers. There’s even a provision that Native Alaskans who served in the Vietnam War have a special claim to Alaska land. The bill won such overwhelming support because it appeals to all sorts of constituencies.

A major facet of the bill involves Land and Water Conservation Fund, which states always anxiously await as it is a huge source of revenue for state-level conservation.

The federal Land and Water Conservation Fund program has needed to be reauthorized since it sunset last September. To see it reauthorized on a permanent basis would be an important development, and one that probably would help reassure states looking for money for their wildlife habitat and other conservation projects. But the bill does not provide any permanent, mandatory source of funding. So even if the Senate bill becomes law, the Fund will still depend on regular appropriations.

What’s the back story on the bill? What were some factors that influenced its passage?

Senators Murkowski and Cantwell have been working on this for quite some time. In an ironic way, the government shutdown and the damage and destruction to various national parks during that time may have helped create a window of opportunity for this to move forward. 

It’s hard not to view the passage of such a sweeping piece of legislation without having been affected in some way by what the public has been expressing about Congress during and following the shutdown. 

Is this purely a win for conservationists or are there components to the bill that appeal to other interests? Are there any surprises here?

If the bill becomes law, some land-swapping will be permitted in certain areas, opening some lands to development that weren’t previously. But overall, this bill would set aside a large amount of land as wilderness and in other ways provide considerable protection for important natural areas. This is the kind of legislation that has broad public support. People in America value the nation’s public lands, its wild places, its clean water, its forests. To see a vote like 92 to 8, it is clear that most senators see this as a win for the entire country. I suspect most of the public would say that, too.

The surprising element is, of course, that a Congress and a Washington, D.C., that seem so highly polarized today can still get something accomplished on a bipartisan basis. Such a sweeping passage by the Senate, with strong Republican support, also stands in contrast to the Trump administration’s public-lands priorities, which have generally moved in a direction opposite of this legislation. 

What do you see as the longer-term repercussions of this bill?

As I indicated, the Land and Water Conservation Fund is not permanently funded. The bill would permanently authorize the program, but over the long term it will still require Congress to act regularly to put funds into it. We may see some legislators in the future try to secure permanent funding, though there will likely be resistance to going that far.

More broadly, one might hope that maybe Congress will learn from bipartisan action like this and, quite frankly, from the recent bipartisan budget deal as well. The old style of horse-trading in Congress can work to get something done for the American people. Compromise is not a dirty word. It can be essential to getting legislation passed that serves the overall public interest.