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The Washington Times
Sunday, May 7, 2000
WASTEFUL LAND GRABBING BY THE GOVERNMENT
A budget-busting, land-grabbing disaster is in the making, brought to you by the U.S. Congress. Leading the way are House Republicans Don Young of Alaska and Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, co-authors of HR 701, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA).
CARA is a textbook example of creating a wasteful spending machine that will spin way, way out of control. What started out as a conservation and environmental protection trust fund has ballooned into a $45 billion, 15-year authorization to spend on wasteful projects ranging from road and dock construction in Louisiana (Title 1) to more police officers for Eskimos in Alaska (Title 6).
Alaska residents will receive a guaranteed subsidy of $272 per person annually under CARA’s gravy train distribution formula. Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the country by any fiscal measure, receives a $313 million annual windfall, or $71 per capita. Meanwhile, the average state benefits a meager $11 per person, per year, under CARA.
CARA has a Senate counterpart, S. 25. It is sponsored by - what a surprise - Sen. Frank Murkowski Alaska Republican, and Sen. Mary Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat. CARA provides more than $1 billion dollars yearly for land acquisition, with most of those funds available for adverse condemnation of private property. That means kicking people off their land and out of their homes against their will, and then paying them what the government says the land is worth. Big Brother becomes both judge and jury.
The federal government already owns more than one-third of the land area in the United States, and is not managing it very well. According to the March 2000 issue of Government Executive magazine, "The National Park Service - with 16,000 permanent structures, 8,000 miles of roads, 1,500 bridges and tunnels, 5,000 housing units, 1,500 water and waste systems, 200 radio systems, more than 400 dams and more than 200 solid waste operations, has estimated its repair backlog at $5 billion. But Congress has provided only $125 million a year in upkeep funds, because of the agency's problems collecting accurate data from its parks various accounting Systems?
The federal government should be properly managing the empire it already controls for the recreational benefit of taxpayers before it grabs for more land and more power.
Members of Congress have been swamped with pleadings for funds from CARA’s Title 4, which is the Urban Parks and Recreation Fund. This $125 million per year program represents 4 percent of the bill. Congress can accommodate these constituencies without handing over the other $2.9 billion per year for wasteful projects and power- hungry, land-grabbing bureaucracies.
The Federal government already owns more than one-third of the land area in the United States, and is not managing it very well.
CARA has generated a feeding frenzy of lobbyists angling for their clients' share of the goodies. For example, Major League baseball owners strongly support the bill, because of federal taxpayer subsidies made available for stadium construction. That's right, the Billionaire Boys Club of team owners like George Steinbrenner and Ted Turner have their fingers in the CARA pie. How is that helping conservation and the environment?
Fortunately, CARA may beheaded down the same road as a similar bill proposed in 1989, the American Heritage Trust Act (AHTA) - Like CARA, AHTA gained co-sponsorships from a large majority of the House of Representatives - it had more than 250 cosponsors, while CARA has more than 300.
AHTA was defeated for three reasons:
(1) There were budget and appropriations objections over taking a mammoth chunk of money off-budget over the long term. CARA likewise creates a gigantic, $45 billion off-budget trust fund, exempt from the appropriations process, for a 15-year authorization period.
(2) Land owners objected to AHTA’s unprecedented financing and power of eminent domain. Handed over to government agencies, this would have resulted in massive threats of adverse condemnation of private property. CARA makes a billion dollars annually available to do much of what AHTA would have done.
(3) AHTA collapsed of its own weight. The bill's sponsors got greedy, and kept adding spending projects in an effort to purchase the support of more and more constituencies. Eventually, it got too expensive, and fell victim to budget concerns.
CARA as introduced in February of 1999 was a $1.4 billion per year bill divided into three trust funds. When it emerged from the House Resources Committee nine months later, it had ballooned into a $3 billion annual Christmas Tree spreading largess out over seven trust funds.
Congressional approval of this bill will place another nail in the coffin of any pretense to fiscal responsibility. CARA will also devastate farmers, ranchers, fish and hunt clubs and all private property owners, a core Republican constituency. All in the name of feeding at the trough of government waste.
TOM SCHATZ
President
Citizens Against Government WasteCHUCK CUSHMAN
Executive Director American Land Rights Association
Be informed! Don't allow yourself to be snowed by CARA.
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