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Washington Post Editorial
A GREEN BILL IN THE HOUSE
Thursday , May 11, 2000 ; A34
THE HOUSE is to vote today on a bill that will pass for precisely the reason it should fail. The measure is doubly green: The purpose is environmental, and the votes have been bought. A new entitlement would be created, in part by people who in other contexts are wont to declaim against entitlements as poor fiscal and social policy alike.
About $3 billion a year would be distributed to buy and thereby protect environmentally valuable land and for other conservation purposes. Enough members think, with cause, that their districts would benefit that the bill has 315 cosponsors. What better tribute could there be to the wiliness of those who cooked the measure up?
The money would come from the proceeds of offshore oil and gas leases. The spending would be automatic. The program would go to the head of the line--ahead of national defense, education, tax collection, biomedical research, you name it. The annual appropriations process in which less-favored programs compete for funds would be waived. About a third of the money would be split between the federal and state governments for land acquisition. Another third would be reserved for coastal states, as supposed compensation for the environmental costs of offshore drilling. The rest would be artfully scattered across other purposes and districts--for wildlife conservation, urban parks, historic preservation.
Our objection is not to the purposes but to the automatic spending without regard to competing claims on the federal dollar. It's as wrong to create this carve-out as it was to yield to the highway and aviation lobbies and create similar, larger carve-outs for them in the past few years. The sponsors say that they had no choice--that the only way to ensure a steady funding stream for conservation was to bypass appropriations and spread the wealth. So which worthy programs do they do it for next? Why this and not those? That's the question this bill begs.
Be informed! Don't allow yourself to be snowed by CARA.
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