Congress' Year-End Grab Bag
In an all too usual year-end flurry of activity on Capitol Hill, Congress is preparing to fund the government for FY2012 while undermining environmental protections that protect public health, wildlife and water quality.
Congress needs to do a better job of running the government. David Iliff photo.
Congress is putting the final touches on a $1 trillion spending package that will fund the federal government for Fiscal Year 2012 that started on Oct. 1, 2011. It appears that a final agreement has been struck between the House, Senate and White House, avoiding a government shutdown.
The compromise bill contains 9 separate spending bills, along with dozens of legislative riders that affect everything from funding for abortions in the District of Columbia to managing air pollution from Alaskan off-shore drill rigs. The Bill passed in the House Dec. 16 and Senate passage is anticipated.
House Appropriations Ranking Democratic Congressman Norm Dicks (WA) has a good breakdown of what riders are currently included in the Bill and how they differ from those originally proposed by House Republicans.
For Idaho, the bill prohibits the Forest Service from implementing their recent decision to protect bighorn sheep in Hells Canyon and the Salmon River. Researchers have confirmed that when domestic sheep interact with native bighorns, that the bighorn die from a form of pneumonia. In response to concerns raised by ICL, The Wilderness Society, the Nez Perce Tribe, Wild Sheep Foundation and others, the Payette National Forest restricted sheep grazing in the most critical bighorn habitat. The rider, inserted at the behest of a total of four (I repeat four) well-connected sheep ranchers, would overturn this decision and could lead to the loss of bighorn sheep from Idaho.
The bill also undermines the government's ability to manage greenhouse gases, would walk away from commitments to bring light bulbs into the 21st century, would reverse a recent court decision on runoff from logging roads, and would change the way that grazing and timber sale administrative appeals are handled by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.
Bottom Line: Congress needs to bring transparency to the development of annual spending bills and stop undermining environmental and public health protections through closed-door, backroom deals.
