Senate Advances Major Conservation Bill in Procedural Vote

The Senate voted 79-18 on Wednesday to move forward on the Great American Outdoors Act, inching closer to passing what many consider to be the most significant conservation legislation in a generation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filed for cloture on the bill after Wednesday’s vote. A vote on final passage is expected early next week.

The bill would permanently fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund at its $900 million annual, authorized level. LWCF funds federal, state, and local conservation projects and land acquisition across the country.

The legislation also would create a five-year, $9.5 billion trust fund from unallocated energy revenues that would tackle the nearly $20 billion maintenance backlog in national parks and on public lands.

Supporters of the legislation, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), are keen on keeping the package “clean,” or without any divisive amendments that could threaten the bill’s survival.

As a final passage vote nears, conservation and sportsmen’s groups, including Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, are mobilizing their members to urge senators to support the measure with no amendments.

More than 850 groups and former Interior secretaries have gone on the record advocating for the legislation.

‘Heavy and Frustrated Heart’

But several senators, Democrats and Republicans, have filed amendments over the past several days.

Just before Wednesday’s vote, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), said on the floor he would vote for the legislation with “a heavy and frustrated heart” because the measure doesn’t do enough for coastal states.

And while the Great American Outdoors Act enjoys broad, bipartisan support on and off Capitol Hill, the package has detractors, too. Conservative senators and outside groups in particular have expressed concern over permanently funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund “massively favors inland and upland projects,” said Whitehouse. “It fails to meet the needs of coastal communities,” the Democrat said, adding that for every $1 that inland states receive from the LWCF, coastal states receive 40 cents.

The LWCF is funded by offshore oil and gas revenues.

The Rhode Island Democrat said that his “environmental friends” tell him he is right, but that if he helps them on securing mandatory funding for LWCF, they will help him with his goals for coastal states.

“And then they don’t,” said Whitehouse.

Whitehouse’s proposed amendment would dedicate revenue from offshore wind and renewable offshore development to coastal states to support resiliency and adaptation. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge our landlocked colleagues their funding, but I do begrudge them the opportunity to add something” for coastal states, he said.

Louisiana Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, as well as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), have made similar arguments.

The senators filed amendments that would increase the amount of revenue that Gulf Coast states, which generate billions each year in oil and gas earnings, receive under existing federal law. Under the proposed language, which would remove the existing cap on how much those states receive for offshore energy production, the additional funds would go toward coastal resiliency and restoration.

The amendments won’t make it into H.R. 1957, the legislative vehicle for the Great American Outdoors Act (S. 3422). But they’ll emerge elsewhere.

Other Concerns

A coalition of conservative groups led by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the American Energy Alliance sent a letter to senators earlier this week urging them to “vote for amendments that will improve some of the bill’s more objectionable provisions.”

The groups did not take a position on the portion of the bill addressing the parks maintenance backlog. But the group said the LWCF title would bypass the regular appropriations process and add to the federal government’s already vast real estate portfolio.

The letter recommended that senators do what they can to “soften some of the worst impacts of this unfortunate legislation” by incorporating provisions including language that would “sunset” the LWCF title in five years and make any future federal land acquisition “contingent upon approval by the relevant state and local governments.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) Tuesday night on the floor outlined his long-standing opposition to more federal land acquisition under LWCF.

“Despite its rosy claims, this legislation combines two bills that will only tighten the federal stranglehold on our lands and drive us deeper into debt, to the detriment of our economy, our environment, and the livelihoods and the freedom of the American people,” Lee said.

But the Republican also blasted the legislative process for stifling amendment debate.

“There is no perfect bill, but we can still make legislation a lot less bad,” he said. “We can make it better. We bring about actual consensus. Consensus is not found by ramming something through without an opportunity for amendment, debate, or discussion. This is wrong. It has gone on for far too long. I have seen it under the leadership of Democrats and Republicans alike in this chamber, and it has to end.”