09.29.15

Rep. Grijalva Highlights Republican Majority’s Misstatements on Land and Water Conservation Fund Ahead of Tomorrow’s Expiration

Washington, D.C. – Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva released the following statement today ahead of Wednesday’s expected expiration of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), one of the nation’s most successful public land conservation programs. The program’s funding authorization will expire on Wednesday and the Fund will stop collecting the royalties it currently receives from oil drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf.

“You can see just how extreme some House Republicans really are when a popular conservation program with a spotless, fifty-year history of bipartisan reauthorization expires thanks to their partisan games. They can’t pass a highway bill, they can’t fund the government, they’re still struggling with a defense bill, and now they insist that LWCF funding has to stop. At this point I’m not surprised Speaker Boehner decided to step down.

“As an accounting matter, everything that’s authorized for LWCF but not spent on the program each year becomes an IOU that sits in the Fund. Because Congress doesn’t appropriate close to what the Fund is authorized to receive each year, it’s accrued about $20 billion in IOUs. With the program’s expiration, I fear the Republican majority will feel less pressure than ever to appropriate a dime of that money to LWCF. With the program expiring, the Outer Continental Shelf royalty will go into the general treasury fund and the majority will ignore LWCF even more than it already has.

“Many of my Republican colleagues have a lot to say about the good old days. Well, back in the good old days, Republicans supported programs like LWCF. Today their leaders seem to find parks, public lands and local baseball fields politically unacceptable. This is not about saving taxpayer money, since LWCF accepts none. This is about an ongoing ideological war on public lands conservation. Letting the Fund expire will be a lasting black mark on the leadership of this Congress.”

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