National Monuments: Republicans push bill through House to curb president's authority to name sites

The Oregonian
By Jeff Mapes
March 26, 2014

U.S. House Republicans, taking another shot at federal wilderness designations, pushed a bill through the House Wednesday that would curtail a president's authority to authorize national monuments.

The measure passed on a nearly party-line vote of 222-201 and faces little chance of becoming law, given the Democratic majority in the Senate and President Barack Obama's veto pen.

But it gives Republicans a chance to sound a warning shot that they won't look kindly on another series of monument designations similar to those put in place by the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

In the heat of his 1996 re-election race, Clinton created the 1.9 million Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah over the objections of that state's congressional delegation.

Clinton also sparked controversy with a string of monument designations near the end of his presidency, including the 53,000-acre Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southern Oregon.

Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, has been encouraging Obama to look at additional monument designations under his executive authority since it looks as if Congress isn't willing to pass any more wilderness proposals.

On Wednesday, DeFazio charged that the House-passed bill "is simply pandering to the ideologues that disagree with the majority of Americans who want to protect our public lands for future generations."

Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., a co-sponsor of the bill, countered:

“Land-use decisions should be made in the sunshine with full input from affected citizens like farmers and ranchers. The President shouldn’t be able to lock up thousands of acres of federal land to all productive uses with just the stroke of his pen and no say from the American people."

According to The Hill, the bill would require designations to go through a full environmental review process and it would limit presidential designations to one per state during each four-year term.