Trump plan to strip public land conservation fund gets bipartisan pushback
Source: The Hill
Republicans and Democrats pushed back against the Department of the Interior Tuesday, trying to secure funding for popular land conservation program cut under President Trump’s budget.
The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) helps state and local governments secure land for parks and wilderness areas. But the Trump budget gives no money to the fund to acquire new land, instead boosting funds to deal with maintenance backlogs at parks across the country.
“Unfortunately, although the LWCF is now permanently authorized, the program does not have any certainty of funding, as evidenced by the President’s budget proposal, which essentially zeroed out LWCF appropriations,” ranking Democrat Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources hearing on a bipartisan bill he sponsored that would permanently fund the LWCF program. “Permanent funding is the next step Congress must take.”
People in shirts that read “Save LWCF” have been a regular in the last few months at hearings that deal with public lands and other environmental issues. A House committee advanced a bill last week that would similarly fund the program. The LWCF program secured permanent authorization earlier this year in a previous lands package, and the latest legislation to fully fund the program at $900 million a year has bipartisan support. That funding comes from existing development on public lands.
Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/450237-trump-plan-to-strip-public-land-conservation-fund-gets-bipartisan
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