July 18, 2003
Washington, DC – With the House of Representatives working late into the night, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) early this morning voted against the Interior Appropriations Act, calling it “badly underfunded.” The bill represents President Bush’s broken promise to eliminate the maintenance backlog at the National Parks and fails to provide even a modest programmatic increase for the National Endowment for the Arts, which is funded under this appropriations package.
Lee supported Democratic amendments to the bill that would have safeguarded dwindling wilderness areas, including an amendment that would replace snowmobiles with snowcoaches in an increasingly-polluted Yellowstone Park and an amendment that would have prohibited the Bush Administration from undermining the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which would protect more than 58 million acres of our national forests.
A $569 million Democratic amendment for conversation-related funding, paid for by reducing the Bush tax cuts for the almost 200,000 American millionaires by $3000, was not admitted by the Republicans.
“Land and water conservation is a matter of preserving our national heritage,” said Lee. “What we lose today will be gone forever.”
“We are witnessing an unprecedented assault on our environment by Administration rollbacks that are decimating crucial and long-standing air, water, and land protections. This bill fails to protect our natural resources, which are already under attack. It cuts hundreds of millions from vital conservation programs. In another generation, our national parks, our wilderness, and our natural heritage will be gone if we continue down this road.”
“The decisions we make today will lay the course for the future. I vehemently oppose these efforts to further weaken our public lands system.”
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Congresswoman Barbara Lee Calls Interior Appropriations Bill “Badly Underfunded”
Democratic Amendments for Preservation of Public Lands are Defeated
Washington, DC – With the House of Representatives working late into the night, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) early this morning voted against the Interior Appropriations Act, calling it “badly underfunded.” The bill represents President Bush’s broken promise to eliminate the maintenance backlog at the National Parks and fails to provide even a modest programmatic increase for the National Endowment for the Arts, which is funded under this appropriations package.
Lee supported Democratic amendments to the bill that would have safeguarded dwindling wilderness areas, including an amendment that would replace snowmobiles with snowcoaches in an increasingly-polluted Yellowstone Park and an amendment that would have prohibited the Bush Administration from undermining the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which would protect more than 58 million acres of our national forests.
A $569 million Democratic amendment for conversation-related funding, paid for by reducing the Bush tax cuts for the almost 200,000 American millionaires by $3000, was not admitted by the Republicans.
“Land and water conservation is a matter of preserving our national heritage,” said Lee. “What we lose today will be gone forever.”
“We are witnessing an unprecedented assault on our environment by Administration rollbacks that are decimating crucial and long-standing air, water, and land protections. This bill fails to protect our natural resources, which are already under attack. It cuts hundreds of millions from vital conservation programs. In another generation, our national parks, our wilderness, and our natural heritage will be gone if we continue down this road.”
“The decisions we make today will lay the course for the future. I vehemently oppose these efforts to further weaken our public lands system.”
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