Posted on 07/13/2011 12:46:33 PM PDT by sinanju
Back in power, House Republicans may have poisoned the well with their austere spending strategy, including the fiscal 2012 interior and environment spending bill that is on track for approval Tuesday in the Appropriations Committee.
Under the legislation, the Interior Department’s overall budget would fall $720 million from fiscal 2011. A popular land and water conservation fund would see a more than 80 percent cut to $62 million, while funding for the North American Wetlands Conservation Act would get a 47 percent reduction to $20 million. State Wildlife Grants would also be cut 64 percent to $22 million.
Wildlife-themed riders are also sprinkled throughout the bill, including language that allows chemical companies and large agriculture operators to skirt pesticide permit requirements and enforcement of certain mountaintop mining rules. Conservation groups are complaining the language will dirty rivers and streams they use for recreation.
Other riders include a prohibition on judicial review of Interior’s decision to delist wolves in Wyoming and the Great Lakes region from the Endangered Species Act, as well as a zeroing out of funding for the Fish and Wildlife Service to list new species and designate critical habitat under the law.
“In the past, conservation has been a bipartisan issue. Democrats and Republicans have always agreed about hunting and fishing,” said Whit Fosburgh, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, one of four conservation groups that took issue with a GOP-sponsored rider that blocks the Environmental Protection Agency from updating Clean Water Act policies dealing with fish and wildlife habitat.
“I think you’re seeing a divide that’s starting to open up that hasn’t always existed in the past and we hope won’t exist for very long,” Fosburgh added.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Most of those groups are just fronts to try and sway voter opinion....”Seee...I’m just like you! We are all on the same side!” To those fake groups and their leaders I say Not hardly you limp-wristed jackwagons. Just another ploy by the leftists out there to try and camo themselves to be anything but what they actually are and get the terminally stupid to go along with them, which usually means congress.
Sometime back I talked with the postmaster of my hamlet about the constant call for more money from the USPS. He said part of the problem was that in many areas where there are redundant distribution centers, the locals and their congressman set up a howl of protest when a consolidation of these areas is proposed. This appears to be a good example..
Ah, but libruls have always stood forsquare for Americans to have the right to own Elmer Fudd shotguns and hunt ducks.
Well, that's all you really need to know, isn't it.
Teddy R., the original environmentalist RINO (and I never use that term lightly).
They sure have. /s
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