This is one rate increase I agree with. The Parks deserve better funding.
The increase will raise $70 million toward an $11 billion need. A drop in the bucket. If this were a business the manager would be required to show a comprehensive plan addressing the entire $11 billion need.
The truth is the park service is managing too many parks that receive little visitation and draw needed resources from the popular parks people visit in numbers. The last few presidents have designated hundreds of millions of acres of federal lands as new national parks and monuments without considering how the management and administration of these new parks will be funded, much less if the American people will visit them. Add to presidential proclamations a Congress that funds billions for foreign aid to third world countries, billions for corporate welfare such as Solyndra and Tesla, and funds countless military adventures in countries like NIger yet closes the purse strings when it comes to maintain the national parks where millions of middle income taxpayers vacation each year.
The Congress and the president should require the Secretary of the Interior a plan to meet the infrastructure needs of the parks even if funding requires selling off some of the parks or opening some of those infrequently visited to mining, grazing and logging. It is long past time for the perfumed desk jockeys in the Washington bureaucracy to be jerked out of fantasyland and into the real world where choices must be made.
Park funding was cut deeply under Clinton and it is to Dubya’s shame that the funding was not reinstated. Obama could not have cared less about the parks, and Trump needs a republican house and senate to get a budget passed, OOPs! Did insay that?
Haven’t seen if funding is increased in the Trump budget proposal. It is a shame there are fees for national parks, these are the people’s parks and should be showplaces of America for all citizens to enjoy.