Defense bill hits snag over land swaps, wilderness

Quick passage of a sweeping defense policy bill hit a snag on Wednesday over public lands, dividing Senate Republicans. The $585 billion measure authorizing funds for the military includes several unrelated bills to expand wilderness areas in the West and expand the program streamlining oil and gas permits, a popular step with western state lawmakers. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., objected to their inclusion and promised to block any attempt to quickly finish the bill next week in the final days of the lame-duck session. "A bill that defines the needs of our nation's defense is hardly the proper place to trample on private property rights," Coburn wrote in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "Nor is it the place to restrict access to hunting, fishing and other recreational opportunities on massive swaths of taxpayer-supported lands."...more

Boy, are we gonna miss Senator Coburn of Oklahoma, who is retiring.  Instead we are stuck with R's like Senator Murkowski who somehow believes restricting people's access to federal lands (Wilderness) creates jobs:

In a closed-door GOP lunch, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski argued that the wilderness expansion and other changes create jobs...

Is she thinking that Wilderness will create more federal jobs?  How does not managing the lands require more employees than managing it?  Besides, Section 2(b) of the Wilderness Act states:

No appropriation shall be available for the payment of expenses or salaries for the administration of the National Wilderness Preservation System as a separate unit nor shall any appropriations be available for additional personnel stated as being required solely for the purpose of managing or administering areas solely because they are included within the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Perhaps we have a new statesman in Senator Cruz of Texas:

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, joined Coburn in criticizing the legislation, complaining about the designation of 250,000 acres of new wilderness, in addition to 15 new national park units or expansions and three new wild and scenic river designations.  "With the military's shrinking budget, it is offensive that this bill would be used to fund congressional pork. And, at a time where jobs are scarce and the federal government has removed billions of acres of land from productive use, Congress should not be restricting more than a half-million new acres," Cruz said in a statement.

Notice that both Senators who are proceeding as statesmen on this issue are from non-federal lands states. 

R.J. Smith with the National Center for Public Policy Research hits the issue hard: 

The leaders of both parties have cut a dark-of-night deal to slip a public lands lock-up package into the murky depths of the nearly 2,000 page National Defense Authorization Act. The federal lands package will take still more of the so-called public lands -- lands supposedly owned by all the people and available for multiple use -- and lock them up for the benefit of elite minorities and pressure groups in mainly limited-use or non-use categories, preventing their use by or benefit to the vast majority of the American people. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land all across the West will be permanently locked up. Still more un-inventoried land will be locked up as Wilderness Areas, set aside and left completely unmanaged to serve as source of forest disease, insect infestation, degradation, death and catastrophic wildfires. America already has over 107 MILLION acres of its lands permanently locked up as Wilderness, which is an area larger than the state of California plus Massachusetts. There is hardly a pressing need for any additional Wilderness.  

And nobody sums it up better than our own Caren Cowan:

"This is a continuation of the governance by blackmail," Cowan said. "The national defense authorization is vital to our nation and those who serve in the military. It should not be used as a bargaining chip for land grabs. Working on land packages in this manner is a disservice to the land and the people who enjoy it."