The hollow victory of LWCF reauthorization

One of the touted environmental provisions in the recent Senate-passed Energy Bill is a permanent reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (“LWCF”). The inclusion of this provision has drawn significant condemnation from Rep. Rob Bishop and other House Republicans, who are the most opposed to protecting the environment from harmful resource extraction activities. Regardless of whether this provision makes it into any final energy bill, these extreme Republicans have already won.  The reauthorization of the LWCF is a nearly meaningless procedural victory in comparison to the significant number of negative, substantive policy concessions that Sen. Murkowski and her industry-aligned allies have secured that will harm the environment and exacerbate the climate crisis.

Here are some inconvenient truths that explain why a permanent reauthorization of the LWCF is such a hollow “victory” compared to what was traded away:

{mosads}First, and perhaps most importantly, Congress can continue to fund acquisition of important conservation lands using LWCF dollars for decades to come without reauthorization of the LWCF Act.  According to the Congressional Research Service, as of 2014, the LWCF has an un-appropriated balance of $19.4 billion that can be used for land acquisition activities. If Congress continued to appropriate funding out of the existing surplus at last year’s above-average rate of $450 million, there would be enough money to fund land acquisition for the next 44 years. Even if Congress were to fully appropriate LWCF land acquisition activities at the $900 million level, we would still have enough surplus funds in the account for the next two decades.

Second, permanent reauthorization doesn’t guarantee any specific level of spending on LWCF activities. If LWCF is reauthorized, spending on land acquisition could still be zeroed out by Congress in future years — the collected revenues would just sit untapped in the fund.  Conversely, if the LWCF is not reauthorized, Congress can still fully appropriate land acquisition at $900 million/year level using the existing surplus. The reality is that the far-right of the Republican Congress has very skillfully shifted the debate away from how much we fund LWCF land acquisition to whether or not we reauthorize the law. Unless the debate shifts back to funding these important conservation activities, the anti-environment crowd has already won this debate.

Third, this situation is neither new nor unique to the LWCF. According to the Congressional Budget Office, more than 260 major laws have had their authorizations expire. These important laws cover over half of the federal government’s non-Defense discretionary spending. In fact, Congress allocated $294 billion in 2015 to programs and agencies that have expired authorizations, including the entire the National Institutes of Health and NASA. The negotiating terms for the energy bill controlled by the Republican far-right masterfully allowed reauthorization to trump the more important issue of actually appropriating funds to purchase critically needed land for conservation.

The 800-page Senate energy bill possesses some real damaging amendments, including a biomass provision that tries to override established climate science, undermines the president’s Clean Power Plan, and threatens to turn America’s forests into energy farms, as well as a liquefied natural gas export promotion provision that will increase the devastating practice of “fracking” throughout the United States, including on our public lands where the practice still astonishingly occurs.

LWCF reauthorization in the Senate Energy Bill is a distraction from the urgent special interest threats contained therein. The failure to address the more harmful provisions will result in a hollow victory for U.S. lands, water, and wildlife.

Brett Hartl is the endangered species policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity.  William Snape is the Director of Adjunct Faculty Development and Fellow in Environmental Law at the Washington College of Law at American University.