-Caveat Lector-
October 25, 1999
A 'sneak attack' on property rights?
Clinton holds money bills 'hostage' to land grab
By Sarah Foster
� 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
The White House is conducting a behind-the-scenes operation to
force congressional approval of President Clinton's demand for a
$1 billion per year land-acquisition trust fund, WorldNetDaily
has learned.
With support from allies on Capitol Hill, representatives from
the administration over the past few days have been quietly
visiting all Democratic and select Republican members of Congress
in an all-out effort to get Clinton's Lands Legacy 2000 inserted
in a new Omnibus Appropriations bill, according to Chuck Cushman,
executive director of the American Land Rights Alliance in
Battleground, Wash.
Cushman, who has spearheaded a grass-roots campaign against the
Clinton's Lands Legacy Initiative and several related bills,
decries the White House move as a "sneak attack."
"Clinton wants his Lands Legacy Initiative, which would create an
off-budget, dedicated billion dollar a year trust fund for land
acquisition," Cushman explained in a phone interview. "That way
the federal land agencies won't have to go and ask Congress for
money every year. There will be no congressional oversight, so
agencies like the Forest Service won't have to justify how they
spend the money -- it will just come to them.
"What a way to run a government," he added sardonically.
Cushman fears that this spells real danger to property rights,
especially in farming and other rural areas.
"This will make millions of dollars available on a consistent
basis, dollars that the federal bureaucracy can depend on to go
and buy up rural America," he said. "If the people don't sell
willingly, their lands and homes could be condemned through
eminent domain. This is nothing less than an all out attack on
rural America and ranks right up there with the Endangered
Species Act in terms of harming private land owners and
communities in this country."
The reference was to the 1973 legislation which extended federal
protectionism over thousands of species, including insects and
microscopic shrimp and bacteria, stopping construction and wiping
out industries, farms, and homes in the process.
"To get what he wants the president is basically holding several
appropriations bills hostage, using the threat of veto," Cushman
continued. "The Interior (Department) appropriations bill has
been passed without giving him what he wanted, and he is expected
to veto it. But there are several other appropriations bills
pending, and Clinton is trying to get these packaged together as
an omnibus bill, with Lands Legacy 2000 added as a rider."
Specifically, Clinton requested $797 million for the Interior and
related agencies, including $413 million for federal land
acquisitions and roughly $200 million in new grants programs. The
conference committee agreement provides $335 million for the
programs that comprise the Lands Legacy Initiative -- with $255
million of that to go for federal land acquisitions in the
Everglades, the California Desert, Baca Ranch in New Mexico and
Civil War battlefields.
That's far short of what Clinton requested.
"This is a big deal," Cushman said. "There were meetings Thursday
in which key senators on the Appropriations Committee admitted
they would have a hard time stopping this. What I'm telling you
is not speculation. I've talked to staff people who sat between
two key senators as they discussed this issue -- I don't want to
name the names, but I can assure you that what I am telling you
is absolute gospel truth."
WorldNetDaily was able to confirm the report independently.
Clinton announced the Lands Legacy Initiative in January, calling
on Congress to appropriate $1 billion for land acquisition. This
was touted as "the largest one-year investment ever in the
protection of America's land resources." At the same time Clinton
explained that although the initiative represented a budget
request for FY 2000, he was "committed to work with Congress to
create a permanent funding stream beginning in FY 2001."
The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) -- which is financed
by offshore oil, gas and mineral leases and royalties -- was
identified as the stream. Part of the LWCF money would flow
automatically to the four major federal land agencies: the U.S.
Forest Service, Department of Land Management, National Park
Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to increase their
holdings. LWCF money would also be made available to states and
local governments for buying land for greenbelts, parks, wetlands
and wildlife habitat and urban parks. A cool billion dollars a
year just for real estate.
As Cushman indicated, there would be no oversight by Congress, no
need for the agencies to go to the legislature each year for a
share from the budget.
"It would be a permanent automatic entitlement," said Cushman.
The National Parks and Conservation Association (NPCA) -- which
has long promoted the idea of an off-budget source of money for
park and wildlife refuge purchases -- hailed this as a
"precedent-setting initiative."
"Under the current system, parks and other public lands have to
fight for scraps from the federal budget every year," NPCA
President Thomas C. Kiernan complained.
The idea of a trust fund based on LWCF moneys is not limited to
the administration. It is incorporated in one of the more
controversial sections of the Conservation and Reinvestment Act
of 1999 -- called CARA -- which Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska,
introduced in February as HR 701: with Reps. John Dinell,
D-Mich., and Billy Tauzin, R-La. On the Senate side, Sens. Mary
Landrieu, D-La., and Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, co-authored S
25,: which has the same title and fairly similar content to HR
701.
HR 701 and S 25 are regarded as essentially Republican versions
of the president's Lands Legacy Initiative, designed to make the
White House proposal palatable to Americans outside the Beltway,
particularly those in rural communities.
Both bills have run into a firestorm of public opposition, and
Rep. Young and Sen. Murkowski -- who head the committees where
the bills are to be heard -- have been unable to muster enough
Republican votes to get either bill out of committee.
With HR 701 and S 25 stalled and the Senate Appropriations
Committee and both houses of Congress rejecting his plans for a
federal land-buying program, the president has gone on the
offensive.
Though the visits and negotiations underway with members of
Congress are conducted clandestinely, Clinton has made no secret
of his willingness to use his veto power unless he gets his way.
At the Oct. 13 photo-op session at Washington-Jefferson National
Forest, Va. -- where he directed the secretary of agriculture to
devise a plan for extending environmental protectionism over 40
million acres of national forest land -- Clinton took advantage
of the occasion to send a message to Congress, scolding lawmakers
for rejecting his proposal and warning of his intentions.
"This initiative represents the largest investment in protecting
our green and open spaces since President Theodore Roosevelt set
our nation on this path nearly a century ago," Clinton boasted in
his remarks. "Unfortunately, this Congress seems intent on
walking away from this opportunity. They're trying to slash Lands
Legacy funding by a full two-thirds this year alone, with no
action at all to ensure permanent funding in the years ahead.
"So, as Congress completes its work on the Interior
(appropriations) bill, again I ask the leadership to send me a
clean bill that adequately funds the Lands Legacy Initiative and
other priorities. But let me be clear, if the Interior bill lands
on my desk looking like it does now, I will give it a good
environmental response -- I will send it back to the recycling
bin."
The attendees rewarded the president with laughter and applause.
Despite pressure from the White House, the Senate Appropriations
Committee and the conference committee gave final approval to a
much-shortened list of appropriations for the Lands Legacy.
Clinton is expected to make good his threat.
On the other hand, he is pushing for the omnibus appropriations
bill that could serve as the vehicle to slip the Lands Legacy
through.
"They're talking about putting the trust fund into the Commerce
Appropriations bill because Commerce has the National Marine
Fisheries Service," said Cushman. "That would move it out of
Interior and out of the hands of (Sen. Frank) Murkowski and (Rep.
Don) Young, so there would be even less oversight."
Cushman is concerned that Congress will not be able to hold their
own against the blitz of White House visitors.
"There's a very real doubt about whether our Republican friends
in Congress have the will to stand up to Clinton on this," he
said.
"This Congress in the next few days will have a chance to show to
the American people whether it's a doormat for Bill Clinton or
not. If they let Clinton get away with this, there is just a huge
number of people out there that will say, 'What's the point? We
work to send these guys to Washington, we work to have a
Republican Congress, and they don't have the chutzpah to do
anything more than be a doormat for Clinton -- amazing.
"The danger is that in the negotiations you get key members of
Congress, the leadership and the traditional people -- like Young
and Murkowski -- are out of the loop in this. It's the chairmen
of the Appropriations Committees, like Sen. Ted Stevens
(R-Alaska); it's the leadership in both houses. In the Senate the
majority leader is Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who is a cosponsor of S
25."
Cushman recalled that in 1995 Lott derailed the popular "Property
Rights Act," which had passed the House "overwhelmingly" and
contained "all kinds of good provisions. For instance, on the
matter of endangered species, the bill provided that if federal
regulations took more than 20 percent of the value of the
property, the federal government would have to pay for land that
they presently regulate so you can't use it -- in effect,
stealing it for free."
"We don't know if Senate would have passed it (the bill),"
Cushman admitted. "We think they would have -- but Lott wouldn't
allow it to come to a vote. That gives some sort of indication as
to where he's leaning."
Cushman regards the next few days as a "seminal moment in time."
"This week could turn out to be remembered as one of the biggest
decision-making weeks in the history of land use in America," he
said. "I'm not exaggerating. We can defeat this; it depends on
how people respond. Will they contact Congress and apply their
pressure, or sit back, do nothing and let Clinton have his way?"
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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