PUBLIC LANDS: LWCF champions look to revive mandatory funding push

Todd Ockert

Moderator
Kellie Lunney, E&E News reporter

E&E: Wednesday, January 22, 2020

An eleventh-hour, ultimately unsuccessful ploy to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund during spending negotiations in late December could resurface this year, according to sources on and off Capitol Hill.

During final talks on the fiscal 2020 spending package late last month, Senate Democrats proposed an alternative to West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's legislation, S. 1081, to provide mandatory funding for LWCF that would essentially achieve the same objective, said congressional aides.

According to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Republicans rejected the idea. "Democrats fought to include funding for LWCF in the end of year appropriations package," the New York Democrat said in a statement to E&E News. "Unfortunately, we could not get the Republicans to agree to fully fund LWCF once and for all."

Aides for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) did not respond to questions about the matter.

Collin O'Mara, president of the National Wildlife Federation, earlier this month also confirmed the suggestion was on the table during end-of-year spending discussions with the four top leaders: Schumer, McConnell, McCarthy and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

"While we're grateful to Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi for raising LWCF during the final negotiations and are encouraged that so many members from both parties support the program, we are incredibly disappointed that LWCF failed to make it into the final package," O'Mara told E&E News.

Conservation groups in particular have put consistent pressure on lawmakers to finish the fight on LWCF and secure permanent funding (Greenwire, Dec. 16, 2019).

Congress last year approved permanent reauthorization of the program, but the funding issue remains tricky, despite LWCF's popularity with Democrats and Republicans.

The end-of-year leadership talks focused on securing full funding for the conservation program starting in fiscal 2021.

It would have ensured that the $900 million in offshore oil and gas drilling receipts deposited annually into LWCF by law remain in that pot and not be tapped to pay for non-LWCF items, as has happened in the past.

Since the program's creation in 1965, Congress very rarely has appropriated the annual authorized amount of $900 million; typically LWCF is funded at about half that level.

For fiscal 2020, House and Senate appropriators eventually settled on $495 million — the highest funding level for the program since 2004.

Harbor fund model
The model for the Democrats' LWCF proposal was a separate legislative effort designed to fix the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund.

That fund, created in 1986, operates in a similar fashion to LWCF: Revenue is collected from shippers and deposited in a fund that is supposed to be used for the operation and maintenance of the country's harbors.

Like LWCF, however, the fees collected have far outpaced annual congressional appropriations, making the program an attractive piggy bank for unrelated activities.

The House in October 2019 passed bipartisan legislation, H.R. 2440, shepherded by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), which is currently pending in the Senate.

The "Full Utilization of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund Act" would make it easier for Congress to spend the money that comes into the fund. It would adjust current budget cap restrictions created by the sequester, essentially unlocking funds that have accrued.

In other words, the money that comes in is the money that has to go out. Under the LWCF proposal, that concept would have applied beginning in fiscal 2021, meaning the current $22 billion balance in LWCF amassed over decades would not have been part of the spending equation going forward, according to a congressional aide familiar with the particulars of the discussion.

'A lot of rumors going on'
The funding rationale embedded in H.R. 2440 resulted in the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimating the legislation would have no impact on spending or the deficit over the next decade.

The hope was to use the same mechanism for LWCF to avoid a CBO score that would increase spending, which is the case under current bicameral legislation to make funding for the program mandatory.

But the LWCF proposal didn't gain enough traction to make it into the final spending package despite Democrats' push, aides said.

"I think there were a lot of rumors going on around LWCF," Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski said in December about the last-ditch effort. "I think what they saw is that we did pretty well by the LWCF account."

The Alaska Republican said if the Democrats' idea was "a serious part of the negotiation, I think we would have known about it."

O'Mara is optimistic LWCF supporters will achieve full and permanent funding sooner rather than later, in part because he views it as part of an overall legislative effort to score other wins on conservation.

That endeavor could include pushing through the parks maintenance backlog legislation as well as a bill that would make $1.4 billion available to states and others to help restore and recover vulnerable wildlife (E&E News PM, Dec. 5, 2019).

All of those efforts are bipartisan, O'Mara noted, and have the support of several rank-and-file members. The focus now is on leadership to schedule floor time for votes, he said.
 

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