House Republicans hope to use the appropriations process to revive efforts to overhaul the Endangered Species Act -- a longtime goal of GOP lawmakers from the West that has stalled in recent years.
The Appropriations Committee's draft fiscal 2012 spending bill includes language that would bar the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from using funds to list new species and habitats for protection under the law.
Mike Simpson, chairman of the Interior-Environment Appropriations subcommittee, said he included the policy rider to draw attention to the fact that Congress has not reauthorized programs under the law (PL 93-205) since it expired in 1992.
"What we're trying to do is put pressure on all parties that have an interest in this to come to the table and sit down" to work on a reauthorization of the act, the Idaho Republican said during a subcommittee markup of the measure. The full committee is scheduled to mark up the bill Tuesday.
Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., whose panel has primary jurisdiction over the law, said he fully supports Simpson's language.
"It needs to be reauthorized, and all parties need to sit down and start talking about that," he said. "If this leads to that, I am very pleased."
Democrats said that argument does not ring true.
"There isn't an appropriations bill that passes that doesn't have funding for unauthorized programs in it," said James P. Moran of Virginia, the top Democrat on Simpson's panel. "Picking and choosing what you haven't funded because it wasn't authorized I think is a little disingenuous."
The gap since the last reauthorization of the law reflects the philosophical divide between the two parties over the Nixon-era statute, which gives the federal government broad powers to protect habitats for threatened species.
Republicans, especially from Western states, have long maintained that the law hands environmentalists too much power to challenge energy projects and other activities on public lands. "The fact is we spend far too much money in court instead of recovering species," Simpson said.
Additionally, conservatives complain that the restrictions authorized by the law threaten private property rights. But earlier efforts to overhaul the law have fallen short, even during the presidency of George W. Bush, when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress for several years.
The attempt by House Resources Chairman Richard W. Pombo, R-Calif., to rewrite the law earned him such enmity that environmentalists made his electoral defeat a priority in 2006. His challenger, Democrat Jerry McNerney, received an influx of support from national environmental groups that helped sweep him to victory. Comprehensive reauthorization proposals have not been introduced since.
Narrower Bills A handful of narrower bills related to the law already have been introduced in both chambers. Legislation (S 228) introduced in January by Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, would bar regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under numerous laws, including the species law.
A House bill (HR 1996) offered by Rep. Cynthia M. Lummis, also a Wyoming Republican, earlier this year aims to curtail plaintiffs attorneys' fees awarded under federal law, which supporters at the time said was necessary in part to curb rampant litigation brought under the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws.
That effort could receive a boost under report language unveiled Monday for the Interior-Environment spending bill. That language would require the Interior Department, the EPA and the Forest Service to compile for the Appropriations Committee the costs associated with Endangered Species Act litigation.
Norm Dicks, a Washington Democrat and the ranking member on the full Appropriations Committee, noted that Simpson's rider would allow the Interior Department to de-list or downgrade protection of species, but not to add new protections.
"It thus creates a one-way ratchet in which wildlife protection can only be weakened," Dicks said.
Bill Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the rider language may in part be in response to an administrative overhaul of the Endangered Species Act that the Interior Department unveiled in May. That plan, he said, takes steps to address longstanding criticism of the law.
But Snape said the language in the House spending bill would bar protection for roughly 250 species that federal biologists have identified as needing protection under the law.
"The only reason they haven't been listed is because of a lack of funds," Snape said. "These are species that are very imperiled and continue to decline, and that's just a value call about whether you really want to try to protect those species or whether you don't care, and I assert that the House Republicans by this action are indicating that they don't care."
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