LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS

by Greg Schildwachter WSF Lobbyist

The 118th Congress

In the U.S., the 118th Congress is underway. WSF is pursuing your interests in public lands, the Farm Bill, and grazing permit extensions.

The House Majority is now Republican by nine seats – it’s been this close only five other times in the last 100 years. This tight margin led right away to a marathon of votes to elect the Speaker of the House, which symbolized the new dynamic in the House.

Members withheld support for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (CA-R-20) to win changes to the rules of the House returning to open debate on bills on the floor. They also wanted rules that help control federal spending. They achieved several rule changes that other members wanted as well.

For us the bigger thing is “divided government”. That may sound like nothing new, but as a technical term it means the two chambers of Congress are controlled by opposing parties. An old saying is back in play, which is that the House proposes and the Senate disposes. Most of the bills passed by the House will have no chance in the Senate.

However, our agenda on Public Lands may benefit. The returning Chairman of the Senate committee, Sen. Joe Manchin (WV-D), and the new Chairman of the House committee, Rep. Bruce Westerman (AR-4-R), are more likely to reach agreement.

On these issues, the “unified” government of the last Congress –with Democratic Party majorities in both chambers – was unable to reach agreement. The House and Senate reversed their usual roles as the Senate proposed a slate of bills that the House disposed of.

The several bills we led and supported failed to reach the President’s desk.

The hang up was between access bills and land designations of wilderness and other special areas. The House wanted to move several of the land bills that the Senate would not agree to. The Senate moved access bills, including the FILM Act and the CAPE Act that we supported.

The FILM Act eliminates fees and permits for small film crews that we rely on to tell our stories of mountain conservation. The CAPE Act modifies the Qualified Volunteers Program that enables hunters to participate in population control actions on National Park Service units – allowing the possibility of bringing home meat, heads, and hides. Other helpful bills in the Senate would have simplified other permitting and access issues.

The several land designation bills we are working on, including the Malheur Community Empowerment for the Owyhee Act, may benefit too. Our contribution to wilderness bills like this is to push for management access that promotes wilderness by enabling water management, control of invasive plants, restoration after fires, and wildlife population management. These provisions are more welcome in divided government.

Another big deal in the new Congress is the Farm Bill.

The Farm Bill is a regular, five-year measure that reauthorizes the many agriculture programs that commit Federal funds without going through the annual appropriations bills. Many of these are conservation programs.

Although most of these programs work “down in the flat” on farms and ranches far from mountain habitats of wild sheep, the Farm Bill in recent years has reached further into public lands.

An entire title of the huge bill (the last one ran to 530 pages) is dedicated to forestry. Some provisions there apply both to National Forests and Bureau of Land Management lands. For example, during the debate in 2018, WSF engaged on a provision that might have settled the issue of alternative grazing allotments. It wasn’t enacted, so we may have another chance this time.

Either in the Farm Bill or separately, the new Congress may be open to fixing the grazing permit extensions issue we began working on last year. Recall that the difficulty of completing environmental review on grazing permits began bogging down the BLM and Forest Service many years ago. Starting in 1995, Congress began relaxing the requirement for these analyses until, in 2014, it amended the law to allow the agencies to renew permits with no analysis.

By itself, this issue is probably stuck. But as part of the permitting reform issue, it may have a chance.

Permitting reform was rejected in the last Congress but the idea lives on with some bipartisan support.

Democratic Party members and the White House administration have realized that ambitions for new energy projects in wind, solar, and the mines that supply them are suffering from the time and difficulty of permitting.

So, with grazing permits, which have no meaningful permitting process at this point, there’s a chance to make a new and better one.

Your Legislative Affairs Committee discusses these and many other issues every other Friday. Your participation is welcome. WS