The Big Bad Budget Bill—rammed through the U.S. House May 22 on a vote of 215-214—contains a number of devastating provisions directly threatening Wilderness and other public lands.
The budget bill now moves to the U.S. Senate, where Republicans have set a self-imposed July 4 deadline for approving their party-line budget reconciliation package.
Time is of the essence, so please call both your senators at 202-224-3121 and tell them to vote NO! While the House-passed budget bill was stripped of a provision to sell off more than 450,000 acres of our federal public lands, on June 11 Republicans on the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources released new text mandating the sale of a whopping 3.29 million acres of public land in all western states, except Montana.
Senate Republicans also added a provision that would approve a key right-of-way for construction of the Ambler Mining Road, a 211-mile road building project through the Gates of the Arctic National Preserve. The road would facilitate huge mining operations that would benefit a private Canadian company and would create road access into one of the wildest regions in Alaska.
The budget bill passed by the House, and pending in the Senate, also include provisions that would force oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Western Arctic—some of the wildest, most-intact ecosystems left on Earth.
In a bit of good news, on June 10, Minnesota Senator Tina Smith successfully stripped a provision from the budget bill that would have given public lands to a foreign mining corporation and allowed toxic copper sulfide mining at the doorstep of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. It still has to be accepted by the House, but this positive step shows that our calls and actions matter! The budget process will be fast-moving and fluid in the next few days—and it’s very likely that members of Congress will introduce amendments to add or remove various provisions from the budget bill—but the most important thing for you to do is call your senators and tell them to take a stand! So please, call your senators today at 202-224-3121 and urge them to vote NO on any budget bill that includes provisions undermining Wilderness and public lands protections.
Here’s a call script to use:
"As your constituent, I'm calling to urge Senator [Last Name] to vote NO on any budget bill that contains provisions threatening Wilderness and public lands. Specifically, I urge Senator [Last Name] to oppose provisions that would force oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Western Arctic, would sell off any federal public lands, would mine next to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and would construct the Ambler Mining Road through the Gates of the Arctic National Preserve. Thank you.” |
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