Guest Commentary
Shootout Over Idaho Wilderness
By Contributing Writer, Unfiltered 12-10-06
by Tom von Alten
Larry Craig's opposition to the Wilderness bills from the other members of Idaho's Congressional delegation isn't a secret any more. The Idaho Statesman's editorial board revealed on Dec. 1st, describing his "conditional" support: all the money promised in the bills has to be paid up front to satisfy our senior singing Senator. The board admits "a certain logic" to the requirement and it even sounds like a sensible test for any piece of legislation, until you consider how often it isn't done.
Former Governor Dirk Kempthorne's big highway maneuver using GARVEE bonds to put payment far into the future (and, as always, on the Fed's tax bill, to insulate us from immediate pain). The mmm, Iraq war. ("We have no idea what this is going to cost. Couldn't even make a guess.") The profound, structural, and far-reaching tax cuts that the Republicans used to bribe their way through the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections. And so on.
The board writes that Craig "doesn't want one group to get what it wants—new wilderness—while other parties wait for the check to come in the mail." Excepting of course that no law makes "new wilderness"; the law designates protection for what's already there. (The proposed laws do a lot more than that in their particulars, some of which provide for removing protection elsewhere, which would no doubt proceed without waiting for funding also.)
The biggest problem here is the timing. Craig, after 26 years in Congress, is keenly aware that timing is crucial in politics. Here, it almost appears that he waited until the worst possible moment to introduce a potential deal-breaker.
Almost?!
Some of us expected Craig to do something like this all along. Last-minute deal-breaker. We'd call it "passive hostility," but it isn't passive; it's active, calculating, premeditated. The fact that his unwillingness to compromise in favor of Idaho Wilderness plays into the hands of opposition on the left, thinking they might be able to get a better deal from a Democrat-controlled Congress would be sweet irony were it not for the fact that Idaho's delegation (particularly in the Senate) has all manner of tools to obstruct action they don't like.
Representative Mike Simpson was gung-ho to get his bill in under the wire, ready to "attach his Boulder-White Clouds wilderness bill to any legislation that moved before Congress adjourns, as soon as (yesterday)" according to the sidebar for his counterpoint to Craig's "Reader's Opinion". (Not just any old "yesterday": the sidebar was Thursday, it said "Friday," now come and gone.)
Craig tries to explain himself in the December 7 Statesman, claiming he told Simpson and Crapo, "I would not do anything to get in the way, and stood by, ready to help if they needed me." Simpson says he's ready now, thank you, demolishes Craig's one substantive argument about the Steens Mountain legislation in Oregon's high desert.
Oh wait, the problem is how late we are in the session, and the fact that so many appropriations bills for the fiscal year that started more than two months ago haven't passed yet, and are about to be punted from the 109th to the 110th Congress with a Continuing Resolution. Those would be the appropriations bills coming out of... which committee that Larry Craig sits on?
I guess they were all too busy with Ted Stevens' $315 million bridge to nowhere and the supplemental appropriations process to keep the enormity of the war in Iraq from confronting the public all at once. We're now running about $8 billion a month in Iraq; enough to pay for the likes of CIEDRA and the Owyhee Initiative well before lunch.
Saturday, our other Senator, Mike Crapo weighs in, insisting it's a tempest in a teapot. Idaho Republicans are one, big, happy family after all, and Craig went out of his way to hold the first hearing on the two bills "within weeks" of their introduction in August. Awfully generous of someone whose legislation is getting skewered by a supposed member of his own team; we take it as an acknowledgement of Craig's power and that the obstruction is fait accompli.
That leaves the wilderness bills dead with Larry Craig's knives in their backs, and only Butch Otter yet to post a Reader's Opinion from an Idaho seat in Congress. As Representative, Otter played out his own passive hostility to the bills. As governor-elect? He could help, but I'm guessing he'll be too busy with other matters to act one way or the other.
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Comments
this from Nick Rahall, incoming house resources chair, on CIEDRA:
"I believe we should not seek the lowest common denominator when it comes to wilderness and saddle a wilderness designation with exceptions, exclusions and exemptions...in my view the focus of this bill is placed on development, with public land giveaway, monetary favors and special provisions for a select few." Rep. Nick Rahall, (D-W.VA)
I hope the proposals come back and get a little scrutiny from Mr. Rahall, Miller and the other Dems. They'll make some adjustments, and then we'll see what the Idaho Congressional Delegation will swallow.
I know a bit about how the Owyhee Initiative came about, and dismissing it as "bad rubbish" doesn't add anything to the debate, I'm afraid. Nor does it get us closer to more Wilderness. A slim Democratic majority is not going to scrub the work that's been and start over.
I'm not as sanguine about CIEDRA; still applauding Craig's cheap trick and slap in the face to his colleague doesn't get us closer to protecting the Boulder-White Clouds, either.
But we can debate the details of bills' failure to pass all we like. What's the point. Now that we're free of these bills and have two lame duck federal reps, perhaps conservationists might get back to working for wilderness. How about it?
FYI - I'm in the game, and I'll stay there 'till the last inning.
Tom - "bad rubbish" was too far, perhaps. But ira and the rest of you "go along to get along"ers - your Quid Pro Quo approach is flat wrong for wilderness, and it's gotta stop.
RIP CIEDRA
Regardless of how new the idea of trigger language is or isn't, the idea of putting a hold on a bill involving funding of a couple 10s of millions of dollars out of principle, or concern for the budgetary effects is absolutely ludicrous in the context of the 109th (and 108th and 107th) Congress.
Craig wanted to kill the bills and he did it. For those who wanted the bills killed, that's apparently a fine thing. I've said what I think about it, and I expect more illegitimate tactics from Craig, clothed in brow-furrowing, oleagenous arguments that slide down easy on C-Span.
I don't fault you for not being as educated as you should be about a bill of such ramifications. I get that you're a "citizen journalist," thus ought not, perhaps, be expected to be fully informed about every topic on which you write. The editors here, however, should be more careful to check who is doing the writing for them and whether they're accurate.
First, I think that had you watched the hearings or at least read the transcripts (you can find them online pretty easily), you'd realizes that Craig didn't kill the bill. Second, if you read yesterday's Idaho Statesman (also online), you'd know that Craig didn't kill the bill. Third, if you had followed the CIEDRA story, you'd know that one Senator couldn't kill this or any bill, really. Fourth, were you more astute about CIEDRA's past, you'd know that a very strong and successful effort was launched against the bill. The effort to take CIEDRA down was a grassroots one organized by Idahoans who felt that they weren't being represented in the compromised CIEDRA process. The bill was not going to get the votes it needed; I can guarantee you that it had no chance in the Senate. We had done too much work.
The good thing, as I said yesterday, is that for those interested in expanding Idaho's wilderness acreage, the door is now open to do so rather than slammed shut. Had CIEDRA passed, think how long it would be before we would have had a shot to create a wilderness bill. Realize too that we've lost no acreage in terms of how acres are treated as wilderness. Again, to cite Mike Simpson, CIEDRA actually reduced the number of acres in Idaho cared for as wilderness. You probably don't know he said that, though, because neither ICL nor TWS mentioned it. Rocky Barker and Dan Popkey also kept that to themselves.
I am glad to see the interest in wilderness creation, despite that some feel they've lost. They didn't, and their efforts to pass wilderness now that we can get back to that will be welcomed.
With the current political climate, these realities we must face. If a bill goes to the new Congress giving away land, it aint gonna pass. Celebrate that, won't you?
1) Give us the benefit of your experience and specific knowledge, Mary, and submit an article of your own.
2) My commentary--not an article--was posted on my blog, and a NW editor asked if it could be reposted here. I was glad to agree. I don't use the term "citizen journalist" to describe myself.
3) Your criticisms about CIEDRA are well taken. I opposed the bill myself. My commentary was not about CIEDRA, but rather Larry Craig's actions in its regard. You make strong claims about what Craig did, didn't, can and can't do. I concede you have more information than I do in this case, but I doubt you're correct that "one Senator couldn't kill this or any bill." If one of Idaho's senators actively opposes an Idaho Wilderness bill, I would argue that its chance of passage is nil. I would be happy to be proven wrong on a good Wilderness bill.
I also don't expect what a Senator does or doesn't do in a hearing to reflect what s/he does or doesn't do in toto. Hearings are political theater; they don't determine the fate of legislation.
4) It remains to be seen whether any party or group can fashion a bill that all sides will consider "good" (or even "good enough") to give Wilderness protection to any more of Idaho's wilderness. There is deeply committed body of environmental activists who I suspect will never be satisfied with a bill that could pass.
The pressure of increasing population and development is not going to abate, so the de facto protection of doing nothing is not permanent. So yes, I'll celebrate the delay (at least) of CIEDRA, even as I lament the delay (at least) of Owyhee Wilderness protection.