UNSEAT THE RIDERS

As a gift to the timber industry, riders placed earlier this week on the omnibus appropriations bill about to be passed by Congress were lavish, extravagant even. As an example of legislative process, however, the decision to attach with minimal debate highly contentious amendments to a bill that must pass was bad policy and an important opportunity for Maine’s delegation to oppose these poor ideas.

The appropriations bill is the major legislation to keep government agencies funded this year. It is late and it combines several spending bills, giving it broad support and every reason for swift passage. The votes in the House and Senate, expected today and tomorrow but which could be rescheduled, allow for no further amending – members of Congress either support the whole package or send it back to conference. Even accepting some of the shaky policy choices within the budget itself, the riders made the package unacceptable.

Members of Congress know this and are trying to negotiate away the worst of them in the final hours before a vote. But some of the possibilities have included opening more areas in Alaska and national forests throughout the West to substantial new logging in exchange for clearing some brush. Another rider would block legal challenges to an expected Forest Service decision on whether to designate any of Tongass National Forest as wilderness areas, where virtually no development or logging would be allowed. A third would supply funding to start construction of a huge hydraulic pumping plant to decrease flooding in the Mississippi Delta that could destroy up to 200,000 acres of swamps and marshes.

These proposals and similar ones were attached to the $396 billion spending bill because if they came up on their own, they would have failed. They would have failed because they are harmful to the environment and there are more benign alternatives. These alternatives, mostly involving conservation, do not have the immediate enriching capacity of the riders and are not as popular with their sponsors or the lobbyists who help craft the rider legislation, so they are not considered.

This is business as usual in Washington, but what is unusual is the lack of time to debate the issues before a vote – a certain path to bad legislation. Even some House Republicans were embarrassed by the decision to add the anti-environmental measures. Eight Republican House members said the riders “would seriously undermine the legislative process to add new provisions behind closed doors and at the very last minute to a must-pass spending bill that is already four months late.” Maine Reps. Mike Michaud and Tom Allen share that sentiment. The Senate might face many of these same shortcomings, and, if it does, Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins should reject the package and urge Congress to return next week to finish its business properly before the latest continuing resolution ends Feb. 20.

Even members of Congress who favor the legislation in the riders should wonder about the means of getting them passed. It is certainly true that most or all of the issues have been heard in Congress before, but they were rejected then because a substantial number of members objected. Trying to sneak through these favors now is no way to legislate.