Shitstain's Interior Budget For 2020: A Cornucopia Of Lies, A Bulldozer Of Funding Cuts
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The Rhetoric: “One of Interior’s highest priorities remains to address the deferred maintenance backlog on Federal lands," reads the proposed budget. "At the end of 2018, Interior’s backlog was over $16.0 billion, about three quarters of which is in the National Park Service’s (NPS) crumbling roads, bridges, water systems, and facilities.”
The Reality: The total NPS budget would be cut by $494,946,000. This includes cuts to the operations budget of $52 million, a $31-million cut to the National Recreation and Preservation fund, a $64-million cut to the Historic Preservation Fund, a $113-million cut for the construction and major maintenance budget, and a $176-million cut for land acquisition and state assistance programs.
The Rhetoric: “The 2020 budget request includes more than $1.5 billion to support infrastructure maintenance and construction. Funding focuses on projects to address critical health and safety concerns as well as repair existing infrastructure. Complementing this request is the Administration’s legislative proposal to invest $6.5 billion over 5 years into a Public Lands Infrastructure Fund to significantly reduce the deferred maintenance backlog. The Fund will support infrastructure improvements through an allocation of 70 percent for national parks, 10 percent for national forests, 10 percent for wildlife refuges, 5 percent for BIE [Bureau of Indian Education] schools, and 5 percent for lands managed by BLM.”
The Reality: As of last year the NPS’s differed maintenance backlog was $11.6 billion, a number that was expanding at a rate of $275 million per year. That was before the 35-day government shutdown, which saw national parks remain open with reduced staffing. We won’t have a full account of how much that situation added to the backlog until next month, but this budget includes no money to address shutdown-related damage. Crunching the administration’s numbers, they’re suggesting a budget of $910 million per year, for five years, to address that backlog. In a best-case scenario, that would only get us $4.55 billion into that ever-increasing backlog, before we talk about the proposed $113 million-per-year reduction in the NPS’ regular maintenance budget. And, as with last year’s budget, that alleged funding relies on oil and gas leasing rates and sales to remain stable, and is only available if other budgets outside of the DOI, which are given priority access, don’t require that money first. It’s Monopoly money, basically.
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https://www.outsideonline.com/2391927/trump-budget-cuts-2020-national-parks
