Bush Administration Pimping Election-Year Funding Boosts For Environment

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON — "With the November election looming, the Bush administration is touting plans to boost spending on environmental programs crucial to the West.

From preventing wildfires in national forests to restoring salmon in the Columbia and Snake rivers, the president's budget proposal includes a host of new spending for the region.

EDIT

Most of the increases — including a much-touted plan to spend $760 million to fully fund the new Healthy Forests Restoration Act — amount to little more than accounting tricks aimed at helping Bush win re-election, critics say. "A leopard doesn't change it spots," said U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, a longtime Bush critic. "The president is not suddenly going to become an environmentalist after all these years of rolling back protections for the environment."

Jay Ward, conservation director for the Oregon Natural Resources Council, called the shift in emphasis an election-year conversion, saying the administration would pay for forest thinning by diverting money from other accounts."

EDIT

[pmbryant]

1. Logging is a boost for the environment?

They are really getting desperate.

:eyes:

--Peter

[PVnRT]

2. Well

Their definition of environment is the environment in the smoky rooms where the logging company execs fork over big bucks to the Republican party.

It's all about semantics.

[PVnRT]

3. No election year politics from the GOP!

Nope, they would never do such a thing!