5/12/00 1:00 p.m.
The Great GOP Land Grab
Bad politics and bad policy.

By Jonathan H. Adler, senior fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute

roperty-rights activists are used to thinking of Vice President Al Gore and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as the greatest threats to their land. Now its time to add House Resources Committee Chairman Don Young (R-AK) and Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA) to the list. This week they joined with arch-green Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and former Commerce Committee czar John Dingell (D-MI) to push through a $3 billion dedicated fund (read: entitlement) for government land acquisition. Despite the opposition of conservative stalwarts, the bill passed 315-102. At a time when government at all levels owns four of every ten acres in the United States, a majority of Republicans joined with nearly all of the Democrats to significantly expand the federal estate. Efforts by Reps. Helen Chenoweth-Hage (R-ID), Richard Pombo (R-CA), and John Shadegg (R-AZ) to insert protections for landowners and taxpayers into the bill were put down by Young and his cohorts. Even an amendment to prevent the disbursement of funds to environmental-activist groups was defeated, 317-107.

Environmentalists claim the bill is a victory for conservation, but the sorry legacy of federal land management says otherwise. The current condition of national forests and parks is disgraceful. There is an estimated $10 billion-plus maintenance backlog on existing federal holdings, and no guarantee that any money from the Young-Miller-Tauzin-Dingell Land Grab bill will meet this need. As if to underscore the point, on the day the House approved the bill, a wildfire set on National Park Service land raged through Los Alamos, New Mexico, shutting the federal government’s weapons-research facilities and burning homes to the ground. Expanding government estates will only condemn more acres to oblivion.

The Young-Miller-Tauzin-Dingell Land Grab bill is not only bad policy, it’s bad politics as well. While environmental proposals typically poll well, government land acquisition is an exception, particularly when respondents are informed that the federal government already owns approximately one-third of the United States. No matter, the Land Grab bill promises a stream of funds to "coastal" states — defined to include Michigan, Minnesota, and other states along the Great Lakes. This outrageous funding formula, and the fact that acquisition money would become an off-budget entitlement, led even the Washington Post to condemn the bill as irresponsible.

New funding for government land purchases pits Republicans against each other and risks alienating a substantial portion of the conservative base in rural areas. Property-rights activists, including farmers and ranchers, were a key component of the Republican electorate in 1994. Offended by the willingness of GOP leaders to sacrifice private-property rights for off-budget pork, many activists are willing to stay home or vote third party, as many did in 1996 and 1998. Chairman Young is so eager for CARA funds to pour into Alaska, he went beyond the usual arm twisting and broke out the thumb screws, among other things threatening legislative retribution and the removal of committee staffers assigned to subcommittee chairmen reluctant to support the bill.

Once a staunch opponent of federal land acquisition Young sold his property rights birthright for an off-budget bowl of porridge. In 1996, Chairman Young told an Alaska radio station that only "communist" governments needed to own land. Now, it seems, Chairman Young sees socialism in a new light.