Congress Has Work to Do By Year's End

Public Lands Council Executive Director Ethan Lane explains there is plenty of work for Congress to do prior to leaving D.C. for the holidays and that a omnibus is needed rather than a Continuing Resolution or CR.

Lane: "Well, everybody is getting excited after the election and wanted to talk about next year, and transition and Secretary appoints for Interior and Ag. That is all fantastic but when we want to do first is make sure that this Congress ends on strong note. We have a few priorities that need to be dealt with before they leave town. Congress has to fund the government by December 9th that is when the current CR will run out. We are hoping that they will do the hard work of doing a full omnibus by December 9th rather than kicking the can down the road with a CR. What we worry about with a CR is that a lot of the priorities that were built into the interior and environment appropriations bill that we did over the summer won't be address if they don't do that full omnibus and get something to the President's desk to signed. Among the other things that would be dealt with in there besides sage grouse where we have a delist provision that prevents them from spending any money on a listing or any implementation of the sage grouse resource management plans. We also have a defunding of WOTUS in that bill. We have a lot of the counties where there is a proposed monument designation across the West would be exempted from the designation. A variety of things that we really need to get past the finish line because as we know shifting into next year, priorities change some leadership roles will change and we don't want any of those things to slip through the cracks."