GOP highway conferee: No money in land and water conservation fund to raid

By Keith Laing - 06/22/12 10:38 AM ET

A Republican member of the committee of lawmakers that is conferencing on a new transportation bill responded to a call from House Democrats to avoid raiding a trust fund for land and water conservation by saying the fund had no money to take.

A group of 150 Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter to highway conference committee leaders Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) this week asking them to preserve a provision in the Senate's version of the transportation bill that provides money for the land and water conservation trust fund until September of 2013.

But Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said in a statement provided to the The Hill that the money could be better spent on transportation projects that are normally funded by the highway bill.

“The reality is that money isn’t being taken from LWCF to pay for transportation," Bishop said. "There is no money to fund the LWCF in the first place."

The House Democrats who wrote to Boxer and Mica argued that the land and water conservation fund "is and always has been a bipartisan program and is a proven economic driver that ensures all Americans have access to outdoor recreation opportunities."

But Bishop countered that "[I]f anything, the LWCF is detracting from resources that could be applied to improving our infrastructure and transportation needs in order to buy more land.

"As it stands, the federal government is already struggling to manage the more than 660 million acres it already owns," he said. "Clearly, the last thing it needs is more land.”

Lawmakers signaled for a second straight day on Thursday that the talks about transportation bill were moving again, but neither Boxer, Mica nor the leaders of the respective chambers of Congress made mention of LWCF in public statements they made about the highway bill.

The highway conference committee is trying to beat a June 30 deadline for the scheduled expiration of the current mechanism for funding road and transit projects and avoid a tenth temporary extension, which critics have said would bankrupt the Highway Trust Fund.

The highway bill that is being negotiated also includes the government's authorization to collect the gas tax, which is used to fill the coffers of the transportation trust fund.