May 12, 2000

"Today, Congress is ensuring that offshore drilling fees intended for maintaining and restoring national parks and conservation efforts will actually be used for that purpose," Rep. Mac Collins said today after passage of the Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA). "I have always believed in truth in taxation. For too long, our government claimed it was collecting taxes for one purpose, but using the money to support unrelated deficit spending."

"Over $4 billion per year has been collected from offshore oil and gas lease payments that are intended for rehabilitation or reinvestment in existing parks and lands, but this money has been diverted to cover deficit spending. That meant our national parks often got short-changed," Collins said. "The Government Accounting Office estimates that our parks have an over $8 billion backlog in construction and maintenance, despite increased park entrance fees. This hurts our seniors and families who use our national parks."

"The Conservation And Reinvestment Act (CARA) will provide our parks and conservation efforts with stable annual funding of $2.85 billion per year out of the revenues paid by companies drilling for oil or gas on the outer continental shelf," Collins said. "These fees are finally being allocated for the purposes for which they are collected."

Collins has consistently worked to ensure taxes collected for a certain purpose are not re-directed for other projects. He has worked on successful legislation to ensure gasoline taxes collected for transportation needs are spent for transit, highway, and other transportation purposes. He also worked on legislation to ensure airport ticket taxes and aviation fuel taxes are used for aviation purposes. He was also behind the effort to ensure payroll taxes collected for Social Security are not used to fund other government spending.

CARA passed Congress 315-102 after Collins joined other colleagues in amending the bill to ensure that the increased expenditures are done in a fiscally prudent fashion and that landowner rights are better protected. The protections limit a federal agency’s land acquisition authority. The bill restricts the ability of federal agencies to force unwilling landowners off their property. Sellers must be "willing." If a seller is unwilling, the bill makes makes the democratically-elected Congress, not a court or bureaucratic agency, the final authority if land is to be condemned for acquisition. The bill also requires that just compensation be paid for all land acquisitions.

Collins also supported an amendment by Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) which ensures that CARA will not result in deficit spending. Before spending under CARA can take place, Congress must certify that it is on track to eliminate all publicly held debt by 2013, that it is not running an on-budget deficit, and that Social Security and Medicare are not predicted to run a deficit within the next five years.

Each year, under CARA, Georgia will get approximately $7 million for coastal impact assistance, $16 million for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, $9 million for wildlife conservation, $2 million for urban parks and recreation recovery, $2.4 million for historic preservation, $2 million, for federal land maintenance, $1 million for farmland protection, and $1.3 million in payments in lieu of taxes for local governments. Collins said the CARA bill will support Georgia’s recently enacted green space preservation program.

"This bill will benefit our wildlife and environment by increasing federal funding for local, state, and federal projects. It will benefit property owners by increasing protections. It also benefits taxpayers because it ensures that money collected for the purpose of maintaining and restoring our parks and environment will be used for that purpose. Finally, it will benefit those millions of Americans who pay taxes to maintain our national parks and then pay fees to use them," Collins said. "With any luck, we should be able to revisit those fees and see if we can now scale them back."

"Congress is entrusted with protecting our nation’s environment and natural resources, and this bill is an important step in fulfilling that trust," Collins said.

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