I. HOUSE UPDATE

II. SENATE UPDATE

III. COUNTDOWN TO CARA FEEDBACK

I. Status of H.R. 701 in the House

House Agriculture and Budget Committees discharged the Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA) from the committees at the end of March. This means TWO things: 1) representatives can no longer cosponsor or pull their names off of CARA without unanimous consent from the full House; and more importantly 2) CARA is now in the Leadership's hands. Don Young (R-AK), one of H.R. 701's primary sponsors, recently met with House leadership to request a date to be voted on before the April recess which starts April 15th. But a firm date for House floor action has not yet been set.

Last week's action item in the Countdown to CARA Campaign was to contact the House leadership to let them know you support conservation funding, and that H.R. 701 must come to a full House vote before the April recess. Even if you were unable to participate in this activity last week, it is still critically important to make sure the House leadership knows how important this legislation is to citizens across the country. Contact the House leadership today by calling the Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 and asking for the LEADERSHIP offices (talking to the Leadership offices rather than the personal office is more effective if you are not a constituent) of Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), Majority WhipTom Delay (R-TX) and Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-CA).

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II. Status of Conservation Funding Bills in the Senate

The primary conservation funding bills in the Senate, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act (S. 2123), and the Conservation and Stewardship Act (S. 2181) have yet to gain much momentum. Both bills have continued to gain a few cosponsors at a time; S. 2123 now stands with fourteen cosponsors, S. 2181 with ten.

On Thursday, March 30, the Senate Budget Committee approved the 2001 Budget Resolution (which establishes the budget priorities for Fiscal Year 2001) on a 12-10 party line vote. During the Committee markup, Senators Boxer (D-CA), Johnson (D-SD), and Sarbanes (D-MD) offered an amendment, which was unsuccessful, that stated budget levels may have to be revised to cover legislation that uses receipts from OCS leasing and production to fund various environmental programs. Their amendment would have created a reserve fund for the OCS receipts in order to fund programs should legislation such as CARA be enacted. After the amendment failed, Senator Domenici offered a substitute to the Boxer/Johnson/Sarbanes amendment which states that the spending levels in the Budget Resolution assume that the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Federal Aid to Wildlife Fund, UPARR, the National Historic Preservation Fund, the PILT program and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act would be fully funded as discretionary funds in FY 2001 if both Congress and the Administration agreed to do so. The amendment was approved 13-9. Domenici's amendment was accepted as a "Sense of the Senate" which means it is non-binding and is unlikely to be helpful in creating space in the budget for funding CARA or CASA.

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Countdown to CARA Feedback

We are now 3 weeks in to the Countdown to CARA and hope thaty you have found having one tangible action item per week beneficial. We would like to get some feedback as to whether or not our grassroots have been effective in making contact with the House. If you have participated in the Countdown to CARA Campaign by writing a letter, making phone calls or sending faxes, we need to know! Please contact Jodi Applegate or Josh Brann (ph: 202-797-6840, mailto:%20applegate@nwf.org; 202-797-6605, mailto:%20brann@nwf.org) with what you have been able to accomplish and let us know if you have received any feedback from Congress. Please don't reply directly to this e-mail!

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