Micah Baird
Kids playing outside. Families picnicking at the park. Friends on the adventure of a lifetime in America’s great wild places. Cultures mixing to create vibrant communities. These contemporary scenes could be relegated to the realm of Americana under Donald Trump’s vision for America. His full budget released today clearly prioritizes billionaires and CEOs over the health and well-being of the public, our public lands, and wildlife.
Here are just a few of the most egregious pieces of his budget, which threaten the very fabric of our country.
Trump plans to cut the Department of the Interior’s budget by 11%, sharply reducing the ability to protect and maintain our existing parks, public lands and wildlife. It also severely restricts the creation of any new parks or public lands by cutting the Land and Water Conservation Fund to the bone. At a time when parks are seeing record visitation and face large backlogs of needed maintenance, what’s needed is more funding, not less. We should not lose sight of the tremendous value protected public lands provide. They are critical contributors to the $887 billion outdoor economy, supporting local jobs and businesses. They offer opportunities for healing and wellness that are only beginning to be understood. They provide clean water and clean air for our communities and places to connect with one another. The list goes on. Public lands are a good investment.
Trump plans to vastly increase fossil fuel extraction on our public lands and waters, including in some of our country’s last wild places. There is no need for more drilling as part of our nation’s budget, especially in sacred places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The dangers of drilling, fracking and mining are well-documented and already burden communities and landscapes across the country with pollution every day. At the same time, revenues estimated from drilling the Arctic Refuge and other places are mere speculation.
Recognizing the risk to the Refuge, members of the Gwich’in Nation are even now touring the desert Southwest raising the alarm about the threat drilling poses to their subsistence and existence. The Gwich’in People have relied on the Porcupine Caribou herd, and their calving grounds on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for millennia. For them, protection of the Arctic Refuge is an issue of human rights.
Trump wants to sell down the strategic petroleum reserve at rock bottom prices and cut off royalty payments to states from offshore drilling operations to increase profits for Big Oil through the budget. At the same time his administration has made moves elsewhere to give our public lands away for pennies on the dollar to coal companies, to open new areas off our coasts to dangerous oil and gas drilling and to loosen safety standards that protect our families.
Trump plans to eliminate and undermine valuable programs to engage kids in service and learning outside. Important outdoor education programs, including the Corps for National Community Service, which houses AmeriCorps and Conservation Corps, and the Department of Education’s 21st Century Learning Centers, which provide after school and outdoor programs for at-risk kids are on the chopping block. Transportation projects to help connect communities and the outdoors and environmental health programs, including those aimed at lead prevention, are sharply reduced or zeroed out. The offices of Environmental Education and Environmental Justice at the Environmental Protection Agency and education grant programs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will be shuttered. Block grants used to revitalize neighborhoods and create local parks will disappear. All of this at a time when it is becoming increasingly clear that time outside is vital for healthy kids (and grown-ups too!). Cuts to these programs will add to the already substantial obstacles many families face to safely spending time outdoors.
While basic protections and services see massive cuts, Trump plans to spend $1.6 billion to wall off the US border with Mexico, with additional funding for increased militarization of the border. Widely recognized as an ineffective boondoggle, the wall will cause flooding, harm communities, block wildlife, and tarnish the image and reputation of the borderlands and its people, while failing as immigration policy. Communities along the border are already dealing with these damages every day from sections of the wall already built. Further build out of the wall will only worsen the effects.
The effects of Trump’s budget will be far reaching and detrimental-- unless Congress takes a stand for our families, our special places and our future. Make your voice heard as Congress sets funding priorities for our government!