Second Interior funding bill keeps Indian bureau cuts

Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995 21:41:06 -0500

BY JEFF NESMITH

Cox News Service

WASHINGTON -- House and Senate budget writers approved a second proposal Tuesday
 for funding the Department of Interior but did not restore any of the funds 
earlier versions would cut from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other agencies.

Instead, a new conference committee report merely contained softened language in
 controversial sections dealing with issuance of mining permits on government 
land and with management of the new Mojave National Preserve in California.

It also contained a new amendment from Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., prohibiting 
National Endowment for the Arts funding of any works of art containing 
``religious desecration.''

The conference committee turned down a motion to delete language that directs 
the U.S. Forest Service to open areas of Alaska's Tongass National Forest to 
loggers.

Conferees, who met for several hours in a packed conference room in the Capitol,
 did not consider restoring any of the $168 million earlier versions of the 
appropriations bill would cut from the $1.7 billion Bureau of Indian Affairs 
budget.

The proposed reduction, which represents a nearly 10-percent decrease in the 
bureau's budget from last year, has provoked outcries from Indian tribes and the
 Clinton Administration.

In his proposed federal budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, President 
Clinton had called for a modest increase in BIA funding.

The proposal to reduce the BIA budget was one of the complaints voiced by 
members of the House when a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans 
voted Sept. 28 to reject the conference committee's first effort to merge House 
and Senate appropriation bills into a single budget for the Interior Department 
and a handful of related agencies.

However, members of the joint committee appeared unconcerned Tuesday about 
disenchantment over the BIA appropriation.

Instead, when it revised its earlier bill, the committee limited itself to 
several technical amendments and four basic issues:

-- A ``rider'' that would have lifted a federal moratorium on issuance of mining
 permits on federal land. Environmentalists, government fiscal reform groups and
 Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt had complained that the department had been 
practically giving away the right to mine for gold and other minerals on 
government land. Babbitt has said he needs the moratorium to study the mining 
permit situation.

New language leaves the moratorium in place -- except for applications for 
mining permits that are currently pending.

-- A rider that directs the U.S. Forest Service, a part of the Agriculture 
Department, to open new areas of Tongass National Forest to timber companies. A 
motion to delete the rider was voted down, leaving the Tongass logging mandate 
in place.

-- A provision that would shift management of the new Mojave National Preserve 
away from the Park Service to the Bureau of Land Management, which has less 
restrictive land use policies. This provision was changed to give the Park 
Service authority to spend up to $100,000 developing a plan for managing the 
preserve.

-- Sen. Helms' amendment to restrict National Endowment for the Arts funds.

The White House had said that if Congress passed the earlier conference 
committee bill, President Clinton would veto it. It was not clear Tuesday 
whether the committee's latest changes would be enough to get the president to 
sign the appropriation -- or even to win approval in the House or Senate.

Like the rest of the federal government the Interior Department has been 
operating under a ``continuing resolution,'' which provides temporary funding 
until Congress can pass appropriations bills.