davidvoegtle.net

Bush to sell off federal land: It’s always OK to cut funds from the poor and then have sales like this but heaven forbid this administration gets serious about finances or thinks twice about delivering tax cuts that primarily only benefit the wealthiest Americans. We’re a big country, so how about thinking about everyone and not just special interests?

The land is on a list of about 300,000 acres of national forest the Bush administration has proposed selling to help fund the operation of rural schools and offset cuts in federal aid.

Forest Service officials said yesterday that they do not expect to sell more than about 175,000 acres in order to reach their goal of raising $800 million. But auctioning any of the land would reverse more than a century of federal policy and law barring such sales of national forests.

Bamford and other critics contend that selling the public lands would not only be a betrayal but could set a dangerous precedent of liquidating federal property to fund other struggling programs, such as Medicare, as the government wrestles with an outsized budget deficit.

(Via AMERICAblog.)

I’m of the opinion this is a horrible idea. The national federal land system is truly one of the best examples of long-term planning this country has ever undertaken. Maintaining open and wilderness space is a crucial part of the legacy that we hand down to future generations (not just our children, but our descendants 1000 years from now).

The federal government may have millions of acres under management, but it is still, in total, a relatively miniscule percentage of our land (and much of it is not very representative of the diversity of ecosystems in this country, being composed significantly of land in the western US). The last thing we need to do is sell off this legacy, piece by piece, because this president has royally fouled up the federal budget through massive spending increases and unfair tax cuts.