Author: Reilly Lowery

WASHINGTON— The $1.3 trillion spending bill unveiled in Congress on Wednesday includes harmful provisions to ramp up logging on public lands, weaken protections for endangered species and fund portions of an environmental destructive border wall. The bill, however, does not include most of the anti-environment riders proposed by Republicans, including ending protections for wolves in the Great Lakes states, allowing a toxic mine in the Superior National Forest and undermining the National Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which would have allowed damaging road building in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. It also contains significant funding for conservation and spares the Santa Ana National Wildlife

Today the U.S. House passed the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill with strong bipartisan support. It funds the federal government through September. The bill now heads to the Senate where NPR says it is also likely to pass with bipartisan support. Wednesday, Montana’s Republican Senator Steve Daines said there’s good news for the Treasure State in the spending bill. “We secured some very important forest management reforms.” Daines points to eliminating what he calls “NEPA paperwork” on national forest projects of 3,000 acres or less aimed at reducing hazardous fuels. NEPA is the National Environmental Policy Act. Critics like the

I really support U.S. Sen. Steve Daines’s S. 2206 to open our historic wilderness study areas, because it does conclude a long overdue 40-year (study) period. The majority of people from Montana and other states all want their historic access that should never have been closed. The three nearly connected congressionally approved wilderness areas south of Lolo Pass are the largest wilderness acres in the lower 48 states, so we don’t need the Great Burn area as a wilderness for more major global warming. The Great Burn area does have historic roads and mining places already and this should be

Reforms to improve forest management and how firefighting is funded are among the provisions important to Montana included in the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill making its way through Congress, according to Montana lawmakers. A bill protecting public land north of Yellowstone National Park from mining, however, did not make it into the omnibus bill, prompting one of the state’s senators to criticize the other for its failure to be included. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., told reporters via telephone Wednesday that he was able to secure forest management and wildfire funding reforms in the bill. One provision reduces red tape and streamlines projects

Montana’s Republican delegation to Congress on Wednesday praised provisions included in the 2018 federal spending bill that address forest management, including a partial overturning of the Cottonwood decision and efforts to streamline timber projects. Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Greg Gianforte said the reforms, which will also fund the U.S. Forest Service’s firefighting expenses from a separate account, represent a start in improving the health of the nation’s forests. “What’s been going on has been called fire borrowing,” Gianforte said. “In bad fire years, most of the operating budget for the Forest Service gets consumed with fighting fires. Because we’re opening up

I want to thank Sen. Steve Daines for his support and co-sponsorship of a bill in front of Congress right now to increase access to lower-cost generic prescription drugs. Many Montanans encouraged the senator to take a good look at the merits of Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples (CREATES) Act. He listened and has joined us in support for this bill, and taking responsible steps to make all aspects of health care more affordable. The way this works is by targeting abusive delay tactics used by mega pharmaceutical companies that keep affordable generic drugs from entering the

Montana’s congressional delegation says reforms to forest management, including an end to “fire borrowing,” will be included in must-pass legislation this week. On a media call Wednesday, Republicans Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Greg Gianforte detailed a forest reform package as part of an omnibus bill, which includes funding wildfires similarly to other natural disasters. The reform ends fire borrowing — the practice of using funds from other programs such as trail maintenance to pay for fires that exceed budgets. Under the changes, when fire budgets run dry, agencies may tap into natural disaster funding rather than their own budgets.