Government the problem
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August 4, 2013 |
By Congressman Raul Labrador
In 1981, when President Reagan took over from
Jimmy Carter, America was stuck in the worst
economy since the Great Depression. In his first
inaugural address, Reagan diagnosed the source
of America’s economic ills by declaring,
"Government is not the solution to our problem;
government is the problem."
More than thirty years later, America is once
again suffering through an era of economic
stagnation, and just like last time, government
is the problem – stifling the genius of private
enterprise and community action through federal
control and interference.
Here in Idaho, and throughout the West, rural
communities once relied upon the timber industry
for job creation and tax revenues.
However, that was before Washington bureaucrats
and environmental organizations crippled that
industry through overregulation and litigation.
During the past 30 years, timber harvests have
declined by more than 80 percent, and the
consequences have been devastating.
Counties that were once dependent upon timber
receipts to fund schools, roads, and daily
operations have become desolate and broke.
In 2000, Congress created a temporary program
called Secure Rural Schools (SRS) to help
counties fund the services they could no longer
afford because of lost revenue from the decline
in timber production. However, SRS was always
intended as a temporary fix as Congress worked
out the more comprehensive issue of how to
manage public land.
So long as SRS was tied to federal policies that
prevented rural communities from developing
their own land in a way that would create more
jobs and generate more tax revenue, it was a
band-aid, not a real solution.
Last year, authority for the program expired.
To replace SRS, I introduced the Self-Sufficient
Community Lands Act, which would empower Idaho’s
rural communities to manage their own land,
instead of being dependent upon federal payments
and Washington bureaucrats.
This week, the House Natural Resources Committee
approved my bill as part of a larger bill, the
Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy
Communities Act, which passed the committee.
This is great news for Idaho’s rural counties.
Thirty-five of Idaho’s 44 counties receive SRS
payments, and we rank third in the country in
total SRS payments.
Our goal is to have the bill on the House floor
for an up-or-down vote. The House has already
taken important measures to shrink the size of
government, hold government accountable, and
empower the people.
This week alone, we passed the REINS Act, which
would require that Congress approve any
regulation whose effect on the economy would
exceed $100 million, and the Keep the IRS Off
Your Health Care Act¸ which would prevent the
unnecessary intrusion of the IRS into our health
care.
The time has come to put our people and our land
back to work. And to achieve that, the best
thing the government can do is get out of the
way. |
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