Government the problem
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.