My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 5, #18, November 15, 1999

RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE

In the annual unseemliness that is the wrapping up of the final appropriations bills, interesting things are happening behind closed doors. Both Congress and the president are on a tight deadline because neither wants to bear the blame of shutting down the government. Both want to spend money on their own priorities; both want to avoid using social security tax revenues to pay for them.

This should result in serious-minded discussion between them, but instead we're getting extortion: Congress is using this opportunity to tack riders onto spending bills that both they and Clinton acknowledge must be passed quickly.

Now, riders are a sort of stealth way of doing business. Inserting them when different versions passed by the House and Senate are being reconciled in committee means that we, the people who get to pay for it all, haven't a clue what's being passed. The meetings aren't on C-SPAN. There aren't any committee hearings. There isn't any chance for anybody to argue that the riders might be very bad ideas.

This is, however, an absolutely wonderful opportunity to exact some special favors for constituents and friends. Who benefits from the funding bill for the Department of the Interior, for example?

• Ranchers who now have permits to graze their herds on federal lands - thanks to Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, the Bureau of Land Management would be required to renew all existing permits, and prohibited from enforcing environmental regulations.

• Ten ranchers in Washington State who get to graze their cattle in the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area, courtesy of Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington.

• The City of Mesquite in Nevada, which gets a new airport, carved out of federal land which they get free of charge, courtesy of Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada.

• Bankrupt mining companies who get to leave their polluted properties for the taxpayers to clean up, courtesy of Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah.

• The lumber and paper industries, who get to clearcut trees in the White River National Forest, courtesy of Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell. AND we get to pay to build them a road to make this easy.

• The oil industry, which won a delay in paying taxpayers, full value for the oil they extract from public lands, courtesy of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas.

  Do you notice an interesting pattern here? Perhaps you've heard of the "sagebrush rebellion," the longing of our western states to be free from government interference? But what our senators from the west seem to mean by "freedom" is what WE might think of as "subsidies," unlimited goodies free of charge, courtesy of us poor saps, the taxpayers in the rest of the country. Goodies that senators do not in fact have the right to give away, because those federal lands belong to us and our children.

  This is not my notion of rugged individualism. But then, the dirty little secret that our great senators from the west never talk about is that the west's economy depends on the federal government, and has from the very beginning of its history.

  It was the federal government whose army killed off the buffalo, defeated the Indians, rounded them up into reservations, and distributed their land cheap to settlers; that tamed the violence of the old west with laws and courts and prisons; that subsidized the railroads that made it possible for the westerners to ship their beef and grains.

  It was the federal government that built its roads and bridges, blasting tunnels through uncrossable mountains; that constructed the dams that made it possible for people to live in desert country and still take daily showers, irrigate farms, and plant their lawns with grass and flowers.

  It was the federal government that protected our national parks and forests from the rapacity of private developers and made them accessible to visitors, creating the tourist industry the west profits from.

  This is not to say the government has not done harm in the process. The dams and roads and bridges have destroyed habitat and species. The violation of countless treaties has amounted to theft of Indian land; the rounding up of Indians into reservations has made their traditional ways of life impossible and yet robbed them of the resources to succeed in the American commercial way of life. And the nuclear testing the government did in Utah may well have caused cancer and brought early death to thousands. If the sagebrush rebellion was about undoing this damage, I could respect it.

  But the sagebrush rebellion is about nephews living off the lavish allowance given them by a rich uncle and then, instead of sending him (and us) charming thank you notes, suing him because his bounty is insufficient.

  Those ranchers in Washington were warned ten years ago that the federal largesse would end, and that they should readjust their plans. Instead, they hired a Senator to rewrite the law for them. The ranchers in New Mexico were told that their cattle were doing damage to the watershed and asked to change their grazing practices. Instead, they hired a senator to exempt them from environmental laws.

  THIS is rugged individualism? Oh, please.

  In fact, it seems a lot closer to the word the Senators disliked so much when Sen. John McCain used it to describe our political campaign funding -- "corrupt." The senators huffed and puffed and demanded to be shown a single instance of corruption in this august body.

  But why else would anybody sneak in a rider that benefited only ten people if those ten weren't Senatorial contributors? Why else would senators give special treats to the oil industry if they weren't donors? And why else would they do it behind closed doors where nobody could see them doing it?

  My somewhat vengeful notion is that we should let westerners display some of that fabled individualism. Let them pay full price for their own water, their own dams and roads and bridges. Let them fight their own forest fires. Since they claim to value the free market, let them pay fair market prices for the trees they chop down, the oil they extract from our property, the grazing rights to our national lands; let them also reimburse us for the damage they do to our air, land, and water.

  But that would punish ordinary citizens of those states for sins of their greedy ranchers, miners, timber merchants, and senators. What I would settle for is this: Say "thank you" to the taxpayers in the rest of the country. And don't go looking for more handouts. "Please, sir, can I have some more" sounds a lot better coming from a starving orphan.

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

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