Roy Blunt: “this week we are considering the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act. I think it is fair to say that this is one of…”

“this week we are considering the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act. I think it is fair to say that this is one of the most important packages of conservation legislation that we have seen in a long time. It might be fair to say that it is the most important piece of legislation since President Theodore Roosevelt dramatically made additions to the National Park System just a little more than 100 years ago. The bill essentially combines two important provisions--the Restore Our Parks Act and the Land and Water Conservation full funding act. I am a cosponsor of both of those. We have been trying to do the things that those two bills both do for a long time, and here we are. During World War II--we are just within a few days of D-day-- President Eisenhower--at that time General Eisenhower--had a view that sometimes if a problem is too big to solve or seems to be too hard to solve, you solve it by making it bigger. Interestingly, what we have done here with two things that we have been trying to do for a long time--to have full access to the reason the Land and Water Conservation Act was created and to do a better job maintaining our parks--that has all been combined into the Great American Outdoors Act. The first thing this act does is, frankly, make a significant investment for the deferred maintenance we have on all kinds of Federal land. It is one of our challenges as a government generally.…”