As the calendar turns to the final month of the year, Congress and the White House remain locked in difficult, and at times contentious, negotiations over a host of hot issues.
Before the Thanksgiving holiday, the House approved a $2.2 trillion social spending and climate bill that is the centerpiece of President Biden’s domestic agenda. The so-called “Build Back Better” bill would provide for universal prekindergarten, new subsidies for child care, expanded financial aid for college, hundreds of billions of dollars in housing support, home and community care for older Americans, a new hearing benefit for Medicare and price controls for prescription drugs. It also devotes more than half a trillion dollars to fighting climate change and would be paid for with tax increases on high earners and corporations, estimated to bring in nearly $1.5 trillion over 10 years.
The bill passed the House 220-213, with all but one Democrat voting in favor, and all Republicans voting no. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it is sure to be modified in order to secure the backing of all 50 Democratic Senators.
Although the bill for the most part does not directly impact CRM, it does include $25 million over the next five years for historic preservation activities at the National Park Service. Unfortunately, one provision that would spur more preservation – an expansion of the Historic Tax Credit – was left out of the current bill. ACRA is working with its allies in the preservation community to urge Congress to put it back in.
The House action comes days after President Biden signed into law a bipartisan $1.2 trillion bill to repair and modernize roads, bridges, water systems, broadband and other traditional infrastructure. (The Infrastructure Bill Has Passed Congress: So What Does it Mean for CRM?)
Congress also took steps to keep the government open, passing a short-term appropriations (spending) bill last week that funds federal agencies through Feb. 18. They still will need to deal with raising the debt ceiling by the middle of this month, then the federal government is expected to run out of borrowing authority.
Even as Congress and the Administration haggled over Build Back Better and the budget, they took numerous steps that will improve the preservation and protection of the country’s cultural heritage:
ACHP Chair Nominee Moves Forward: The Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved the nomination of Sara Bronin as Chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) before Thanksgiving on a 12-8 vote, sending it to the full Senate. Two GOP Senators joined all 10 Democrats to send her nomination to the Senate; eight Republicans voted against her, due to what Committee Ranking Member John Barrasso (R-WY) called her support of “progressive zoning reforms.” She is expected to be confirmed by the full Senate, although the timing is not certain.
National Park Service Director Confirmed. The full Senate has unanimously approved Charles F. Sams III as the next Director of the National Park Service (NPS). Sams, an enrolled member of the Cayuse and Walla Walla tribes, which are part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, will become the first Native American director in the NPS’ history, and the first director the agency has had since their last head retired in 2017.
White House Acts to Protect Native Lands. At the Biden administration’s Tribal Nations Summit Nov. 15-16, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced a new initiative to protect and improve access to sites across the country considered sacred by Indigenous peoples. Under the initiative, eight federal agencies have signed onto an MOU aimed at improving interdepartmental coordination. The MOU directs those agencies to develop consistent policies and processes for sites held sacred by Indigenous peoples, and to take a “forward-thinking” approach that not only seeks to avoid harm, but also to “collaborate with Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations to ensure good stewardship of their lands and allow their rightful access and use to certain public lands through Tribal-agency and co-management agreements, where possible.”
At the Summit, President Biden also pledged to be the first president to work with Tribes to comprehensively incorporate Tribal Ecological Knowledge into the federal government’s scientific approach to fight climate change. According to the White House, the administration “will develop a guidance document for federal agencies on how the collection and application of such knowledge can be mutually beneficial to Tribes, Native communities, and federal agencies and can strengthen evidence-based analysis and informed decision-making across the federal government.”
Biden also proposed a 20-year ban on oil and gas drilling in Chaco Canyon and surrounding areas in northwestern New Mexico, a sacred tribal site that also contains valuable oil and gas.
As the clock ticks towards the end of the year, Congress and the White House have a lot left on their to-do list. ACRA continues to engage with its allies on Capitol Hill and in the Administration to make sure the CRM industry’s views are heard.