The President thought government spending was out of control, so he vetoed the appropriations bill. Congress was determined to have its way, though, and overrode the veto, restoring funding despite his objections. However, it took ten days for full funding to be restored and, in the meantime, two federal departments were shut down.
That may sound like a common theme today, but the year was 1976 and the President was Gerald Ford. I was an intern on the House side that semester, the first intern my college had ever sent to Capitol Hill, and it seemed like historically wild times. A government shutdown had never happened before. Little did we all know how common it would become in the years ahead.
- Friday, September 18, 2015
Greg Walcher GregWalcher.com is president of the Natural Resources Group and author of “Smoking Them Out: The Theft of the Environment and How to Take it Back,” now in its second printing. He is a former head of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.
A recent World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report claims humans have killed more than half of all the wildlife in the world since 1970. The report attracted media mass attention, even though the actual 145-page essay doesn’t really say that, much less prove it.
In high school and college, I competed in debate tournaments across the state and country. I clearly remember many occasions when a debate team's plan would include abolishing some government program. Inevitably, the opponents would ask, "What will you replace it with?"
How we long for the good old days! That’s the tone of some environmental industry leaders who are screaming bloody murder (literally, not figuratively) about Department of the Interior actions under President Trump. The Department’s re-interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is a case in point.
Have we become a society of people who want to regulate others, but not ourselves? We laugh at those who suddenly object to a policy that seemed perfectly OK when (they thought) it only applied to others.
