Here's an urgent task for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Remove Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., as chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. The need became clear on Wednesday, when Peterson was instrumental in narrowly defeating a landmark public lands bill that was the result of years of bipartisan compromise.
The Senate passed this highly popular bill in January on a 73 to 21 vote. House members voted 244-182 in favor of the bill – two votes short of a needed two-thirds majority.
The problem: Peterson helped hold this noncontroversial bill hostage to amendments being pushed by the National Rifle Association. Specifically, the bipartisan Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (Senate Bill 22) was held up because the NRA wanted to attach an amendment that would create a law allowing concealed, loaded weapons in national parks.
For a committee chairman to allow the narrow agenda of a special interest group to take precedence over a broad-based bill in the national interest is unacceptable – particularly for someone who chairs a committee overseeing many of the nation's public lands.
Pelosi can't just let this pass. There have to be consequences.
For us in California, the stakes are huge.
The bill includes the landmark San Joaquin River Restoration settlement, years in the making.
It has several projects to increase water supply and enhance watershed quality.
It adds land to the national wilderness system (including acres bordering Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks; the Hoover Wilderness near Bridgeport in Mono County; and a new Pleasant View Ridge Wilderness Area in the eastern Sierra and San Gabriel mountains).
It creates, finally, a National Landscape Conservation System (which includes the King Range National Conservation Area along the Lost Coast; the North Fork of the American River; and the Headwaters Forest Reserve of redwoods).
All of these represent months and years of bipartisan give-and-take, resulting in fragile deals that could be undone with delays.
It's no secret that for the last five years, the NRA has been trying to change rules that have been in place since the 1960s, and updated in 1983 during the Reagan era, that prevent concealed, loaded guns in the national parks.
In the waning days of the Bush presidency, agency bureaucrats did the NRA's bidding with a last-minute rule change. Now the NRA wants Congress to pass it into law before the Obama administration gets a chance to overturn the Bush rule.
House leaders must insist on a clean public lands bill – and take up gun issues as stand-alone bills with separate votes.
Of 53 California House members, 38 voted for the public lands bill – all the Democrats and Republicans David Dreier, Jerry Lewis, Howard "Buck" McKeon and Mary Bono Mack. Surprisingly, Republicans Gary Miller and George Radanovich didn't vote. Pelosi should be able to pick up their votes, as their districts benefit directly from the bill.
When she brings this bill to the floor again, Pelosi clearly needs to do a better job of counting votes. But it is in dealing with Ag Committee Chairman Peterson that Pelosi needs to send a strong message that she will not allow a landmark public lands bill to be held hostage to gun issues.
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