November 2011 - Parks & Recreation - 31

By Jon Wisbey

ADVOCACY UPDATE

The Tea Party's Impact
on National Politics

he " teA pArtY " movemeNt, StArted iN 2009 as a conservative re-

action to a Democratic-controlled Congress and Presidency, has
helped center the national political debate on deficit reduction. The
November 2010 election, which shifted control of the House to Republicans
and diminished the Democrats' majority in the Senate, resulted in nearly
100 Republican freshmen representatives and senators. Many of these new
members were elected with significant tea party support, and nearly all
support sizeable cuts to the federal budget. Since the 112th Congress began in January, these demands for budget cuts have reverberated through
Capitol Hill, turning nearly every legislative effort into a referendum on
federal spending.
As a result, the first 10 months of 2011 have found
leading Republicans and Democrats agreeing on the
importance of spending cuts, even as they fought bitterly over the extent and source of those cuts. Debate
over FY 2011 funding levels lasted through April,
eight months after the fi scal year officially began,
and included more than 60 hours of debates in the
House centered around H.R. 1, the House's proposed
FY 2011 appropriations bill. Despite this extensive
debate, H.R. 1-which contained tens of billions of
dollars in cuts, including the elimination of the Land
and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) Stateside program-was never adopted by the Senate. Instead,
after three temporary funding measures, Congress
passed a FY 2011 Continuing Resolution (CR) that
included only modest across-the-board funding
reductions.
However, not long after the FY 2011 CR resolved
the federal budget debate through September 30,
2011, attention in Washington turned to the need to
raise the federal debt ceiling-a historically noncontroversial procedure that allows the Administration to borrow money in order to provide funding
approved by Congress. While House and Senate
leadership negotiated a deficit reduction package,
many members of Congress associated with the tea

party movement-most prominently Rep. Michele
Bachmann (R-MN)-argued that the debt ceiling
should not be raised at all and vowed to oppose any
compromise. This steadfast resistance to a bipartisan deal helped strengthen Republican demands for
spending cuts. In the end, despite arguing that raising the debt ceiling shouldn't be tied to deficit reduction measures, President Obama and Congressional
Democrats reached an agreement with Republicans
to raise the debt ceiling that would produce more
than $2 trillion in spending cuts.
For some politicians who have long fought to reduce or eliminate federal funding for parks and
recreation, the tea party's support for cutting federal spending has reinvigorated ongoing efforts to
stop federal support for parks. Sen. Tom Coburn
(R-OK) has led many unsuccessful efforts over his
career in the Senate to eliminate the Transportation
Enhancements (TE) set-aside, which ensures that
states utilize a small portion of their federal highway
funding for bike and pedestrian paths and trails,
historic preservation, and other non-traditional
activities. Although historically Sen. Coburn's attempts have been defeated by broad, bipartisan
margins, in September he capitalized on a tea party-driven stalemate over extending transportation

To ensure park
and recreation
priorities do
not receive an
unfair share of
Congress's FY
2012 and FY
2013 budget
cutting, local
parks and
recreation
advocates must
clearly and
eﬀectively
articulate the
beneﬁts of
these programs
to their federal
representatives.

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& Recreation

November 2011 - Parks & Recreation

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