On January 15 the U.S. Senate passed a big public lands bill emerging from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that places the Bill Clinton birthplace in Hope, Arkansas, on the National Historic Register.
The omnibus bill also protects 290 million-year old fossilized animal tracks in the Robledo Mountains in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, and authorizes $40 million annually for landscaping and forest restoration projects that cover 50,000 acres.
Oh, among more than 160 bills in this public lands package, the bill also authorizes the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Act, which has nothing to do with energy or natural resources but a lot to do with hope and human resources.
Now it might seem that the Reeve bill is being sneaked through the back door, tacked on to a feel-good environmental bill, and that’s not entirely wrong. How and why this happens illustrates how business gets done in Washington, D.C. Nothing sneaky about it but there is an indirectness that leaves you to wonder: Would the Reeve bill have had the juice to make it on its own? Well, maybe so, with the new House and Senate coming to town, but this bill, in similar form, has been percolating in the nation’s capital for 10 years; kudos to Sens. Tom Harkin and Edward Kennedy, so for now let's skip the lessons in civics and legislative strategy and celebrate the fact it’s finally close to being real.
See this
link for more on the CRPA, and since something similar is brewing in the House, expect soon to see a bill on the desk of the new president to improve the health and well-being of people living with paralysis. It will save some fossil tracks, forests, waterways - and keep Hope afloat
Mad.
