A congressional effort to spend nearly $10 billion on national park maintenance backlogs moved by unanimous vote to the full Senate on Wednesday, even as senators acknowledged hard problems remain to be solved.
The co-authors of the America the Beautiful Act, Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines and Maine Independent Senator Angus King, jokingly broke ranks just before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted on their bill. King asked for an amendment allocating the maintenance money to parks by alphabetical order, which would start with Acadia National Park. Daines countered that would meet stiff resistance from the Yellowstone National Park caucus, not to mention supporters of Zion National Park.
Humor aside, several committee members commented on how hard the negotiations were. Daines said his staff had worked on compromises until 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, three hours before the committee vote.
The bill reauthorizes the Great American Outdoors Act, which Daines authored in 2020. That bill created a Legacy Restoration Fund providing up to $2 billion a year to the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Bureau of Indian Education for repair work. Yellowstone National Park alone has an estimated $1.5 billion to-do list.
Daines also thanked Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, the committee chairman, for letting the bill move forward despite Lee’s unresolved concerns. Lee opposed the 2020 bill and said the new version perpetuated many of his objections. In particular, he expressed frustration that the national park maintenance backlog had grown from $26 billion in 2020 to $43 billion in 2026 despite Congress spending $10 billion trying to fix the matter.
“If the intended purpose of the Great American Outdoors Act was to reduce the backlog, and six years later it’s significantly larger, what should Congress do?” Lee asked. He also complained about his inability to force changes to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which he said was adding new lands to the federal estate when it couldn’t afford to maintain what it already had.
California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla raised concerns in a different direction. He insisted on more negotiations over the bill’s codification of a $100 surcharge on foreign visitors, which the Interior Department imposed last July.
“Parks could become de facto immigration checkpoints,” Padilla said, “where hard-working Park Service staff would be required to check passports or birth certificates. That’s not what they signed up for.”
Padilla also questioned how the surcharge money would be distributed. Currently, each national park keeps 80 percent of its gate fees, with the remainder going to a NPS-wide general fund. Padilla said the new law would send all the foreign visitor surcharge dollars to the Legacy Restoration Fund, without any consultation about the impact on local communities or business needs.
The America the Beautiful Act has 64 cosponsors, giving it strong potential to pass the Senate. However, it would require reconciliation with a House version that has different language before making it to President Donald Trump’s desk for an anticipated July 4 signing.
