Sen. Cruz: ‘The Great American Outdoors Act Puts Government Spending on Auto-Pilot and Limits Private Ownership’

This week I filed four amendments to the Great American Outdoors Act, a bill that would establish a program allowing the government to federalize more land while adding $17.3 billion to the national debt. My amendments would bring much-needed fiscal restraints to the bill by ensuring congressional oversight of spending by the Department of Interior, with respect to federal land acquisition programs, and by prohibiting the Treasury Department from using an accounting gimmick that allows for even more spending by the Department of the Interior. Read the full text of two of my amendments here and here.

Upon introducing the amendments, I said:

"For decades, the federal government has been taking control of land all over the United States and now owns more land than it can properly maintain. When we're dealing with a $26 trillion national debt, it's neither fiscally responsible nor necessary for Congress to add over $17 billion to the debt and expand the federal government's ability to claim more land. Putting government spending on auto-pilot while reducing the amount of land available for private ownership, both of which this bill does, hurts American taxpayers in Texas and across the country."

I have long sought to rein in federal spending and prevent the federal government from acquiring more and more American land, voting against a bill last year that open-endedly authorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund and reduced congressional oversight. I have also fought against the federal government's attempt at land grabs in the National Defense Authorization Act, and an attempt at permanently reauthorizing the LWCF by attaching it to a must-pass spending bill.