Editorial: President’s money grab off for now

Friday, July 29, 2005 | 8:50 a.m.

Early in his administration President Bush set a paradoxical policy of increasing spending while cutting taxes. The short-term effect is a superficial but politically advantageous jump in federal revenues, as people have more money to spend and tax collections show slight gains. The long-term effect, however, is enormous growth of the national debt as tax collections ultimately will fall well short of the yearly increases in federal spending. The national debt is now increasing by $1.64 billion per day and rapidly growing toward $8 trillion, an increase of more than 30 percent since Bush took office. This is money that will have to be paid back at some point by a combination of higher taxes and reduced benefits.

For Nevadans, that "some point" was intended by the Bush administration to begin immediately in the form of reduced benefits from the Public Land Management Act of 1998. Congress passed the act to compensate Nevada for the overwhelming amount of federal land it contains, land that cannot be used to develop tax-producing businesses and industries. The act says that all proceeds from federal land sales in Nevada are to be spent in Nevada on airport improvements, water infrastructure, education and conservation programs.

In an attempt to at least partially offset federal spending while keeping its tax cuts intact, the Bush administration in February put forward a budget for 2006 that proposed amending the lands act. The amendment would have been a gigantic money grab. It would have allowed the federal government to take 70 percent of our land-sale proceeds, amounting to more than $700 million a year.

The rest of the country is not yet having to pay for Bush's cockeyed economic theories, so why should Nevadans? Our congressional delegation -- two Democrats and three Republicans -- united in opposition to Bush's proposed money grab and persuaded a majority of their colleagues to oppose it as well. Thankfully, this week, it was able to announce that the money grab, for this year anyway, is almost certainly dead.

The delegation served Nevada well by heading off this threat to the state's well being. We are hopeful they will be as successful next year, when Bush and his allies in Congress are likely to again go after Nevada with the same proposal.