Anti-government people complaining about government budget cuts.

[MrFun]

Why is the park service plowing a road outside the park? Wyoming and / or Montana should man up.

Exactly. States' rights also means responsibilities that go with it.

[MrFun]

Voting IS a federal issue by the Constitution. Many of the budget items are not.

You seem to think that I don't want the federal government involved anywhere. The truth is, I only want them involved where they should be. I guess no one can stop you from pushing your agenda, but maybe you should limit things like this post to relevant discussions.

fine, fair enough

[The Mad Monk]

It talks about them, and also talks about all the residents whose livelihoods are directly or indirectly tied to Yellowstone. You must have missed this sentence in the article:

"Today, Yellowstone country is a deeply conservative place, where government is regarded with great suspicion."

I think the quoted sentence is a nicer/more professional way of saying "having a pathological hatred for anything having to do with federal government."

I think those words don't mean what you think they mean.

But thanks for making me run a word search on that article, it brought someone else to my attention:

But the sequestration law slices money from most budgets across the government, including $136 million from the 398 national parks.

That's $341,000 per park if evenly divided. Why, I ask without a hint of suspicion, would the first and most popular park in the system be forced to cut ten times as much?

[Jon Miller]

It is probably the most expensive park and probably the size of cut goes by cost.

JM

[snoopy369]

Presumably because they have a larger budget than most other parks? Many of those national parks have a handful of rangers and not much else.

[MrFun]

Presumably because they have a larger budget than most other parks? Many of those national parks have a handful of rangers and not much else.

makes sense

[The Mad Monk]

Two weeks it is, then.

[DinoDoc]

The sequestration cuts the rate of growth by 2% when average budget growth is about 6-8%. When Washington initiates cuts like this it is deliberate mismanagement to make people feel the pain.

The strategy is called "firemen first." It's how government drones fight back against calls to cut budgets: punish the populace.

[snoopy369]

Yellowstone's budget is in the $60MM-$70MM range (I have very old figures, so I'm estimating growth based on NPS growth). 1.8MM from 60MM is around 3%. Total US NPS budget is around $2.2B; 136MM is around 6%. So Yellowstone is being cut half of its share of the total budget, percentage-wise. (Some of that budget may be non-discretionary, like the Bison program).

http://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/upload/businessplan.pdf

If you consider the 'Appropriated Base' funds to be the source of revenue under consideration here, then they're about at par with the remainder of the NPS (as that's about half of their total funding).

[MichaeltheGreat]

Why is the park service plowing a road outside the park? Wyoming and / or Montana should man up.

States will typically only plough areas that have multiple connections to other state or county roads. With a lot (not sure if it's a majority) of woodland national parks, you'll also have national forest lands buffering the park boundaries. NPS will typically plow into NF lands outside of NP boundaries, even though the roads throught the NF lands are typically state or county or tribally owned roads. I'm not sure if there's an inter-agency charge process, since NPS is part of Interior and NFS is part of USDA.

For example, Cal. state highway 120 west from US 395 goes up the Tioga pass and into Yosemite from the east (Tuolomne meadows side) Unless the Yosemite valley roads are cleared within the park boundary, 120 west is a dead end, so the state won't plow it at all. NPS doesn't plow all the way down to US 395, but they do plow sections outside the national park boudary that are still with national forest land.

[snoopy369]

So what you're saying is this is more complicated than a couple of soundbites.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The sequestration cuts the rate of growth by 2% when average budget growth is about 6-8%. When Washington initiates cuts like this it is deliberate mismanagement to make people feel the pain.

2% of total budget, or 2% of discretionary?

[DinoDoc]

2% of total budget, or 2% of discretionary?

Sequester is a a 5% reduction in discretionary spending –after 14% increase since 2008. The budget even under sequester still went up this year.

[giblets]

The sequestration cuts the rate of growth by 2% when average budget growth is about 6-8%. When Washington initiates cuts like this it is deliberate mismanagement to make people feel the pain.

You think they could have cut funding in a way that wouldn't make anyone feel the pain? Or is cutting funding for national parks supposed to be especially painful?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Sequester is a a 5% reduction in discretionary spending –after 14% increase since 2008. The budget even under sequester still went up this year.

14% increase is not across the board, it's some areas more than others, and not hugely out of line with inflation. Although it's popular to scream "firemen first" that idea that the intent is to maximize public impact is more than a bit exaggerated.. A lot of contracts, especially multi-year procurements, have built in CG termination costs which make termination actually increase current FY costs without allowing for such costs in the agency budget, so those discretionary contracts don't get touched. Short term non-solutions like sequestration always excessively hit recurring expense areas such as government employee or contract employee costs and current year opex items which aren't subject to CG termination costs. To really unwind and reduce agency costs is in a way that increases net efficiency per dollar and minimizes impact on services or capabilities, you need a 5-10 year window. There's also a big difference in termination costs between non-renewal at an option year and early termination during base years.

If the House was serious about reforming cost of government, they could target repeal of the Service Contract Act of 1965 and the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts, or failing that, enact new legislation better directing how DoL makes prevailing wage determinations. They should also legislatively overhaul the FAR, DFARS and GSAM, limit allowable indirect cost margins in CASDI statements, require cost plus contracts to be closed out within five fiscal years of last appropriation or three fiscal years of last activity, and a whole bunch of other procurement reforms.