Since the untimely death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, advocates for hunting and conservation in the nation’s capital have feared that our top legislative priority would be hopelessly stalled by the Senate logjam that resulted. But in April, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) found an opening and seized upon it to advance core provisions of the bill.
The path to this accomplishment was long and winding.
The White House nomination of Merrick Garland, a perceived “moderate” judge now sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, was intended to put fire to the feet of Senate Republicans. But the White House political team miscalculated the impact of several Garland rulings that put him on the wrong side of the Second Amendment. As a result, they handed Senate Republicans more, rather than less, justification for delaying the Garland nomination. The White House gambit to pressure Republican Senators backfired, and instead gave them a solid reason to question Garland’s credentials and delay his nomination indefinitely. But frustrated Senate Democrats have exacted their price on the pace of other business in the Senate, refusing to cooperate on the forward movement of any number of important bills. Our priority – known in the Senate as the Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act – had been among the victims.
Senator Murkowski spotted an opportunity to thread the legislative needle when the Senate took up debate over a bill to modernize the nation’s energy infrastructure. As chair of the Senate Energy Committee, she was in the driver’s seat to make decisions on how to manage the bill’s debate on the Senate floor. And as a pragmatic lawmaker, she avoided the hot-button topics of climate change and oil and gas exploration in crafting the bill, to insulate it from becoming another pawn in the partisan dispute over the Supreme Court nomination.
The last major energy bill passed in 2007, and our nation has gone from fearing shortages of oil and gas to becoming the world’s leading producer of both fuels. Senator Murkowski intentionally limited the scope of the bill primarily to modernizing the nation’s energy infrastructure. That was a critical element in paving a path for the bill to come to the floor for debate. Even so, some Democratic Senators still blocked the bill to force attention to other issues, including the tainted water of Flint, Michigan. Ever patient, Senator Murkowski waited them out for three months. And she took that time to package up a number of major amendments, partially to address Democratic concerns, and partially to advance other issues she favored that had little prospect of passing the Senate as stand-alone legislation. The Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act was one of them.
Loyal readers will recall that the quirks of Senate committee jurisdiction forced the bill to be broken into two vehicles. In fashioning her amendment, Senator Murkowski chose carefully from the provisions of the bill. She included the most substantial parts of the legislation that expanded federal land access and the construction of shooting ranges. She also included language to make “Open unless closed” the hunting access policy for Forest Service and BLM lands, and she added provisions to support several worthy federal conservation programs that had previously been starved for resources. When the floor debate opened, Murkowski singled out these provisions to ensure her colleagues knew they were included in her amendment. And her calculation paid off when the votes were counted, as the amendment passed without opposition, with 97 in favor and zero voting against. Murkowski’s precision strategy was rewarded again with an overwhelming vote in favor of final passage, with 85 in favor and only 12 opposed to the overall bill.
Where does the legislative path lead from here? The House has already passed its own version of both the Sportsmen’s Act (called the “SHARE” Act in that chamber) and the energy bill. Congressional leaders will have to decide whether to follow the Senate’s lead and leave the measures conjoined for consideration by a conference committee. That committee will hammer out differences between the respective House and Senate versions, and develop a final version called a “conference report” to be given a final vote in both chambers. The bill passed by the House was more comprehensive in scope, and the full range of those provisions will be available to committee negotiators in crafting a final version. The other advantage of leaving the bills conjoined is that measures important to hunters are far more likely to be signed into law if they remain tied together with the larger bill, but prospects for the president’s signature will depend entirely on which specific measures remain included in the final report delivered by the committee.
So quite a bit of work remains to be done before the bill can land on the president’s desk, but its passage through the Senate is the high-water mark for progress for this legislation –it has been derailed in the Senate twice before. SCI is grateful to not only Senator Murkowski for her leadership on this legislation, but also its other original sponsors – Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), James Risch (R-Id.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.). SCI also appreciates the efforts of Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) for playing a key role in advancing this legislation. Finally, SCI appreciates the support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the rest of the Senate Majority Leadership team for bringing this important bill to the floor.
Hunters have every reason to celebrate this accomplishment, but our work is not done yet. Rest assured your entire SCI Washington team is focused like a laser on the last phase of moving the final bill through the Congress and to the president’s desk.