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CLINTON RIVERS PROGRAM VIOLATES CONSTITUTION

The evil spirit of Leonid Brezhnev lives on.

Unfortunately, the legacy of the Russian Communist dictator is far more alive in America than in the former Soviet Union.

We have achieved a true Brezhnevist society in America.

The current regime manipulates - or "spins" - information to the masses. The journalism establishment recognizes the manipulation for the propaganda that it is - then describes it, accepts it, and largely goes about its work as if there is nothing wrong about the government telling boldfaced lies.

The attitude seems to be:

"The government is lying."
"It knows it's lying."
"We know it's lying,"
"It knows that we know it's lying."
"We know that the government knows that we know it's lying."

"Nonetheless, the government continues about its business of collecting taxes, putting people in jail, and starting wars."

And one of the worst things that our government is doing is violating Americans' property rights.

Beware of the "American Heritage Rivers Initiative," warns Alex Annett of the Heritage Foundation.

"The initiative creates, by executive fiat, the most all encompassing regulatory regime ever to be imposed on private landowners," warns Nancie Marzulla, president and chief counsel, Defenders of Property Rights. "Most other land-use programs have been designed to protect federal land. And in the case of the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, Congress passed these regulations. Never has an executive dared to assert so much control over private property through his own declaration."

The rivers initiative was announced during Clinton's 1997 State of the Union address.

Clinton says he intends to support communities in their efforts to restore and protect rivers across the United States.

To many American, this lofty goal sounds good. As usual, Clinton has chosen a very clever title for his program - supposedly protecting America's heritage.

But, on closer inspection, the pristine image it paints becomes murky, revealing a program that violates many constitutional and statutory provisions, involves the federal government further in local and state environmental issues, is inefficient and wastes tax dollars, and threatens personal property rights.

Nevertheless, President Clinton appears ready to begin implementing his initiative, although he has neither the constitutional authority to do so nor the intention of asking Congress for such authority. He also appears unconcerned that promoting this initiative could suggest to many that, for his Administration, the "era of big government" is not over.

On that topic, "Budget Whoppers" was the title of a column by James Glassman in the February 3 Washington Post. Glassman noted that President Bill Clinton said in his State of the Union Address, "We have the smallest government in 35 years."

"We don't," retorted Glassman. "In fact, we don't even have the smallest government in FIVE years."

According to Glassman, "In 1992, when he took office, federal spending - which is, after all, the best way to measure the size of government - was $1.4 trillion, or roughly $14,000 for every American household."

This year, spending will be $1.7 trillion.

That's no reduction at all.

It's a dramatic increase! The precise increase is 21 percent in a period when inflation, according to the consumer price index, rose less than 14 percent.

So, was Clinton telling the truth about government shrinking? Glassman says that President Clinton is telling lies about budget matters that are "big, brazen and undeniable."

And Annett says Congress should consider taking immediate action to block Clinton's river initiative before it floods America's communities with layers of federal bureaucracy and further muddies the balance of power in Washington, D.C.

Clinton unveiled new details about how he plans to implement his new American Heritage Rivers Initiative when he issued Executive Order 13061 on September 11, 1997.

Through executive order, Clinton has established an American Heritage Rivers Interagency Committee to oversee implementation of the initiative. Members of the committee will include the secretaries of the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, and Transportation; the attorney general; the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; the chairpersons of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities; or designees at the assistant secretary level or their equivalent.

"To nominate a river for designation as an American Heritage River," writes Annett, "a local community must submit a river nomination packet to the President's Council on Environmental Quality. The packet must include: a description of the river or river area to be considered, its notable resource qualities, a clearly defined vision for protecting the area and a specific plan of action to achieve it, evidence that a range of citizens and organizations in the community support the nomination and plan of action, and evidence that individuals in the community have had an opportunity to discuss and comment on the nomination and plan of action."

Clinton's Council on Environmental Quality will select a panel of experts to review the nominations and make recommendations to the President. From these recommendations, the President would select ten rivers or river areas to designate as American Heritage Rivers.

These American Heritage Rivers would receive preferential treatment for federal dollars and the support of other federal programs.

"On the surface, President Clinton's program looks appealing," says Annett. "Rivers have played a vital role in the country's history, culture, recreation, health, environment, and economy.

Finding ways to encourage states and local communities across the country to become involved in improving the water quality of their rivers and revitalizing their waterfronts is commendable. The AHRI, however, will amount to little more than a surface ripple in accomplishing these goals.

"Impediments to achieving the AHRI's lofty goals have more to do with the design of the program than with the intentions of communities. The notable problems with President Clinton's initiative are that:

"1. It violates a number of constitutional and statutory provisions;
"2. It is wasteful and inefficient;
"3. It reduces the role and authority of the states;
"4. It threatens property rights; and
"5. It serve[s] political purposes.

"Upon close examination, it becomes clear that the AHRI is bad policy and unconstitutional and, like many of President Clinton's other initiatives, will become another political pork-barrel program designed to send federal dollars to politically important jurisdictions across the United States.

Does the initiative violate the Constitution?

Yes, says Annett.

"Above almost all else, Americans love the beauty and resources of their country. They clearly understand that the U.S. Constitution establishes a system of government to protect their individual rights, and that the federal government should be expressly limited in its ability to usurp those rights.

"They may disagree, at times, about how much power is given each branch of the federal government to settle disputes and to limit personal freedoms, but there is no dispute that the Founding Fathers intentionally and explicitly designed a balance of power to prevent legislative, judicial, or executive arrogance and abuse of power. Americans expect their elected leaders to abide by the separation of powers delineated in the Constitution, and they want the federal judiciary on guard to make sure they do.

"Rather than honor these expectations," says Annett. "President Clinton's American Heritage Rivers Initiative violates both the intent and the letter of the U.S. Constitution. It gives the President as well as his executive agencies authorities that clearly and constitutionally belong to the legislative branch of government, and it confiscates the land use and zoning powers of the states."

President Clinton, through his executive order, is attempting to establish and exert federal control over something that clearly is under state jurisdiction. By allowing the intervention of the federal government through federal bureaucrats, known as "river navigators," who are appointed by the President, Executive Order No. 13061 will interject the federal government heavily into the local decision-making process.

The Clinton Administration claims that river navigators will not interfere in the local planning and zoning process, yet it resists incorporating a provision to prohibit them and all other federal employees involved with the initiative from intervening in local zoning and other decisions affecting private property and water rights.

Such a provision would ensure that the states and local communities continue to control areas that are rightfully under their jurisdiction. The AHRI appears to be the program of a President who believes Washington, D.C., knows best and can govern best every aspect of life in every American community.

The Clinton Administration claims that the AHRI will help "reinvent government." But President Clinton's understanding of reinventing government seems to mean creating additional layers of bureaucracy.

The American Heritage Rivers Initiative, in fact, is similar to an existing program, the National Rural Development Partnership (NRDP) established by President George Bush in 1991 by executive order.

The NRDP is a flawed program: President Bush had no congressional authority over water rights, property rights, or the appropriation of funding when he initiated it; therefore, it also violates a number of constitutional provisions.

Like the AHRI, the NRDP planned to create a collaborative relationship among federal, state, local, and tribal governments, and private, nonprofit, and community-based organizations within each state and some territorial areas, in order to establish a comprehensive and strategic approach to rural development efforts in each state. A comparison of the descriptions of these programs from their respective World Wide Web sites reveals further similarities.

According to the National Rural Development Partnership, the NRDP's objectives are to:

According to the Clinton Administration, the AHRI is supposed to:

At a time when the country wants to downsize government and revitalize the importance of the Tenth Amendment, and Congress is recognizing the necessity of empowering local communities and states even more, the American Heritage Rivers Initiative chooses the wrong approach for preserving some of America's great resources, its many rivers.

Although there often has been a lack of political will in Congress to tackle these kinds of issues - even with flagrant violations of law - several Members of Congress recognize the problems with President Clinton's initiative and have begun to focus their attention on it.

For example, on June 10, 1997, Representative Helen Chenoweth (R-ID) and 46 cosponsors introduced H.R. 1842 to terminate funding by any federal agency for the AHRI.

The Bill passed the House Resources Committee by voice vote on November 5, 1997. In addition, on December 10, 1997, Representatives Chenoweth, Richard Pombo (R-CA), and Bob Schaffer (R-CO), and House Resources Committee chairman Don Young (R-AK) filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to challenge the constitutional authority of the President to implement this initiative.

Because President Clinton plans to designate the first ten rivers in early February, the time has come for every Member of Congress to take a long, hard, and honest look at the AHRI program.

It is an indefensible waste of taxpayer dollars. Through its Wild and Scenic Rivers Program and numerous other water quality initiatives, Congress already has devoted considerable resources to cleaning, restoring, and enhancing America's rivers with great success.

But even more disturbing than the waste, the AHRI program seriously undermines congressional authority and upsets the delicate balance of power so carefully crafted in the U.S. Constitution.

Congress must exercise its proper statutory and constitutional authority to bring this program to an end before it is launched.

Christian Crusade Newspaper
March, 1998
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