Rep. MacArthur’s town hall meeting in Willingboro was a lively protest scene with helicopters buzzing overhead while hundreds of indignant constituents waited (in vain) to get one of 300 seats at the Kennedy Center.
The police were very polite and thoroughly in control, but they had two or three extra large paddy wagons parked beside the center in case any anarchists showed up.
The crowd was there because Rep. MacArthur’s amendment brought the Republican American Health Care Act, ACHA, back to life, and it put people with pre-existing conditions at greater risk.
I went to the town hall to support Americans in their struggle to get decent affordable care for themselves and their families, but I have a separate beef with Congressman MacArthur. If this doesn’t sound insane to you, we don’t live on the same planet.
In 2015, MacArthur introduced H.R. 2295, the National Energy Security Corridors Act. “This bill amends the Mineral Leasing Act to allow natural gas pipeline rights-of-way through all federally owned lands, including lands in the National Park System…,” the text explains.
It directs the Department of the Interior to “identify and designate suitable federal lands as National Energy Security Corridors for construction, operation, and maintenance of natural gas transmission facilities…”
“For purposes of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 neither the designation of a Corridor, nor the incorporation of a Corridor into agency plans, shall be treated as a major federal action subject to environmental impact evaluation,” it says in conclusion.
This bill is still alive, and making its way slowly through a Republican-controlled Congress. It is appalling and it must be withdrawn. There is a precedent for that.
On February 15, Jason Chaffetz, a Republican Congressman from Utah, rescinded his own bill to sell off millions of acres of federally owned land after backlash from conservationists and sportsmen.
“Groups I support and care about fear this bill sends the wrong message,” he wrote. “The legislation dies tomorrow.”
Representative Tom MacArthur must rescind and withdraw H.R. 2295, or resign.
The National Parks and Federal lands do not belong to the Department of Interior or to Congress, or to the gas companies; they belong to the People, and the People are sovereign in the United States of America.
Sincerely,
James Mullin
Moorestown
