Daines Celebrates Senate Passage of Great American Outdoors Act

Montana Senator Steve Daines met with the media on Wednesday morning to celebrate the Senate’s passage of the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act.

“This has been a great day in the U.S. Senate,” said Daines. “We made history today in the United States Senate by passing the Great American Outdoors Act. We had a strong bipartisan vote or 73 to 25 because this is a bipartisan bill that protects a critical conservation program, the Land and Water Conservation Program.”

Daines described just one aspect of the bill that will help rebuild our national parks.

“The bill addresses our maintenance backlog that faces our national parks and many of our public lands,” he said. “When you think about it for Montana and the nation, LWCF is good for public access, it’s good for jobs, it’s good for wildlife habitat, it’s good for land management, and the best part is that it costs the public absolutely nothing.”

Now that the Senate has passed the bill, Daines said a difficult task lies ahead, getting the bill through the Democratically controlled House of Representatives.

“That’s the next fight we’re going to have is to get this passed in the House,” he said. “It’s going to take everybody acting in a bipartisan way. We’ve got our colleagues here on the Senate side. We’ve been working with (Senators) Joe Manchin, Martin Heinrich, and Angus King and Mark Warner. They’ve really been the key leaders on the Democrat side.”

Daines said that when he met with President Trump in February, he said that if Daines can get the Great American Outdoors Act through Congress, then he would sign it.

If passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, The Great American Outdoors Act will fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":33555201,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"28":1}">