Some Decisions Can’t Be Reversed

When the family budget gets in a jam, the choices aren’t that different from the ones Congress is debating. You can cut spending - on dental checkups, charity, clothes, cars, cable TV. And if you change your mind, well, it’s easy to start spending again.

You also can unload possessions - sell part of your yard, if it’s wide enough. But if the new owner builds a cheap house and rents it to motorcycle gangs, you’ve made an irreversible mistake.

Same goes for Congress. Yes, the curtailing of federal outlays might wind up hurting like a postponed visit to the dentist. But an unwise cut can be restored.

The far more radical - and permanent - parts of the Republican agenda are the calls to liquidate federal lands.

Look at maps of Idaho and Eastern Washington; they’re covered with government green - national forests, and vast stretches administered by the bureaus of Land Management and Reclamation.

Inland Northwest residents know well the flaws in federal management. Paralyzing regulations, lawsuits and arrogant bureaucrats clearly are a problem.

But why is liquidation the proposed solution? After all, it lies well within the power of Congress to revise regulations and make federal stewards more responsive to local residents, who know the land best and value all its uses - for fish and game as well as logs and ore.

It is unsettling that industry-oriented conservatives, like Idaho Sen. Larry Craig and Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas, are the ones pushing bills to transfer federal lands to the states or to private ownership.

And it may be a sign of a still-unfolding agenda that the Republican budget invites mining companies to buy certain lands at prices set by a 123-year-old mining law - $2.50 to $5 an acre.

There’s a key difference between federal and state management. States manage their resource lands for one primary purpose: to produce revenue. Federal agencies, flawed as their results are, manage for multiple uses including recreation and wildlife habitat.

Even if the American people did want their trust lands run primarily for industry’s goals the states themselves have raised a big concern: It costs millions, in personnel and road-building subsidies, to manage federal land. Where would states find the money to take over that responsibility? State legislatures are cutting back as energetically as Congress is.

Federal lands do cry out for better management. And some state and private lands are well run. But the American people deserve clear evidence that turning federal lands over to states or corporations would be an improvement for all concerns, not just the industries that stand to profit.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board