Crater Lake Nat'l Park potential fee increases (likely)

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Splintercat
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Re: Crater Lake Nat'l Park potential fee increases (likely)

Post by Splintercat » November 23rd, 2014, 7:31 pm

Does it state anywhere in the proposal for the increase to $25.00 that it is because of further proposed cutbacks in federal funding for Crater Lake? How much has total Federal funding to Crater Lake specifically decreased in the last 10 years?
No, I'm just assuming that based on a decades-long underfunding of national parks (and public lands in general) since the Reagan era -- this graphic shows it as well as any (and is based on the CBO):

Image

This chart shows the decade-long big defense spending spike under Reagan/Bush I (green) and the shorter spike from the Recovery Act of 2008 in domestic spending (orange - includes most discretionary programs like transportation, environment, etc.) Not sure what all is in the "other non-interest" but because it doesn't exclude defense, but based on the big spike in 2008-10, one piece must be unemployment insurance. I'm guessing veterans programs are in there, too, as you can see post-war bumps in that curve.

Obviously, the entitlement programs are the area where the expenditures are greatly increasing as a share of GDP, and without getting into a major political debate, I think the GOP learned a painful lesson when Bush II proposed privatizing Medicare (thud!), and with the Ryan budget and sequestration have attempted to blunt the impact of rapidly growing entitlements with flat or declining discretionary spending. Obviously, that's not sustainable, but my point is that the REST of our public programs are suffering as a result -- including National Parks. A factoid I pulled form the National Parks Conservation Association: the average family tax burden for national parks is $2.60 per year. That's absurd, and certainly doesn't reflect MY priorities, so that's the importance of weighing in! :)
Not surprised you want to blame Greg Walden (Oregon's only Republican Representative) but do the facts actually point to him in any way being actually responsible for this.
Only because he has signed on to the GOP leadership (he's the fourth in command, though he makes a point of not emphasizing that in Blue Oregon). The Republicans have been behind the sequester, shutting down the government periodically and generally opposed to prioritizing public lands in the federal budget -- they've also beat the drum on privatization of public lands, right down to selling them off.

So, it's stark between the major parties on the environment and public lands, there's not much debate about that point. Plus, with the demise of moderation in Washington, the few environment-friendly Republicans that used to exist were drummed out of office. Mark Hatfield was pushed out because he voted against the balanced budget amendment (one of the more absurd gimmicks to emerge in recent years). I'm not partisan, but I'm definitely an issues voter -- and I vote environment first. I'd love to have a Republican champion the environment, in fact, because it would make the Dems have to work HARDER for my vote! Now, my vote is just taken for granted, as there is no real choice between the parties on this issue.

Stepping off my soapbox...

Tom ;)

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Re: Crater Lake Nat'l Park potential fee increases (likely)

Post by retired jerry » November 23rd, 2014, 10:10 pm

Good chart Tom

So National Parks must be part of the orange "non defense discrectionary"?

Looks like it's been trending down since 1980 - so it makes sense long term maintenance could have been neglected

It went up a little 2000 to 2009

and down steeply since 2009 - that must be why they're increasing entrance fees so much, to make up for these steep cuts

Seperate issue - health and social security have doubled while everything else has been going down. This is the big problem - even zeroing out everything else won't fix it. Actually, it's mostly health costs:

Image

I think Pete Peterson wants to cut spending on social security and health, so he lumped them together, and then jumps to the solution of cutting spending.

Another solution is to figure out how to provide healthcare without further increases. Interestingly, since obamacare has been implemented in 2010 or so, from that plot, healthcare costs have actually gone down. This is just a couple years, but that would be a much better solution than just cutting the amount the government spends - get healthcare providers to live with what they're currently getting rather than continuing past growth trends.

This is beyond Crater Lake visitor fees, but is the big thing you see from that chart.

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Re: Crater Lake Nat'l Park potential fee increases (likely)

Post by retired jerry » November 23rd, 2014, 10:31 pm

In 2009, 2010, and 2011 there were one time stimulus projects passed by Bush and Obama to fight the recession. Since they're one time projects, maybe just ignore them.

So we're just left with the slow downward trend since 1980.

So we're replacing funding from federal taxes with user fees.

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Re: Crater Lake Nat'l Park potential fee increases (likely)

Post by Peder » November 24th, 2014, 1:01 am

drm wrote:I don't pay anything - I get it free because of my volunteer activity. I think I was offered 3 NWF passes last year.
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Re: Crater Lake Nat'l Park potential fee increases (likely)

Post by drm » November 24th, 2014, 9:02 am

retired jerry wrote: Interestingly, since obamacare has been implemented in 2010 or so, from that plot, healthcare costs have actually gone down. This is just a couple years, but that would be a much better solution than just cutting the amount the government spends - get healthcare providers to live with what they're currently getting rather than continuing past growth trends.
The graph is not of actual costs, but percent of GDP. So health care costs have not gone down, but their share of the economy apparently has. And the rate of growth of health care is down as well. Obamacare has actually introduced more competition into health insurance due to the way the exchanges work and apparently getting fewer people to get their health care from emergency rooms also helps, both of which seem so far to counter the costs of the insurance policy subsidies.

But still, this is not a scenario I see in Congress: "health care is not going up as fast as we thought so let's increase funding to the parks and forests."

And parks and forests are not the only thing those of limited income are getting squeezed out of. How about college? Working no more than 40 hours/week? A reasonably secure retirement? And many of those who are most squeezed simply have to work too many hours for the basics to spend time visiting parks.

As long as the larger economy is so unbalanced with most of the benefits and the rewards going to so few, it's hard to see how those of limited income avoid the squeeze. The fees might just possibly preserve the resource for those of us who are not as squeezed financially, but there is a bigger picture here and it's impacts rain down on everything beneath.

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Re: Crater Lake Nat'l Park potential fee increases (likely)

Post by 200,000' » November 25th, 2014, 12:20 pm

retired jerry wrote: So we're replacing funding from federal taxes with user fees.
Right. And that is what is exactly wrong.

These national parks and other wildlands are the birthright of Americans. Your Federal Form 1040 should be all the payment you need to make in order to access these places.

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Re: Crater Lake Nat'l Park potential fee increases (likely)

Post by Splintercat » November 25th, 2014, 7:47 pm

retired jerry wrote:So we're replacing funding from federal taxes with user fees.
If we're going to shift to this principle, then I'm looking forward to seeing how the Department of Defense is financed... and who will get that big bill! :twisted: :lol:

It's no coincidence that the advocates of "user pays" only advocate that for programs/purposes they don't intend to use or deem of value.

Tom :roll:

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Re: Crater Lake Nat'l Park potential fee increases (likely)

Post by raven » November 25th, 2014, 10:32 pm

Splintercat posted:
Image

1. Interest refers to interest payments on the national debt, so "other non-interest" means all payments for goods and services other than those on the other lines.

2. The graph is meaningless for years after 2008 because GDP was depressed and is assumed to be depressed in the future in the graphic.

3. The forecast Social Security and medical expenses are based on data made irrelevant by the results of the new medical plans -- outlays are running well below the forecasts available at the date of the chart.

Note that as a proportion of full employment gdp, "other non-interest" would be relatively smaller than as shown compared to the other items because social service expenditures shrink as incomes increase.

I consider the chart to be deliberate political theater because of the failure to correct for or flag the ongoing depression. (Note: I wrote depression -- which is relative to full employment -- not recession.)

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Re: Crater Lake Nat'l Park potential fee increases (likely)

Post by Water » November 30th, 2014, 11:56 pm

to bring this back to the level of crater lake--i wanted to say when I brought up my quip about the visitor centers I didn't truly intend that visitor centers should be done away with at parks. I don't think every TH needs a kiosk and sign, but sure a lot of our wonderful national parks, national forests, and state parks can use a visitor portal to learn about the place they're visiting. Often they can serve as a good repository of history/artifacts/etc. My only point of voicing crater lake's new visitor center discussion was in the context of the talking about raising park entrance fees. I would have to crunch the numbers but I do wonder how far the projected $10,000,000 cost to pay for the proposed new visitor center there would go to covering the backlog of work needing to be done that increased entrance fees would be tasked with keeping pace of. I guess I was a little befuddled when I saw on crater lake's FB page that they're talking new visitor center.. I've never felt like I was unable to learn about the lake when I've visited and its been socked in under 10ft of snow and fog-soup with 5ft visibility.. On FB park personnel presented as if they don't currently have a visitor center.. whereas I could have swore they did already. http://www.nps.gov/crla/planyourvisit/v ... enters.htm

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Re: Crater Lake Nat'l Park potential fee increases (likely)

Post by jessbee » December 1st, 2014, 6:40 am

Matt, they do have a visitor's center and it's staffed year round, although the open hours in the winter are minimal. The center is small but informative, and the rangers are extremely friendly and helpful.

I've never been in the summer so I don't know how overwhelmed they get in peak season.
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