Political Outrage

President Reagan’s veto of the Montana wilderness bill was an outrageous political act with the sole purpose of assisting Republican Conrad Burns in his effort to defeat Sen. John Melcher (D-Mont.) in Tuesday’s election. The President’s veto was announced by Burns in Montana even before the White House disclosed the action in Washington.

The 1.4-million-acre wilderness bill took 10 years of work by the Montana delegation to Congress, and finally passed both houses on uncontested voice votes. Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mont.) had said: “This Montana wilderness bill and the six which have unsuccessfully preceded it have been debated, discussed, argued about, fought over, considered, amended, researched, analyzed, dissected and restored. This legislation represents a triumph in public participation.”

Reagan’s explanation was that the proposed wilderness was too big, that it posed an economic threat to timber and mining interests and would have reduced federal receipts from timber sales. In fact, the federal government consistently loses money by selling Montana timber at below cost. All proven mining claims were protected. And the state now realizes that tourism, which would be encouraged by the preservation of scenic areas, is the best long-range hope for its economy.

Approval of the bill would have released another 4 million acres of Forest Service land in Montana from wilderness study. With the veto, however, all 5.4 million acres will remain frozen from any resource development until a wilderness act becomes law. Even corporate interests that did not particularly like the bill wanted the issue settled this year. Conservation organizations had proposed a 2.8-million-acre wilderness plan and found Melcher’s proposal unnecessarily accommodating to timber and mining interests compared with bills sponsored by Williams and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). Even so, they supported the final bill.

In the 25-year history of the Wilderness Act, this is only the second time a wilderness bill has been vetoed. Reagan earlier vetoed a Florida bill over a specific peripheral issue that was solved in a new bill that then was signed into law. The Montana bill was the first of about 100 wilderness acts to be rejected supposedly because of the substance of the proposal. The real sin of the Montana bill, of course, is that it landed on the President’s desk just before the election.