The vote is in the McDade Amendment to the Interior Department Appropriations bill (HR 3363) to reduce funding by 4%. The Reagan Administration has already made major cuts in important Interior Department programs, especially those designed to protect, rather than commercialize, our natural resources. Environmentalists backed higher funding levels for most (though not all) of the programs financed in the bill, some of which the President has tried to eliminate entirely. Among the programs which environmentalists did not want to see cut were the Land and Water Conservation Fund (used to buy parkland, wildlife refuges and national forests); the operating budgets for the national Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Office of Surface Mining; the urban parks program; and historic preservation grants.

McDade Amendment rejected 206-213; June 28, 1983. NO is the pro-environmental vote.