WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN), Chairman of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Congressional Caucus, today lauded passage of a sense of the Senate amendment he authored with Senator Max Cleland (D-GA) urging the Congress to increase funding for the National Park Service (NPS) and to eliminate the maintenance backlog by 2007.
“We have a responsibility to take care of our nation’s natural treasures, and that means providing the National Park Service with the funding it needs,” Thompson said. “We are blessed in Tennessee to have the nation’s most-visited national park, but funding for the Smokies has not kept up with increasing needs. We must do more to protect and preserve our national parks, and I urge Congress to act on this consensus by adequately funding the National Park Service in 2003 and the future.”
The amendment approved by the Senate today highlighted the erosion of the National Park Service’s operating budget, despite efforts by the Congress to adequately fund the National Park System in recent years. Due to increased visitation and a tremendous maintenance backlog, the NPS current operating budget faces an estimated shortfall of $600 million for FY 2003.
In May, Senator Thompson and a bipartisan group of twenty-seven Senators wrote to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee urging support for a significant increase in the National Park Service’s operating budget. The current Interior Appropriations bill provides $1.59 billion for operation of the National Park System, $98 million more than the FY 2002 appropriation.

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