How will Congress pay for CARA? Will it require an increase in taxes?
The federal government collects billions of dollars annually from private companies that pay for the opportunity to extract oil and gas from offshore reserves on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). Currently, a small portion of OCS revenues (which average approximately $4 billion annually) are used to fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund. CARA uses a larger portion of these federal OCS revenues to fund not only the Land and Water Conservation Fund, but a host of other local, state, and federal conservation programs. The logic behind CARA’s financing is simple and sensible revenues derived from the exploitation of the nations non-renewable oil and gas resources should be reinvested in the protection and restoration of renewable natural resources such as our wildlife, public lands, and coasts. CARA will not require any new taxes; it simply relies upon a portion of the $4 billion that the federal government already receives annually (on average) from private OCS leases.
