Obama said during his campaign he "will repair the damage done to our national parks by inadequate funding," but so far, he has done only slightly better than George W. Bush when it comes to boosting the parks' budget. Since 2007, the annual budget has increased by more than $100 million a year. Next year's increase of $218 million is an improvement, but it's hardly transformative.
"It's a very little increase that Obama has managed to get through the Congress," says Bruce Hamilton, deputy executive director of the Sierra Club. "It may be a step in the right direction, but it's not nearly enough. Much more needs to be done by Congress and the administration to find much larger public funding investment in future years. They will need to keep adding more."
Last year, under Bush, the parks budget was about $2.5 billion. This year, it is a bit over $2.7 billion. The parks have a maintenance backlog of $9.2 billion and an operating deficit of about $580 million. Their annual budget is less than 0.1 percent of the federal budget and is less than what America spends in a week in Iraq.
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