Feds Spending $175,000 to Observe ‘Swimming Abilities’ of Fish

Free Beacon ^ | 2/21/14 | Elizabeth Harrington

[Libloather]

The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) will spend $175,000 for a study on the “swimming abilities” of fish in the Northern Rockies, the agency announced on Thursday.

The FWS, a bureau within the Department of the Interior, will award a grant for the study that will produce a “fish swimming video.”

The grant announcement, entitled “Cooperative Research Program on the Swimming Abilities of Native Stream Fishes in the Northern Rockies-Upper Great Plains Regions of Montana,” estimated the project’s cost at $175,000.

[Amendment10]

We've been doing this since the 1950s, since the Dingell Johnson Act. Collect an excise tax on fishing equipment and supplies that Treasury turns over to FWS who grants it back to the states.

Mea culpa. It dawned on me that if the fish being studied are on public lands which the feds have purchased from private owners (5th Amendment) or purchased with the consent of a state's legislature (Clause 17 of Section 8 of Article I), that Justice Marshall's prohibition on Congress's power to lay taxes probably does not apply in this case.

On the other hand, I wonder, if the federal Senate was still under the control of state legislatures, if the Senate would have killed the HoR bill which appropriated funds for this study.

Also, is federal government still under sequester or not?