As ordered reported by the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on April 8, 2014
S. 1294 would designate about 20,000 acres of federal land in Tennessee as wilderness under the Wilderness Act of 1964. Based on information provided by the Forest Service, CBO estimates that implementing the legislation would have no significant effect on the federal budget. Enacting S. 1294 would not affect direct spending or revenues; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures do not apply.
The lands that would be added to the National Wilderness Preservation System are already owned by the federal government and are currently being managed to protect their wilderness values. CBO expects that designating those areas as wilderness would not increase the costs of managing or protecting them. In addition, because the Forest Service already manages the affected lands as wilderness, we expect that they would produce no income from commercial activities over the next 10 years under current law.
S. 1294 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and would impose no costs on state, local, or tribal governments.
