Congress and retailers want to rebuild national parks. Road tolls may be payable

Congress is trying to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary this year by devoting more money to renovate aging national parks. President Donald Trump talks about the importance of making federal facilities look better while cutting funding to the National Park Service in his budget proposal.

Republican lawmakers are seeking funding sources such as tolling federally managed roads in the Washington area used by tens of thousands of commuters each day and increasing admission fees to national parks for visitors from outside the United States, while Democrats They argue that tolling roads that intersect with the Capital Ring Road is an unsustainable solution and that there is no need to find new funds to finance park renovations, as it is already the government’s responsibility to maintain the parks.

Lawmakers are racing to pass a successor to the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), which President Trump signed into law during his first term to help the National Park Service overcome a backlog of park system maintenance. That law has now expired, and the maintenance backlog is only growing, so Congress hopes to pass a successor bill to complete the job.

National parks are so popular with voters that they are one of the few truly bipartisan issues left on Capitol Hill. Few lawmakers would oppose funding for parks, and President Trump’s proposed reductions and sales of public lands are routinely defeated in Congress. These parks also support a burgeoning outdoor recreation industry that contributes to the economy, supporting REI, Patagonia, dupont.

“If we can find a way to use toll roads on federal roads, that’s one way we can fund them,” said Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. Westerman said he is creating what he calls the “Next 250 Fund” to provide funding for the park.

Westerman said the toll would be justified because the first revision of the Great American Outdoors Act directed funds to repair the George Washington Memorial Parkway, a federal highway in the Washington metropolitan area. Many federally managed roads crisscross the metropolitan area.

“Look at all the money that comes out of Wyoming’s parks. It goes to things like the George Washington Parkway and the admission fees from there. So why shouldn’t we choose that as an option to raise money to take care of future maintenance backlogs?” he asked.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, dismissed the possibility of tolls to collect additional taxes, saying drivers who use Washington-area roads balk at the idea.

“Every colleague I’ve talked to representing these fields says this is a poison pill with no quick fix,” Huffman said.

Huffman said there was no need to find additional revenue to match the new spending included in the bill, calling it a Republican “obsession.”

“It’s deferred maintenance and it’s like a debt we’ve already incurred,” he says. “So tinkering with these politicized offsets is not a productive path forward.”

The legislative effort comes against the backdrop of President Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal, which would cut the National Park Service’s overall budget by 34% and cut its construction budget by 72% from 2025 to less than $50 million.

These cuts follow a total of nearly a quarter of the National Park Service workforce cut in 2025 after Trump returns to the White House, according to data compiled by the National Park Conservation Association.

The Senate is not pursuing tolls or other new revenue from the bill, dubbed the “America the Beautiful Act.” The bill would use the same mechanism as the original Great American Outdoors Act to fund maintenance, funneling oil and gas royalties from all federal energy development revenues into a fund called the Legacy Restoration Fund set aside for park maintenance.

The Senate bill is sponsored by Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Angus King (R-Maine) and has 52 sponsors in the Senate.

Asked about the proposed toll, King said, “Let’s see how we can do it here, and then we’ll talk to Chairman Westerman.”

At issue is the White House’s request in its fiscal year 2027 budget request to reinstate the Heritage Restoration Fund, which expires after fiscal year 2025. The White House also supported a fee for foreign tourists, saying the Park Service would “introduce additional fees for foreign tourists in our most-visited parks and provide hundreds of millions of dollars for maintenance at parks across the country.”

In President Trump’s first year in the White House, the number of foreign tourists visiting the United States fell 5.9% from a year earlier, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The National Park Service has already implemented a $100 per person surcharge per day of visit for expatriates to the most popular national parks, a change that President Trump wants to enact into law.

Democrats are also keeping a close eye on legislative language that could pave the way for a variety of Trump’s projects around Washington, including plans to build a White House ballroom and the Arc de Triomphe.

“I’m concerned that some of the language we’ve seen could be used for vanity construction projects, and that won’t work either,” Huffman said.

The outdoor recreation market is a huge industry worth billions of dollars in the United States, with specialized companies like REI and Patagonia walmart and target For apparel companies, etc. lululemon and Abercrombie & Fitch.

Neil Saunders, an analyst and managing director at GlobalData Retail, said retailers were committed to supporting GAOA because legislation that supports the outdoors and America’s national parks is a safe policy to support and is inherently apolitical.

“It’s like casting a halo around the brand. It’s tied to sustainability. It’s tied to the green agenda, but it’s not really political in a controversial sense,” Sanders said. “Most Americans think, ‘Hey, our public parks are assets. They’re national assets. We should protect them. We should take care of them. We should make sure they’re well taken care of. Parks are a source of pride. And I think it’s very easy for retailers to agree to something like that.’

Of course, it is also ideal for business.

The Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, an industry group that supports GAOA, said in a November report that outdoor recreation drives $1.2 trillion in economic output and supports 5 million U.S. jobs each year. The group found that recreation on federal lands and waters adds $351 million to the U.S. economy every day. That’s the same amount of economic impact that comes from hosting eight Super Bowls every month.

For retailers like REI and VF Corp., which own brands like The North Face and Timberland, that means more customers coming into stores to buy camping gear, helmets and hiking boots. If a consumer visits a national park and likes what they see there, they may decide to make outdoor recreation a more regular hobby. That probably means spending money on gear related to those hobbies. On the other hand, if you visit a park and find it unorganized and unenjoyable, you might try something else during your next free time, perhaps indoors.

If more people visit national parks, “the market could grow because more people will be doing outdoor activities,” Sanders said. “You need equipment, even if it’s basic things like a coat and a backpack.”

The debate over how to fund GAOA comes at a time when the overall wellness market is growing and becoming a significant economic driver. More consumers are paying close attention to their bodies, what they consume and how they spend their time. For many people, this includes exercising outdoors or simply spending more time in nature for mental health reasons.

U.S. consumers’ interest in wellness, a trend that was on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerated during lockdown orders, with increased interest in outdoor activities, national parks, and sports and leisure equipment sales.

While that interest is still there and is now being boosted by the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, sports and leisure equipment sales have slowed since the pandemic. The main reason for that, Sanders said, was that so many people were stocking up on outdoor gear at the time and that discretionary spending had slowed overall.

According to GlobalData, between 2015 and 2022, the U.S. outdoor market grew every year for seven years, but then slowed and contracted by 6% between 2022 and 2025.

Given the slowdown in discretionary spending in recent years, new funding for GAOA could be a significant sales driver for retailers, especially when combined with marketing related to national park renovations and outdoor events around the 250th anniversary.

“They need it,” Sanders said. “The market is a little bit down, so I think retailers are seeing this as a good boost at the right time.”