Dale Bumpers: “Twelve years is a long time. You cannot compare timber sales, which are let competitively, to a permit which you give…”

“Twelve years is a long time. You cannot compare timber sales, which are let competitively, to a permit which you give some corporation like Anheuser-Busch or Hewlett-Packard, simply because they own a few hundred acres in their own right, give them 50,000 to 100,000 acres to raise cattle on for $1.35 a month per cow. Everybody here knows what this is--corporate welfare, pure and simple, just like the Market Promotion Program where we give McDonald's money to advertise the Big Mac in Moscow. That is more of the same. Here we are trying to make just a small dent and say that these big corporations who own 60 percent of this 270 million acres pay at least what the State would charge you if you were renting lands from the State. Why is it that the Government only receives $1.35, and that is way under what any State in the Nation charges for the same thing? It is politics. It is corporate welfare. And it is grossly unfair. I plead with my colleagues to come in here and search their consciences about whether this is right or wrong. Should we allow this practice to continue? As I say, these things are so patently unfair. They never go away, Senators. They never go away. Let us address it now. If my amendment is not perfect, we will go to conference and make it perfect. My fee is actually less than the fee of the Senator from New Mexico in the year 2005.”