Dale Bumpers: “grazing fees have been the subject of many hot controversial debates in this body. The reason is that our grazing fee…”

“grazing fees have been the subject of many hot controversial debates in this body. The reason is that our grazing fee policies are highly controversial. When I think about the farm bill that we passed last year and the proponents of the farm bill said that it was going to take the farmers off of welfare--they have been receiving these commodity payments since the memory of man runneth not, so we are going to give them some money each year for 7 years and then that is the end of all farm subsidies. All farmers will be on their own after that. No more welfare state for the farmers of this country. Mr. President, I have absolutely no objection to grazing on Federal lands. What I object to is the amount of money we receive from the people who graze livestock on public lands. Let me just start by saying that we have about 27,000 permitees in this country who graze cattle on public lands. That is on both Forest Service lands and Bureau of Land Management lands. How much land is involved? It is 270 million acres. What do we get? What does the United States Treasury get for the 270 million acres? We get $25.2 million--$25.2 million a year for 270 million acres of land.”