Dale Bumpers: “my colleagues will be greatly relieved with my departure at the end of this year because they won't have to listen to…”

“my colleagues will be greatly relieved with my departure at the end of this year because they won't have to listen to this debate anymore. They may have to listen to it again, but not from me. This amendment arises from a situation which really began last year, Madam President. In order to set the stage for it, I direct my colleagues' attention to this chart here. But before doing so, let me just say that we had what I thought was a solemn agreement last year on this same issue. I won't say it was a handshake contract, but last year the Interior appropriations bill contained a provision that was added in the committee markup, which said the Secretary of the Interior may not promulgate new regulations for the mining of hard rock minerals on Federal lands until every Governor of 11 Western States had individually agreed to it. In 1976 we passed FLPMA, an acronym for Federal Lands Policy Management Act, it was my second year in the Senate when we passed that, but I was very active in the negotiations and passage of that bill. It was a comprehensive bill that determined how all Bureau of Land Management lands would be handled. In it we said that the Secretary of the Interior is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that on Bureau lands, no unnecessary and undue degradation would occur.”