Dale Bumpers: “this is the ninth year I have stood on this floor and tried to prick the conscience of the Members of this body about…”

“this is the ninth year I have stood on this floor and tried to prick the conscience of the Members of this body about this last remaining egregious scam on the American people. Next year, when some of you are up for reelection, I expect you are going to see some 30-second spots on this. What is it your opponent will say? What is it that makes you want to give away billions and billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money and us get nothing in return? Why do you tell your Chamber of Commerce you will handle their money like it was your own? Anybody in this body would be disqualified from being a Senator if he answered the question I posed a moment ago, ``Yes, I will let them come and take gold off my property for nothing.'' Why, of course, you would not. This is a very narrowly drafted amendment. It is crafted not to discriminate. It simply says that if you mine gold on private lands, fine, get a depletion. Oil companies, coal companies, and gas companies are entitled to a depletion. But when you give resources of the U.S. taxpayers away for nothing, and then allow them to take a 15 percent depletion, which is worth $400 million of the taxpayers' money, and you turn around here in this tax bill and say we are going to give it back to you, don't give it away in the first place. For God's sake, colleagues, do your duty. I yield the floor.”