Dale Bumpers: “if anybody heard that giant sucking sound this afternoon at 1 p.m., it was the sound of $11 billion worth of gold and…”

“if anybody heard that giant sucking sound this afternoon at 1 p.m., it was the sound of $11 billion worth of gold and 1,800 acres of land being transferred from all the people of America--the taxpayers of America--to a Canadian gold mining company for the princely sum of $9,000. Secretary Babbitt, at 1 o'clock this afternoon, issued seven certificates of patent--which is the same thing as a deed--to a gold mining company called Barrick Gold Strike Mines, Inc., a subsidiary of American Barrick Resources Corp, a Canadian Corporation. Madam President, the Secretary hated to do that as much as I hated for him to do it, but he had no choice, because under the existing law, which is now 122 years old, signed by Ulysses S. Grant, the Secretary was required to issue the patents. Barrick Gold Strike Mines applied for these patents, for the deeds and under the law proved that it had commercial quantities of gold under it, and the Secretary refused, to his eternal credit, to cough up $11 billion in gold that belongs to every person in America because this is Federal land that belong to all of them. The Secretary refused to do anything so gargantuan, so monumentally preposterous, but a U.S. district court made him because the law required it.”