Dale Bumpers: “the distinguished Senator from Nevada, Mr. Reid, and I, are very good friends. We have fought many battles over this…”

“the distinguished Senator from Nevada, Mr. Reid, and I, are very good friends. We have fought many battles over this issue on the floor of the Senate. I have the utmost respect for him. But the Senator from Nevada started off talking about how he had tried to reform this law and had in fact gotten an amendment passed here that said the mining companies in the future would have to pay for the surface value of this land. The people in this body who know nothing about the issue all applauded: ``Isn't that wonderful? We are going to make them pay for the surface value of the land.'' The surface value of the land in most instances is probably $100 an acre. We are not talking about the surface value. We are talking about highly valuable minerals. In Nevada, Barrack is getting, for the princely sum of $10,000, 11 billion dollars' worth of gold, and they are pretending that they are doing us a great favor by taking it off our hands. It is a tragedy by any measurement. They act as though because they invested hundreds of millions of dollars in finding and setting up the mine that they should be able to do anything they want with the taxpayers land. Why have they made the investment? They did it for the best American traditional reason: To make money.…”