George Miller: “First of all, this leaves our public lands and the damage to public lands and the threat to public lands open to a…”

“First of all, this leaves our public lands and the damage to public lands and the threat to public lands open to a policy by filibuster, by Senate holds, and by obstructionists. Those would be the people who win in the debate against protecting and creating the national monuments. The second point, as the gentleman said, there is no mining here. Well, there is mining. In fact, in the Grand Canyon there was previously. But this is a generic law. This is not about these lands, this million 7, this is about lands in the future that may be declared monuments where there are serious issues over water rights, where there are mining claims, where there are all these issues. If we give 30 days notice, we will have a gold rush out there for people who think they can come back and jack up the Federal Government for these things, because we deal with that in this committee and have for years and years and years by people who think they can then extract something from the Federal Government if they file a claim. So, remember this, we are not writing a law about Utah. We are writing a law about the United States of America, and there are many assets that people would find valuable and would try to perfect and would try to hold up the Federal Government.”