Jerry Lewis: “I rise in favor of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, this is going to be an extended discussion, probably over several days…”

“I rise in favor of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, this is going to be an extended discussion, probably over several days, regarding this desert wilderness and park bill. Fundamental to the discussion that we are going to have relative to the amendments that will be before us today is for people of the House to understand exactly what has taken place here on the part of the committee and the way it has been dealing with Members who are elected to represent this vast territory. Mr. Chairman, there are four Members of the House who represent the California desert. All of them happen to be Republican. All of them are very interested in the desert, having represented it for years and spending much of their lives in the region. Yet it is very, very apparent to me as a Representative of the region that those Members have not just been almost entirely ignored, they have been arbitrarily rolled over by this committee. I said earlier in our discussions that it is reflective of the thought that in this process, often power does corrupt, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.”