Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. Grijalva, and thank you very much for our friends from Arizona. Let me just tell you, my family has been in mining since the 1860s, gold mining, which isn't working too well in California right now. And I am not at all opposed to mining copper in Arizona, although there are issues, local, to be dealt with; and I will let that go to another individual. I was deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior and had the opportunity to deal with appraisals and land transfers. This bill, as structured, is a bad deal for American taxpayers and for Americans. It basically is an enormous giveaway of extraordinary value to these two companies. As has been mentioned by our colleagues from Arizona who are in support of the bill, this is one of the biggest deposits of copper and other minerals in the United States and quite possibly among the biggest in the world. What is its value? The mechanism that's used to determine the value of the trade is called a capitalization appraisal, which has to assume the cost, has to make assumptions on the extraction, the cost of extraction, and the amount of ore to be obtained. There is no way in the appraisal process that that can be done with any accuracy at all. {time} 1400 In the language of the bill, there are certain provisions that make it impossible for the United States Government to go back and do a reappraisal, so we're left with a bad financial deal. I'm all for the copper mining.…”