Richard Pombo: “reclaiming my time, this provision was not in the Contract With America. Nobody seems to be constrained by the truth…”

“reclaiming my time, this provision was not in the Contract With America. Nobody seems to be constrained by the truth here. This is a brand-new way of dealing with compensating property owners whose land is taken. CBO scored this at $10 million. This is a brand-new way of dealing with a very real problem and assuring some kind of protection to my property owners and your property owners. Mr. Chairman, it was just a couple of weeks ago that the Supreme Court came out with a decision where this Congress stood up and said, you cannot use eminent domain to take away private property, to take someone's house away from them and give it to another individual. And all of you ran down on the floor and said you were all in support of that. We are going to stop the government from being able to use eminent to take away somebody's house and give it to somebody else. But, under that provision, you have to pay them for their house. Under current law, you do not have to pay when you steal somebody's property for declared habitat at this time. You guys are all fine with that. Is that because we are talking about farmers and ranchers? Is that why you do not want to pay them? But when we are talking about somebody's house, all of a sudden you want to pay them? I mean, you guys have no consistency in this whatsoever. I believe if you take away somebody's private property, you should have to pay them for it, and that is what we are trying to do in this underlying bill.…”