Richard Pombo: “Mr. Chairman, we just had a vote on an amendment that I offered which would have protected the property rights of those…”

“Mr. Chairman, we just had a vote on an amendment that I offered which would have protected the property rights of those in-holders that we are talking about in this particular amendment, unfortunately that amendment was defeated. My friends voted against it. They said that the Federal Government could come in and control the land that they did not own; that they could tell private property owners what they could do or could not do with their private property, and the will of the House was that that would proceed; that we would do that to those private property owners. Now, having voted that way, having made that decision and told those property owners that we were going to control their property, even though we did not know own it, the least we can do at that point is to approve this amendment, because this amendment now says that that is our priority, we have to go in and buy out those in-holders. We have to go in and pay those people for their land, because see we do not want to protect their property rights, we voted against that, we said we want to control them. Now, the least we can do is pay them for the land that we are taking from them.”