Sam Farr: “I rise today on Earth Day to remind us that Mother Earth giveth, but the 104th Congress taketh away. Look at the battle…”

“I rise today on Earth Day to remind us that Mother Earth giveth, but the 104th Congress taketh away. Look at the battle of this year: Tried to take away Medicare benefits, affordability of Medicare, tried to take away the school lunch program. And now on Earth Day we see that they are trying to take away the Endangered Species Act, but that is not all. Mr. Speaker, we have heard earlier today that the 104th Congress decided also to take away the public enjoyment of public lands and sell those to private interests. They want to sell the mountains to the ski resorts, the forests to the logging companies, the rivers to hydropower and to development. They want to sell wildlife refuges to oil and gas development and to hunters. They want to sell the minerals that belong to the people to the mining companies. Lastly, they want to take the Indian lands and sell those to the gambling interests. In addition to these takeaways from the U.S. public, because the public owns these lands, and give these to private interests, they also want to take away the money that has been derived from the sale of all these resources because we receive value for when we sell the land and water of this country and the grazing lands and so on. What do they want to do with that money? It is our money, sitting in a trust account here in Washington called a lockbox, known as the land and water conservation fund. The lockbox now has our money, $12 billion in there that cannot be spent.”