Sam Farr: “this vote is about whether oil companies get more research money or whether your city, county, and State gets more land…”

“this vote is about whether oil companies get more research money or whether your city, county, and State gets more land acquisition money. The gentleman from Ohio pointed out that this vote is essentially the difference between Ohio receiving $830,000 in grants from my amendment or no money. I think that most of the Members here coming to represent their districts have to also think about representing the totality of the districts. It is not just the Federal forest lands and Federal park lands and BLM lands and fisheries management, but it is also State lands, county lands, and city lands. This amendment allows those communities to get access to funds that have been created by Congress for that purpose, for that purpose alone. It does not delete the funding in the oil and gas research fund. It only takes a third of that money and still leaves in excess of $200 million for research. So I suggest to Members of this House that if they want to support their communities for their ability to acquire land from willing sellers, then this is the amendment to do it, and I ask for an ``aye'' vote.”