I hope the Administration officials here today pay close attention to the loud and resounding opposition to a unilateral national monument designation.

They are, by definition, and you are, by definition, a representative of the people or you would not be holding that office.

We need to rethink the whole thing.

It would be entirely arrogant and offensive to a lot of people, people who have lived there for generations, to have a President who has never been there and will never go there unilaterally change the designation on millions of acres…

Uintah County commends Congressmen Bishop and Chaffetz and their staff for the thousands of hours of work and dedication to this effort.

We support the process and concepts utilized to develop this grassroots public lands process.

Great. Well, I am sorry the mountain did not come to Grijalva, but Grijalva did go to the mountain.

The locally-elected officials do not support a national monument, but they do support, by and large, this Public Lands Initiative.

Of all the bills we have seen during this Congress, I believe no one has tried harder to adhere to these principles than Chairman Bishop.

We respectfully ask that it be passed out of committee favorably at the earliest possible time.

The subcommittee measures bills according to three over-arching objectives for Federal lands management: to restore public access to the public lands; to restore sound management practices to the public lands; and to restore the Federal…

I would ask unanimous consent that Representative Jason Chaffetz, the co-sponsor of this legislation, be allowed to join us on the dais and participate in today's hearing.