Tom McClintock

H.R. 4647... create a Wildlife Conservation and Restoration Subaccount...

H.R. 4609... authorize the U.S. Forest Service to convey approximately 3.61 acres of Forest Service land...

H.R. 4429... address conflicts between cormorants' natural feeding habits and challenges they pose...

H.R. 2591... modernize the funding for wildlife conservation.

In furtherance of this Subcommittee's core objectives to restore sound management and public access to public lands...

If we start approaching trillion-dollar deficits, things will start to get very unstable very quickly.

A debt is simply a future tax.

For 8 years, the Obama administration literally doubled the entire debt of the United States and there was not a single protest from the other side.

This budget proposal has already achieved a miracle. It has made the Democrats suddenly very concerned about the debt.

The essence of the legislative process, which is, once again, why the Constitution gives Congress authority over these matters, not the President, so that these voices can be heard.

It should be done legislatively. Rather than just a stroke of a pen and somebody's arbitrary decision making.

And they have every right to demand that Congress reassert its role over management of the lands on their behalf.

The Antiquities Act of 1906 delegated limited authority to the President to designate national monuments.

This bill seeks to right a wrong and to go about monument designation the constitutional way.

The Constitution gives sole jurisdiction over the public lands to the Congress.

The over-arching objectives of this Subcommittee bear repeating: to restore public access to the public lands, to restore good management to the public lands, and to restore the Federal Government as a good neighbor to those communities…

Today, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands meets to consider H.R. 4532, the Shash Jaa National Monument and Indian Creek National Monument Act, by Congressman John Curtis and co-sponsored by the entire Utah congressional delegation.

I wonder when the Constitution grants to Congress the sole prerogative over the management of the public lands for the Congress then to cede such authority to the executive, I think is questionable constitutionally.

But we are also opening up vast acreage that has been set off limits for the enjoyment of the American people, and for the prosperity of the regional economy.

Perhaps that is why our Constitution gives to Congress, and not to the President, authority over the public lands, so that decisions like this that affect the livelihoods of families across the West would be done in the open.

I wish my colleagues from other states where the Federal Government holds maybe 1 percent of the land area would consider what would happen to their communities if the Federal Government suddenly took over 93 percent of the land area.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton, in a breathtaking abuse of this law, unilaterally declared 1.7 million acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in southern Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument without any…

The Antiquities Act of 1906 provides the President with the authority to designate national monuments on Federal lands containing 'historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, or other objects of historic or scientific…

This bill seeks to right this wrong and to go about monument designation the constitutional way: through open hearings, debate, and congressional action.

And they have every right to demand that Congress reassert its roll over management of the public lands on their behalf.