John Hansen: “This has been kind of an experimental thing we have been moving into. Little by little I would hope we would come to the…”

“This has been kind of an experimental thing we have been moving into. Little by little I would hope we would come to the point that we are able to encourage the States to have one. I am not saying this is a perfect program; I do not think anybody does. But we have started down the road of having people pay a user fee, so to speak, or a camping fee, and I think it is coming out very well. I would admit to the gentleman, yes, there are some bugaboos in it, there are some problems, but I think right now we are headed in the right direction and we will be able to take care of our parks. Let me just say to the gentleman, we have a tremendous amount of backlog on in-holdings and repair. I could come up to billions of dollars just on our parks alone that we cannot figure out how to get the money. We had 28 miles of impassable road in Yellowstone; no one could drive down it. We had a water system out in the Grand Canyon, a sewer system out in Yosemite. We have a problem down in the Everglades. I could give the gentleman a list a mile long, but nobody is coming up with the money. I think it would make a lot of sense to have a users' fee to take care of this. Mr. Chairman, I strongly oppose the gentleman's amendment.”