Angie Craig: “let me echo again what the Senator from New Mexico has just said. This is a fascinating precedent being established here…”

“let me echo again what the Senator from New Mexico has just said. This is a fascinating precedent being established here in this amendment by the Senator from Arkansas, precedent in the way we would sell public resources. Never before have we said to a large timber company, ``You're going to pay a premium for the tree because you're larger,'' and to the smaller timber producer, ``You'll pay less.'' We have never said to a rich person who walked into a national park, ``You're rich, so you'll pay more.'' And we have never said, therefore, to the poor person, ``You will pay less.'' We have always established what we believed was a fair market price for the value of the public resource. That is your job, Mr. President, and that is mine. This past year we made every effort to accomplish that. We debated it long and loud in the committee that the Senator from Arkansas and I are members of. We agreed and disagreed; and we came back again and structured another provision to reform. It had a fee increase in it for all parties who would lease the public's grass. But what the Senator from Arkansas is saying is, ``If you're rich, this blade of grass for your cow will cost you more than if you are less rich.'' You and I both know that deciding who is rich and who is not rich is very arbitrary. Sometimes you can own 1,000 head of cattle, and owe the bank $5 million, and have a net worth of nearly zero. That happens in the cattle business on occasion.…”