Bruce F. Vento: “Mr. Chairman, this is an enormously important bill. I appreciate that my colleague, the chairman of the Committee on…”

“Mr. Chairman, this is an enormously important bill. I appreciate that my colleague, the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, has worked with various groups, but the fact is at the end of the day, all the environmental groups are against it, some of the sports groups are against it, and some of the taxpayer groups are against it, because balance is not in this bill. This bill is not a balanced bill. I regret that it did not have the type of hearings after the fact when it was written and introduced and passed so quickly that it is here and has not had the type of debate within committee. So many questions are still confused with regard to it. There are 250 million acres of land under permit. The fact is that we have 30,000 permittees out there, but over half of them are very large. Half of the forage goes to the largest, less than 10 percent of the group. There has been a reiteration of sound science. What is the science about increasing the number of sheep and goats per AUM? Where is the science that supports that? That is in the bill. Science is put in a straitjacket in this bill. Where is the science that says you cannot come on the land for 48 hours without notifying the individuals so you can monitor it. That puts a straitjacket on the land managers and the scientists we charge to manage the land.”