Bruce F. Vento: “this amendment was described in a Dear Colleague. What it attempts to do is to differentiate between the family rancher…”

“this amendment was described in a Dear Colleague. What it attempts to do is to differentiate between the family rancher, providing that the existing fee formula that is in this measure would prevail, which is, as I pointed out, a substantially subsidized operation with regard to the amount that BLM or Forest Service spends or expends, and the amount of fees that are retained. Of course, much of those fees go back to the grazing councils and back to the States. So the fact is that the Federal Government, if we look at the scoring of this, has actually even a greater cost that is associated with it. As I pointed out, many attribute nearly $400 million to the cost of managing the 28,000 grazing permits on the various allotments. The 250 million acres of land that we have grazed. And I would say to my colleagues that this affects the National Forests, it affects the Bureau of Land Management lands, it affects almost all the lands within the National Forests, whether they be wilderness, whether they be areas of special environmental concern in terms of the BLM. All of these lands are grazed.”