Bruce F. Vento: “today we have a chance to vote on a good amendment, the Vento-Rahall amendment. We have the so-called American Land…”

“today we have a chance to vote on a good amendment, the Vento-Rahall amendment. We have the so-called American Land Sovereignty Protection Act which breaks really two treaties and repeals a protocol with hundreds of nations. The United States has led efforts of hundreds of nations to, in fact, provide the conservation and recognition of our areas. But in this bill, last night we were able to offer an amendment which deals not just with conservation but deals with exploitation. We think if the Congress is going to approve the conservation measures in this Congress, it ought to also approve foreign firms that seek to exploit this, exploit our resources, and there are many of them. We know under the 1872 mining law that Canadian, United Kingdom, Danish, and Australian firms are coming in here and getting billions of dollars worth of important assets for mere thousands of dollars. The Vento-Rahall amendment today gives us a chance to vote on that, to vote to provide parity; that is to say, if we are going to have conservation votes, we ought to have votes when we have exploitation.”