Bill Bennett: “there has been a lot of historic revision going on with respect to the creation of national monuments. I rise to set the…”

“there has been a lot of historic revision going on with respect to the creation of national monuments. I rise to set the record straight. The record is available for those who will research it, but for those who may have been listening to this debate, it needs some accuracy in terms of what happened. I was involved in it right from the public beginning, but I cannot say I was involved in it from the real beginning because the creation of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument was done in the dark. It was done without consultation with any member of the Utah delegation. And when members of the Utah delegation called the administration and asked what was going on, we were told: It is not happening. To be very specific, in one example, let me describe to the Members of the Senate and to the Chair an exchange I had with Katie McGinty, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality. First, to put this in historic context, a story appeared in the Washington Post saying that President Clinton was considering a major national monument in the State of Utah. Immediately after that story appeared, the administration denied it and said it was just a consideration, just an idea, and under no circumstances were they that far along in serious consideration of a national monument. Understand that the law required, under NEPA and appropriate environmental laws, that there be full public examination and consultation. The administration knew that.…”