Political Quotes

“Let me finish my answer. To develop that piece of land costs them tens of millions of dollars. You don't simply go out in the deserts of Nevada or any place in the West and locate a claim and start scooping out the gold. I am not saying millions of dollars. I am saying tens of millions of dollars. In addition to that, the unique situation that the Senator has raised, they also purchased next to their mine a ranch. And the reason they purchased the ranch originally was so their mining operations would not interfere with the ranch property. They bought that ranch so their trucks could go through the property on their roads. They found on that land some mineral value. Since they owned the ranch, and they found some gold. And the reason they were willing to do that, and pay the fee on land that they already had, is because they had an ongoing operation. They had already developed and they discovered gold there, and it was the profitable thing for them to do. They didn't do it, just to go out and then somebody said, ``You start paying us 18 percent royalty.'' They already had a huge mining operation in the immediate vicinity of the property they agreed to lease.”