Political Quotes

“The fact of the matter is that my good friend from Arkansas could not go out and get a bunch of people together to raise money and go in and do this. We are talking about investments of hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, near my hometown of Searchlight, NV, people tried to develop the Viceroy Gold property for almost 20 years. They went all over, trying to find an investor. They finally found somebody in Vancouver who was willing to come in and before there was a single ounce of gold taken out of that property, that man spent $100 million. Now, there was no guarantee that they would have an ability to pay back the $100 million. The fact of the matter is, it is true there is no industry in the world more than the American mining industry that represents the free enterprise system. That is all we want to be able to go forward on, with a fixed set of rules that are meaningful and something that the mining industry can still proceed on. I would close by saying--I repeat--I hope the Interior Department does not try to make up for its shortcomings in grazing, in logging, and in water problems with what they are trying to do on mining.”