Political Quotes

“I also wish to speak to the issue of the objection on this, the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Twenty-nine percent of all the land in the United States is already under Federal ownership. Let me clarify. This is not Federal control-- Federal ownership, 29 percent of the land. There is $20 billion in deferred maintenance on that land--$20 billion. So there is a significant issue we face where a tremendous amount of land that is owned by the Federal Government is not being managed properly, including over $11 billion of that just in our national parks. The issue here is, what is this Land and Water Conservation Fund going to be used for? Continuing to acquire new land. It is actually prohibited under the structure of this account, to actually do any of the maintenance. So we are continuing to acquire new land constantly, expanding landholdings, already at 29 percent of the total property in the United States, but we are not doing maintenance on what we already have, and we continue to complain there is not enough money to be able to go around and get this done. If only this was the only program that actually did land acquisition in Federal control. In the past several years, there have been 130 conservation banks also set up by the Fish and Wildlife Service. These 130 different conservation banks that are scattered around the United States actually take private land and set it aside for what they call perpetual--perpetual--set-aside.…”