Mark Hatfield: “as the sponsor of this legislation, I want to merely highlight a few of the points that have already been eloquently…”

“as the sponsor of this legislation, I want to merely highlight a few of the points that have already been eloquently stated in arguments supporting this bill by Senator Wallop and Senator Baucus. There are now some 44, I believe, cosponsors of this legislation, because it does affect 1,700 counties over 49 States in this country. Back in 1976, we first adopted the payment in lieu of taxes, and very simply stated it is the effort of the Federal Government to compensate as an offset for some of the costs for road maintenance, for highway patrols, for police, for rescue efforts, for all the other things that occur on the Federal public land that is tax-exempt. Those counties provide those services. Now, to summarize, Mr. President, the Federal Government has been increasing recreational positions of special, unique setasides, of wilderness, of scenic and wild rivers, of heritage centers, and so forth and so on, because we want to preserve unique areas of our country, withdrawing those lands frequently from either private ownership or transferring their interests to increase the recreational value to those land. We also have, Mr. President, a continuing withdrawal of the administration, especially this administration, of many of those activities on those Federal lands that have produced revenues such as in the forestry of the Pacific Northwest. So there is a double whammy.…”