Jeff Duncan: “you can never satisfy government's appetite for land or money. They always want more. Today the Federal Government has…”

“you can never satisfy government's appetite for land or money. They always want more. Today the Federal Government has taken and controls over 30 percent of the land in this Nation. States and local governments and quasi- governmental units have taken and control another 20 percent. Tremendous amounts of land in my home area of east Tennessee have been taken by numerous Federal agencies and departments. Not all of this is bad, but people in government have never been sensitive enough about taking other people's property. They just do not seem to realize how much this can hurt a person or a family. In fact, very few people get concerned about this until it is their land or their home that is being taken. Fortunately, this has not happened to me or my family, and I am not on some personal vendetta, but many people in east Tennessee have had this heartbreaking experience happen to them. These people were for the most part people like many of my ancestors, good, intelligent, hard- working people, often poor, often with not a lot of education, but people with common sense, and often smarter in reality than the elitist do-gooders who came in and used the power of the Federal Government to take their homes. To show how much this can hurt, I would like to read a letter that was published in the Knoxville News this past Sunday from a man who no longer lives in my district, but whose family home was in my district.…”