Jeff Duncan: “today the Federal Government owns over 30 percent of the land in this country. State and local governments and…”

“today the Federal Government owns over 30 percent of the land in this country. State and local governments and quasi-governmental agencies are controlling the other 20 percent. Half the land, 50 percent, is in some type of government or public ownership or control. We could probably live with this, but the problem is that government at all levels keeps taking over more and more property at a faster rate than ever before. People don't get upset unless or until their property gets taken. And it sounds great for a politician to create a park, but now we have so many parks, recreation areas, nature preserves, national forests, and on and on that we can't take care of all of them. We are constantly being told we have a mega-billion-dollar maintenance backlog for the national parks and all these other public areas; yet we keep taking over more land. You really can never satisfy government's appetite for money or land. We just do not teach our young people how important private property is to both our freedom and our prosperity. We see this most clearly in the fact that counties that have high percentages of public land are almost always poverty areas or at least counties with incomes far below the national average. Also, because we keep taking so much land off the tax rolls, we keep shrinking our tax base at the same time that all of the schools and government agencies tell us they need more money.”