Joe Cunningham: “I think this is a good debate. Mr. Chairman, one of the gentlemen says that if we have a plan that gives a judge a…”

“I think this is a good debate. Mr. Chairman, one of the gentlemen says that if we have a plan that gives a judge a better opportunity to look, well, look at the tuna dolphin bill, that passed the House, that passed the Senate, over 300 votes here. It was signed by the President, environmental groups supported it, animal rights groups supported it, but the gentlewoman from California in the other body judge-shopped to get that stopped, and that is why we are talking about this. I have heard extremists, and I have heard anti-environmentalists to ask the Government to follow the law is not extremist. And I would like to take a look at the things that we are actually looking at in this amendment. Californians, when they complain, they call it extremists because we do not want to follow the Antiquities Act on millions of acres without review. This is East Coast and all the colored lands in here are owned by the Government. Now, when we turn this chart around, Mr. Chairman, this is what is in the West. When the President takes Utah and millions of acres and millions of acres in Oregon and other areas, when the Antiquities Act was met, the average is 47 acres, then that is damaging to California and the West. Yet we are called extremists because we want to limit that. And all we are asking, and what the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt) is asking, is that for the Government to follow the law; that is not extremist. That is not anti-environmentalist.”