Political Quotes

“Mr. President, there is no doubt that we are blessed with beautiful, useful, and productive lands in our Nation. And there is no doubt that some of them should be preserved as what they are, which happen to be national treasures. But, unfortunately, the Federal Government owns far too much land. It owns far more of these Federal public lands than it should own and far more of these lands than it can possibly take care of. Let's take a look at this map, for example. This shows in red the land that is owned by the Federal Government in parts of the United States. The Federal Government owns most of the land. This is certainly the case in my home State of Utah, where the Federal Government owns two-thirds of the land. Notice, by the way, that in every State east of Colorado, the Federal Government owns less than 15 percent of the land--in most States, significantly less. In every State west of Colorado, the Federal Government owns more than 15 percent of the land, and in many cases, a whole lot more than 15 percent. The sheer volume of land that it owns is nothing short of staggering. In fact, the Federal Government owns 640 million acres of land. This is a total larger than the entireties of France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands combined. That is how much land the Federal Government owns just in America.…”