On the recordJune 20, 2013
I certainly share the concern of my friend and colleague from Colorado, and I thank him for his remarks. We do, as an institution, have an alarmingly low approval rating. I have even said we are slightly less popular in America than the Castro brothers and slightly more popular than the influenza virus, but the virus is gaining on us rapidly. There are many reasons for this. One thing is we are trying to gain too much control over too may aspects of the lives of the American people. There is so much of what the American people do that is governed, even micromanaged by the Federal Government and by what it does every single day. So much of their wealth has to go to pay their taxes to the Federal Government. So many of their communications are potentially susceptible to being monitored. So much of what they do is in one way or another restricted by the Federal Government. I would like to discuss amendment No. 1207, which would address one of the many implications of the fact that we have a Federal Government that is simply too big. It deals specifically with the ownership of Federal land. In my State, the State of Utah, the Federal Government owns about two-thirds of the land. That is two-thirds of the land that has to be managed by bureaucrats, bureaucrats ultimately working out of Washington, DC, who, for the most part, don't tend to share the same values or the same interests in land development as do people from my own State.…





