Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, our Natural Resources Committee--and great work from the Natural Resources Committee's staff--has been trying to get a handle on just how much land the United States--the Federal Government--has taken over. West of the Mississippi, it is absolutely extraordinary. Now, we have heard in recent months and over the last few years of incidents in which landowners, according to the media, just went off and did something crazy, overreacted--maybe had a gun--but it bears looking into what the Federal Government has been doing to the landowners, to the local governments, to the State governments in the Western United States. Our committee has been able to pull together maps that show just how much Federal Government property we have. On this, we have the Bureau of Indian Affairs showing in these burgundy, or maroon, areas. These are areas in the West that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is in charge of. When we look at the next map here, added to that of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, we have the Bureau of Land Management. Those are these areas here, the pale color, the soft orange. It is 247.3 million acres. That would be larger than Arizona, plus Iowa, plus Colorado, plus Nevada all put together that is owned by the Bureau of Land Management--those are all of these kind of light orange areas--all the way up here, into Montana.…”