Louie Gohmert: “Again it's certainly a privilege to get to speak in this hallowed hall, where so many courageous decisions have been…”

“Again it's certainly a privilege to get to speak in this hallowed hall, where so many courageous decisions have been made, and also so many ill-begotten decisions have been made. Speaking of which, today in our Natural Resources Committee we voted a bill out of committee to deal with the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, disastrous oil spill that hopefully, maybe, prayerfully, maybe, they have gotten the cap on things and are going to be able to stop the oil from destroying lives and livelihoods. But our bill did some amazing things. For example, the bill we passed in committee--should be coming to the floor now for a vote for the whole Congress--provided $900 million a year for the next 30 years, through 2040, to buy more land for the Federal Government to sit on. Now, it was pointed out that actually we already own so much land, we have so many Federal parks, national parks that we can't take care of them, and we are not taking care of them. There is a report that indicated that just in maintenance alone we are $3.7 billion behind on just doing necessary maintenance to keep the Federal parks from falling apart. And we are not taking care of that. And here we voted $27 billion to buy more land for the Federal Government to sit on. And it's important to understand when the Federal Government buys any land at all, that land is immediately taken off of the tax rolls. And the schools, the local governments, the State governments are prohibited from taxing that land.”