Rob Bishop: “the issue at hand today is not the 23 miles of wild and scenic river in what is called the Eightmile River. It is on the…”

“the issue at hand today is not the 23 miles of wild and scenic river in what is called the Eightmile River. It is on the use of condemnation power to create it. It is sad in this situation that staff did not decide to work in a bipartisan way to try and come up with language accommodating everybody, instead, rejected in both the Rules and Resource Committees on straight party-line votes, simple and direct language that the Republicans submitted. We asked that it simply read that no Federal funds be used to condemn land to carry out the purpose of that act. Every Democrat, from the sponsor to the committee, said that was indeed their goal. That is simple language in section B. It is short; it's direct; it's understandable to any citizen, any attorney, any judge. That's what we need. Instead, the Democrats gave us a convoluted bit of double talk about zoning ordinances by some date in 2005, later on perhaps, willing sellers, all in the wrong section of the code, section C. It is nice, but it is a loophole. Simply because if you read, not the bill, but the act, read the entire act, you'll find that all of the language that is presented in this section, in this bill comes after this sentence in the law which says, nothing contained in this section, that covers what we're talking about and what they're talking about, nothing contained in this section shall preclude the use of condemnation. This supersedes everything in their bill.”