On the recordApril 17, 2012
The Antiquities Act, which allows the President to designate land, is a legislative function that the legislature gave to the executive branch in Teddy Roosevelt's time. Whether it is good or not, it is wrong for Congress to give its authority away to the executive branch. At the time, it was thought it would be okay because there were specific restrictions placed on it. You had to have a specific something geological, historical that you were going to preserve, it was in imminent danger, and it was going be on the smallest area possible in the debate that was going to be over a couple hundred acres. The unfortunate thing is Presidents since that time have used this monument designation power for political purposes in areas quite bigger than that. The last monument that was created in my State was not a couple of hundred acres. It was bigger than the States of Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island combined. It was done at 9 a.m. after the Governor of the State was told about it at 2 a.m., after having been told earlier that day that nothing was going to happen in this kind of an area. Earlier this year, the Antiquities Act was used at Fort Monroe when the entire delegation and the local community were in favor of it. When ours was done, as well as many of the other Antiquity Act monuments were done, the local delegation was not in favor of it, and the Governor was not in favor of it. Everyone was not in favor of it.…
