Alan Simpson: “This debate is always fascinating. I've got to tell you, if rhetoric were fast food, there'd be golden arches over all…”

“This debate is always fascinating. I've got to tell you, if rhetoric were fast food, there'd be golden arches over all these doors because I've never heard so much rhetoric in my life. And I hope that the gentleman from California actually read the report. Maybe he did and maybe these pages got stuck together. I don't know. But if you look at the report--he said that we don't care about the lands and the designations, that we just want to use them up and all that kind of stuff. Let me read, for the Record, what the report says: As mentioned in the introduction of this report, the committee lauds the Department of the Interior for its significant changes in wild lands policy and notes that the Bureau of Land Management has, to this date, been in compliance with the fiscal year 2011 continuing resolution prohibiting funds for the use of Secretarial order 3310, which was to designate, and as the gentleman said, he couldn't designate wild lands because that policy didn't exist, and he can't. And he's in compliance with that. It continues: While the Department is now rightly requesting the input of Members of Congress, Senators, and the public, the committee is concerned about the internal direction given by the Bureau of Land Management regarding the inventory of lands managed by the Bureau. As the Department has stated, inventories of bureau lands are required under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, FLPMA, and the committee agrees.…”