Alan Simpson: “I understand and sympathize with the amendment that the gentlelady from Wyoming is proposing. We in the West sometimes…”

“I understand and sympathize with the amendment that the gentlelady from Wyoming is proposing. We in the West sometimes have a little bit different point of view. Regardless of where the funding comes from, whether it comes from money that comes from oil sales or other things, when you're buying additional land in the States with 64 percent of Federal land currently, that causes some concern to westerners. So I understand why sometimes people from New Jersey and Massachusetts and other places that don't have a lot of public lands sometimes don't understand the same concern that we share out there. So I sympathize with what the gentlelady is saying in this amendment, but I would point out this started out in 2010. There was $450 million in the Land and Water Conversation Fund appropriated for this year. We have reduced that in this bill to $58 million. It already terminates funding for any new Federal land acquisition projects, an action we had to take in order to meet the subcommittee's allocation halfway through this fiscal year. All that remains is enough funding for managing projects funded in prior years and for emergencies and in-holdings for small acquisitions that make sense and save taxpayers money in the long run.”