Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas. Texas is a State that has very little Federal land. And the fact that he took the reins as subcommittee chairman for the Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and has taken such an active interest in this issue is something for which those of us from the public lands States in the West are very grateful. Thank you very much, Mr. Gohmert. Now, what does this mean on the ground? What we have told you tonight is roughly 640 million acres of this country, or about 30 percent--1 in 3 acres in this country--are owned by the Federal Government. So we have gotten that far. We have also told you that there are a variety of Federal agencies that own this land. The biggest one is the Bureau of Land Management, BLM, which is under the umbrella of the Department of the Interior. The BLM manages about 250 million acres, and 99.9 percent of that BLM land is in the 11 Western States and Alaska. So this is an agency that really doesn't deal with 38 of the States. It only deals with 12. But those States are so dramatically affected by this agency, if you combine those 250 million acres, roughly, that BLM manages, that is like the States of Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and Iowa combined. It is a huge geographic area. It is not taxed. It is off the property tax rolls. So that is why our schools and other public services in our 11 Western States and Alaska are so impacted by the presence of BLM land.…”