Senators Trying To Sell Our Land

A national land bill has been introduced in the Senate and it is a contemptible ruse.

It’s a Trojan horse that conceals a scheme to rob Americans of their public lands. Its co-sponsors are Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and it is called the National Land Commission bill, S-1151.

The bill’s pretense is to set up a commission that will study the best way to manage public lands.

In reality the bill can - and will - take Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, and Forest Service lands from the American public and sell or trade them to private interests.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Sens. Burns and Craig have each received nearly half-a-million dollars in PAC money from energy, mining, agricultural and construction industries in the past six years, according to the non-partisan organization Project Vote Smart.

A million bucks is a lot of snap in just six years. These industries don’t give that kind of money away for nothing. “No free lunch,” as members of the GOP are fond of saying.

If the public lands administered by the BLM or the Forest Service are sold, who do you think will hold title to big hunks of it?

These are choice commodity lands: oil, minerals, real estate, farming and ranching. Notice the tight fit with the contributors to Burns’ and Craig’s PACs.

It’s payback time for Burns and Craig. The American public will be left holding an empty lunch sack.

Foreign interests could buy up our public lands, too. Once it is up for sale anyone can bid on it. Prime pieces of our forest land or landscapes could be owned by an emir from Saudi Arabia.

Think of the millionaires who would love to build expensive two-story log cabins in former national forests - away from it all - fenced off from those of us who are working class stiffs.

And nothing in the bill protects wilderness areas or wild and scenic river areas from being sold.

Burns has a history of wanting to take public lands from the American public. In 1993 he authored a bill to turn over BLM land in Lincoln County to the state of Montana. And naturally he signed on to the bill by Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., to transfer all BLM lands to the states in which they exist.

Sen. Craig also signed on as a co-sponsor for the Thomas land grab bill.

The intention is clear, although the language of the National Land Commission bill is not.

This bill pretends to require a study. In truth, the bill’s conclusions come before a study.

This is what the bill mandates:

A 50 percent reduction for BLM, Forest Service, and BuRec administration and management funds. This will result in the elimination of staff in state and national offices. Field offices will be closed, and the ability to manage the land will be severely crippled.

A 30 percent reduction in land management funds. This means a reduction in funds for reforestation, restoring riparian areas, range reform and cleaning up waterways damaged by mining. It means fewer people in the field to assess possible damage to the lands.

A consolidation of the missions of the co-opted agencies. The Forest Service is under the Agricultural Department for good reason. It is a commodity driven agency. It manages the forests so that timber is available - timber farming. The BLM manages the land for multiple use, for the availability of the general public. Their missions conflict.

The establishment of a single agency to manage BLM, FS, BuRec lands. This new agency would have the ability to sell any of these lands. States can select the best for purchase - plucking the ripest cherries, which they, in turn, can sell to the highest bidder.

No one who works for one of the included agencies may serve on the commission. Their expertise isn’t desired.

If the bill is passed, the commission will be empowered to make the sole determination of which lands will be sold or given away - not Congress, not our representatives.

The commissioners serve for the life of the commission. They answer to no one.

Surrounded by War on the West hype, citizens of the West don’t seem to realize that state takeover of public lands eventually means private ownership and lock out.

When they finally do figure it out, it will be too late.

Sadly, legislators from the western states love the idea. On Oct. 10, the Western Legislative Conference endorsed a similar move.

If this bill passes, it begins a runaway process to implement the commission’s recommendations.

The commission must offer its recommendations to the president and to Congress in two years or less. The president has six months to make changes and submit the report to Congress.

The congressional committee to which the report is submitted has 20 days to introduce a bill to implement the recommendations.

The implementing bill is labelled “highly privileged.” That means that once the bill is introduced it cannot be stopped, postponed, reconsidered or amended as an ordinary bill might. It cannot be filibustered. And debate on the bill is limited to a trivial five hours.

These are extraordinary procedural moves - ordinarily saved for national emergencies.

Here they function to halt reasonable consideration - thinking about the implications of the recommendations. They exclude public input to the implementation plan.

Once again we see members of Congress putting private interests - and their own - ahead of the American public’s.

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