[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 36 (Monday, February 27, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H2233]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                      TODAY'S FORGOTTEN AMERICANS

  (Mr. SMITH of Texas asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the giant sucking sound in America 
in 1995 is a governmental grabbing of private property through ruinous 
regulation. Our farmers in the Midwest and across the Great Plains are 
unable to use their farmland because the Government calls their dry 
lands wetlands.
  Property owners on the East Coast are denied the right to build homes 
for their families because bureaucrats deem their construction unwise.
  Across, Texas, homeowners, ranchers, and farmers are warned they may 
not be able to use private land if a golden-cheeked warbler decides to 
nest there.
  These are today's forgotten Americans. These citizens will be 
forgotten no longer if, later this week, we pass the Private Property 
Protection Act of 1995.
  This legislation puts the rights of these Americans who do the work, 
pay the taxes, and pull the wagon on the same par as the blind cave 
spider and the fairy shrimp.
  This legislation requires the Government to pay for land that it 
wants to use for a public good. It prevents us from shifting those 
costs onto the farmer, the rancher, the homeowner who happens to own 
the wrong land in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  Mr. Speaker, let us remember the forgotten Americans.

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