[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 140 (Thursday, October 9, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H8811-H8812]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      BROKEN PROMISES MADE TO UTAH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Utah [Mr. Hansen] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HANSEN. Mr. Speaker, many of us know that Utah was not too happy 
on September 18, 1996 when the President of the United States went 
safely to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and declared 1.7 million 
acres a national monument. The President failed to talk to the 
governor, Senators, Members of Congress, including one from his own 
party, and did this thing.
  Well, we talked about that this week and a bill went through to try 
to make sure that does not happen again. I commend my colleagues on 
both sides of the aisle for helping us out on that issue.
  But the part that was not mentioned and that I think is very 
interesting was a promise that was made by the President on the South 
Rim of the Grand Canyon. I quote:

       I will say again, creating this national monument should 
     not and will not come at the expense of Utah's children. 
     Today is also the beginning of a unique three-year process to 
     set up a land management process that will be good for the 
     people of Utah and good for Americans.
  What is he talking about? What he was talking about is buried in this 
thing, the largest supply of compliance coal in the world, over a 
trillion dollars, trillion with a T, and that money, over a billion or 
so, would inure to the benefit of the education of the children of 
Utah.
  Mr. Speaker, we are still looking for that to be set up. That was an 
election year promise. I thought it was interesting. He went on to say: 
``And I will now use my office to accelerate the exchange process.'' 
However, that has been 371 days. It would only take an hour of his time 
to fulfill that promise, but it has never, never, never, never 
occurred.
  I feel a little bad about this.
  I will say again, creating this national monument should not come at 
the expense of Utah's children who just lost a billion dollars on this 
in royalties.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I think that is interesting. Now we find the thing 
the other day, that the President of the United States used the line 
item veto, and he had the right to do that. I have no problem with 
that, but I sure wish he would talk to the Department of Defense. I 
sure wish he would talk to the people of Utah.
  Because we had another interesting thing happen on June 16, 1995. In 
Budapest what happened is they stood up and they made the statement, 
they said 2002 Winter Games will go to Salt Lake City, and America is 
euphoric, we got the Winter Games. The Governor of the State stood up. 
And then we got a call. It was on nationwide TV. And who was it? It was 
from the White House. What did he say? ``Truly, Salt Lake City offers 
the Olympic family and the people of the world an ideal place to enjoy 
this peaceful gathering of the world's champions.''
  He went on to say: ``I want to congratulate Salt Lake City on their 
successful pursuit of the Olympics in 2002. This will be an historic 
event. It's a great event for Salt Lake City. It's a great event for 
the western part of the United States.'' It is a great thing for the 
United States of America, and we had the entire support of the Federal 
Government behind it.
  So we went with that. We moved out. We started working on an Olympic 
village, and part of making this Olympic village would be moving 11 
acres from the University of Utah and turning it into an Olympic place 
for all the world's athletes to come, and they could have nice, new 
facilities as they compete. And the world, 3 billion people at a time, 
watches the Winter Olympics.
  Gosh, Mr. Speaker, do my colleagues know what happened? He vetoed it. 
I mean, this was the thing, just like what happened on the $1.7 million 
promise to the children on education. Another promise to take care of 
this, and vetoed. Sure would have been handy if we just had a phone 
call. We could have explained to the President.
  The Salt Lake Tribune, the largest newspaper in Utah, in its 
editorial called it a veto in the dark. I think that says it, because 
no one was alerted, and out of that, back to point zero.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I do not know where we are going to put all these 
athletes. I hope somebody can think of something. Possibly there are 
some World War II tents out there. We can put them out on the west 
desert, maybe bring in some facilities for them. I sure hope somebody 
with the vision and planning ability can see how to do this.
  It is surely difficult to run a State and run a country when we do 
not think about it, when we veto things and make hollow promises.

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