[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 139 (Thursday, October 27, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H9333]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        EMINENT DOMAIN DISASTERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, you can never satisfy government's appetite 
for land or money. They always want more.
  Today the Federal Government has taken and controls over 30 percent 
of the land in this Nation. States and local governments and quasi-
governmental units have taken and control another 20 percent. 
Tremendous amounts of land in my home area of east Tennessee have been 
taken by numerous Federal agencies and departments. Not all of this is 
bad, but people in government have never been sensitive enough about 
taking other people's property. They just do not seem to realize how 
much this can hurt a person or a family. In fact, very few people get 
concerned about this until it is their land or their home that is being 
taken.
  Fortunately, this has not happened to me or my family, and I am not 
on some personal vendetta, but many people in east Tennessee have had 
this heartbreaking experience happen to them. These people were for the 
most part people like many of my ancestors, good, intelligent, hard-
working people, often poor, often with not a lot of education, but 
people with common sense, and often smarter in reality than the elitist 
do-gooders who came in and used the power of the Federal Government to 
take their homes.
  To show how much this can hurt, I would like to read a letter that 
was published in the Knoxville News this past Sunday from a man who no 
longer lives in my district, but whose family home was in my district. 
This is the letter from John Webb of Gainesville, Georgia, a man whom I 
have never met.
  He wrote, ``In the spring of 1964, there was a storm that hit Marion 
County, Tennessee, that resembled the recent storms of Katrina. It left 
behind people who were devastated and lives that were changed 
forever.'' He says, ``I was only 12 years old at the time and was on a 
camping trip with the Boy Scouts when I was told that I had to go to 
the hospital to see my father. There was a good possibility that he 
would not live through the night.
  ``The name of the storm was the Tennessee Valley Authority; my father 
had a stroke during a battle with the government agency which had 
condemned his farm of 110 acres on the Tennessee River.
  ``A panel of judges decided during the next 12 months of deliberation 
that the offer made by TVA to purchase my father's farm for $240 per 
acre was indeed too low and that it should pay the outrageous sum of 
$400 per acre.
  ``Court records show that the TVA experts stated under oath that this 
property had no present or future value as anything but farmland.''
  Mr. Webb continues, ``Even as my father lay in bed completely 
paralyzed on his left side from the stroke, unable to be present at 
proceedings, the court system granted TVA its wish, using the power of 
eminent domain.
  ``With the simple stroke of a pen, my father's farm was gone, 
completely against his will.
  ``Left behind was a woman with two teenagers to raise, a husband who 
required 24-hour medical care at home, and a future that looked as 
bleak as those victims of the hurricanes.''
  ``For the next 3 years,'' Mr. Webb writes, ``we learned a lot about 
bed sores, bed pans, and what it was like for a once proud man to lose 
his health and his humility.
  ``My father finally succumbed to pneumonia, and my mother lived for 
another 20 years with the aid of family, friends and Social Security.
  ``I still wonder about how all of our lives would have been different 
if it had not been for the power of politics and money. John E. Webb of 
Gainesville, Georgia.''
  Mr. Speaker, if we do not wake up and realize how important private 
property is both to our freedom and our prosperity, we are going to 
destroy our Nation. Politicians love to create parks, and this sounds 
so good, but when we continue to take more and more private property, 
we have to continually raise taxes on the property that remains in 
private hands, and we drive up prices on that remaining land. More and 
more young people cannot then afford homes, or they have to be jammed 
together in high-rises, condos or homes on postage-stamp-sized lots. In 
addition, the government cannot and does not take as good of care of 
land as private owners do.
  We need to put more people in office who understand how hurtful it is 
when government takes property and takes people's homes and farms, and 
we need to put more people in office who will pledge to take better 
care of the land government already has and stop government land grants 
and give poor and lower-income people a chance to own property and 
appreciate this very important part of the American dream.

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