[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 43 (Thursday, April 6, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H1630-H1631]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                LIMITING SIZE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the 
time of the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier).
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Utah?
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  MR. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, several weeks ago, several of us on 
the floor talked on the value of the Federal Government not trying to 
be more efficient but simply trying to be less, and returning some 
misappropriated authority back to the states. To poorly paraphrase, 
Justice Brandeis, a minority decision he gave in the 1920s: The States 
are indeed the laboratory of democracy. If you think about it, if a 
State tries something creative that does not work, we are not all 
harmed. When we, on the other hand, tries something that does not work, 
the entire Nation is harmed.
  For the Federal Government, the only advantage the Federal Government 
has is of uniformity. By definition, what we do is one-size-fits-all. 
States on the other hand have a greater opportunity of being creative, 
being fair, being just simply because they have a greater opportunity 
of meeting individual needs. Federal Government does not mean to do 
harm, we just do.
  Let me give you an example: I want to introduce you to a constituent 
of mine, an elderly gentleman, we will call him Gene. He owned a farm 
that had been in his family for several generations. Of course, on this 
farm ran a small creek. This creek went to a larger creek, which went 
to a river, which went into a bay, which eventually went into the Great 
Salt Lake. Even though this dead-end lake, all within the state of 
Utah, has been declared by the Federal Government to be international 
waterway, because in the 1800s, an entrepreneurial pioneer was paid for 
ferrying sheep across the lake for summer grazing. Go figure. But back 
to Gene.
  Gene had eight acres of this land that was on the main road, two of 
it was elevated. Since they were now planting hay on this land, they 
have to in Utah irrigate. So he built a man-made ditch from the creek 
to his property to flood up the lower areas so it finally hit the 
higher areas and water his crop, until the Federal Government declared 
that the man-made ditch was indeed the creek bed, the man-made standing 
water was now Federal wetlands; and, if Gene did not like it, it was 
his responsibility to prove the Federal Government was wrong. Which he 
actually did. The Soil and Water Conservation District came in and 
showed the land was different. He dug wells which showed that there was 
a clay base underneath, so even if the water was there, it would never 
sink into the aquifer and get to the river. He even put a flexible pipe 
into the ditch and put the creek water back into the creek, and oddly 
enough the land went dry, to which the Federal Government then 
threatened him with fines and imprisonment because he was harming 
Federal wetland. Then, when confronted with the evidence, they simply 
said, ``Well, we are in a drought cycle. You are going to have to wait 
at least 5 years until we have a wet cycle to see if the water will 
naturally appear by itself.''
  He tried to sell this land at one time. A factory wished to buy it 
which would make apparel and create 100 jobs in his community, but he 
could not do it because now this was a Federal wetland. It was not a 
taking, mind you, because the Federal Government still allowed him to 
raise hay even though the price he made from the hay barely paid the 
taxes on this land that was now zoned as commercial property on the 
main road.
  Gene did what most people when they run up against the bureaucracy of 
the Federal Government did, he surrendered. He eventually sold his 
property at $400,000. However, the exact same kind of land next door on 
the same road was sold for $750,000 for the same acreage. Which means, 
$350,000, which should have been his retirement, it should have been 
his posterity. The wealth from his own property was denied him simply 
because we as a government usually do one-size-fits-all.

[[Page H1631]]

  It is an interesting question of why we harm our own people, why we 
sometimes insist they have to prove their own innocence, and why we 
fail our own simply because the Federal Government is too large, too 
inflexible to be creative, to be just, and to be fair.
  One last comment about Gene. His family raised on this property sugar 
beets. I am not a farmer, but it does not take a rocket scientist, 
either, to understand you cannot raise a root crop in a wetlands. Some 
day I wish the Federal Government would learn that as well.

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