[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 20]
[House]
[Page 29318]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                              URBAN SPRAWL

  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, the current politically-correct, fad issue 
with the liberal elite is what is called urban sprawl. Those who are 
shouting the loudest about this are for the most part people who are 
very anti-private property or at least people who are very lukewarm 
about property rights. They are usually wealthy environmental 
extremists, and ironically they are the very people who are the most 
responsible for urban sprawl in the first place.
  Today, the Federal Government owns about 30 percent of the land in 
this Nation. State and local governments and quasi-governmental units 
own another 20 percent, so that almost half the land is in some type of 
public ownership. The most disturbing things, however, are, number one, 
the very rapid rate in which government has been taking over private 
property in the last 30 or 40 years; and, number two, the governmental 
restrictions being placed on the land that remains in private ownership 
now.
  I attended a homebuilders meeting a few years ago in which they 
estimated that 60 percent of the developable land in this country would 
be off-limits with strict enforcement of our wetlands laws. Also, the 
Endangered Species Act has stopped or delayed for years the development 
of roads that would have saved many lives and has stopped construction 
and driven up costs of many homes. And there is something called the 
Wildlands Projects which the Washington Post said is a plan by 
environmentalists to place under public ownership half the land that 
remains as private property today.
  I know that to many people, the word ``development'' has become 
almost a dirty word. But home ownership has always been a very 
important part of the American dream. Are those of us who have homes 
now going to say to young couples and young families, ``Well, we have 
ours but we don't want you to have yours''? Are we going to tell young 
people in small homes now that they cannot someday move to a bigger 
home because we basically have to stop all development? Are we going to 
tell homebuilders and construction workers that they are going to have 
to find some other work, probably at much lower pay?
  No one wants our beautiful countryside turned into strip malls or 
parking lots, but development can be done in beautiful, environmentally 
sound ways. Old, unsightly buildings or blighted areas can be greatly 
improved. We should stop the local government appetite for farms which 
they then turn into industrial parks and give land at bargain-basement 
rates, sometimes to foreign corporations.
  Why do I say environmentalists have caused a great deal of urban 
sprawl, indeed most of it? Well, just think about it. When more and 
more land is taken over by government or restricted from development, 
that forces more and more people on to smaller and smaller pieces of 
land. It also drives up the price of the remaining developable land, 
which also forces more people into apartments, townhouses or houses on 
postage-stamp-size lots.
  Big government, brought on primarily by our liberal elite, has also 
caused urban sprawl. Big government has given most of its contracts, 
favorable regulatory rulings, and tax breaks to extremely big business. 
This has driven many small businesses and small farms out of existence.
  Now the environmental extremists are aiming at agricultural run-off 
or spill-off. Rigid Federal rules and red tape hit the small farmers 
hardest and keep driving them out, which of course inures to the 
benefit of the big corporate farms. When the Federal Government drives 
small businesses and small farms and even small hospitals out of 
existence, it drives more and more people into the cities and causes 
more and more urban sprawl.
  We need to remember that private property is one of the main things 
that has given us the great freedom and prosperity that we enjoy in 
this country today. It is one of the main things that sets us apart 
from nations like the former Soviet Union and other starvation-
existence type countries.
  Tom Bethell in his new book, ``The Noblest Triumph,'' says, ``Private 
property both disperses power and shields us from the coercion of 
others.'' He quotes Pope Leo XIII in 1891 who wrote that the 
``fundamental principle of socialism, which would make all possessions 
public property, is to be utterly rejected because it injures the very 
ones whom it seeks to help.''
  Brian Doherty, in the November 4 Journal of Commerce wrote that ``if 
the anti-sprawl agenda became a truly powerful political force, we 
would have to obey the dictates of busybody politicians who think it 
better for us to live in a crowded, central city walk-up than to have 
our own house with a two-car garage and a nice quarter-acre lawn.''
  We should remember that private property is good for the environment 
because people always take better care of their own property than they 
do of property in public ownership. We should realize, too, that if we 
really want to stop urban sprawl, we must stop this stealth-like 
abolition of private property so even more people are not forced into 
central cities and overcrowded suburbs.
  Mr. Speaker, we should stop government takeover of property and 
people will then have both the freedom and the opportunity to spread 
out.

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