[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15245-15246]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            RURAL CLEANSING

  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, we can never satisfy government's appetite 
for money or land. If we gave every department or agency up here twice 
what they are getting now, they would be happy for a short time but 
then they would be coming back to us crying about a shortfall in 
funding. But it is this threat to land and to private property that 
especially concerns me tonight.
  The Federal Government today owns over 30 percent of the land in this 
country, and State and local governments and quasi-governmental 
agencies own another 20 percent. So that half the land today is in some 
type of public control.

                              {time}  2015

  The alarming thing is the rapid rate at which that government control 
of land has been increasing in the last 30 or 40 years. Then on top of 
that, we continue to put more and more restrictions on what people can 
do with the private property that remains in their hands.
  We have to realize at some point, Mr. Speaker, that private property 
is one of the few things that has set us apart from countries like the 
former Soviet Union and Cuba and other socialist and communist nations. 
We need to recognize that private property is a very, very important 
part of our freedom and our prosperity.
  I have talked about these restrictions on what people can do with 
their land. There are groups all over the country that protest any time 
anybody wants to dig for coal, drill for any oil, cut any trees, or 
produce any natural gas. What they are doing is hurting the poor and 
lower- and middle-income people most of all by destroying jobs and 
driving up prices on everything.
  I want to bring to the attention of my colleagues tonight a column 
that was in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago called ``Rural 
Cleansing'' by Kimberley Strassel, who is an assistant editor and 
columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
  She wrote a column, most of which I want to read at this time. She 
talks about the cut off of water to 1,500 farm families in Oregon and 
California's Klamath Basin in April because of the sucker fish: ``The 
environmental groups behind the cut off continue to declare that they 
were simply concerned for the welfare of a bottom feeder. But last 
month these environmentalists revealed another motive when they 
submitted a polished proposal for the government to buy off the farmers 
and move them off their lands. This is what is really happening in 
Klamath. Call it rural cleansing. It is repeating itself in 
environmental battles across the country.
  ``Indeed, the goal of many environmental groups from the Sierra Club 
and others is no longer to protect nature. It is to expunge humans from 
the countryside.
  ``The strategy of these environmental groups is nearly always the 
same. To sue or lobby the government into declaring rural areas off 
limits to people who live and work there. The tools for doing this 
include the Endangered Species Act and local preservation laws. In some 
cases, owners lose their property outright. More often, the 
environmentalists' goal is to have restrictions placed on the land that 
either render it unusable or persuade owners to leave of their own 
accord.''
  The column continues that there was a court decision in this case. 
``Since that decision, the average value of an acre of farm property in 
Klamath has dropped from $2,500 to about $35. Most owners have no other 
source of income. So with the region suitably desperate, the enviros 
dropped their bomb. Last month they submitted a proposal urging the 
government to buy the farmers off.
  ``The council has suggested a price of $4,000 an acre which makes it 
more likely the owners will sell only to the government. While the 
amount is more than the property's original value, it is nowhere near 
enough to compensate people for the loss of their livelihoods and their 
children's future.

[[Page 15246]]

  ``The environmental groups have picked their fight specifically with 
the farmers but its acts will likely mean the death of an entire 
community. The farming industry there will lose $250 million this year. 
But the property tax revenues will also decrease under new property 
assessments. That will strangle road and municipal projects. Local 
business are dependent on the farmers and are now suffering 
financially. Should the farm acreage be cleared of people entirely 
meaning no tax and no shoppers, the community is likely to disappear.''
  ``Environmentalists argue,'' this columnist continues, ``that farmers 
should never have been in the dry Klamath Valley in the first place and 
that they put undue stress on the land. But the West is a primarily 
arid region. Its history is one of turning inhospitable areas into 
thriving communities through prudent and thoughtful relocation of 
water.''
  The columnist goes on, ``But, of course, this is the goal. 
Environmentalist groups have spoken openly of their desire to 
concentrate people into the cities turning everything outside city 
limits into a giant park. Do the people who give money to environmental 
groups realize the end game is to evict people from their land? I doubt 
it.''
  Ms. Strassel says, ``The American dream has always been to own a bit 
of property on which to pursue happiness. And we are very slowly doing 
away with that in this country.''

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