[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 4127-4128]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                   THE GOVERNMENT'S APPETITE FOR LAND

  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, a few days ago, I did a Special Order about 
a tax cut and how one can never satisfy government's appetite or demand 
for money. I said then that if we gave every department and agency 
double what they got the year before, they might be happy for a short 
time, but they would soon be back crying about a shortfall in funding. 
Everyone supports education, for example, and I certainly do.

                              {time}  1215

  But you almost never hear the fact that education spending has gone 
up at a rate many times the rate of inflation over the last several 
years.
  But I want to expand today on something else that I mentioned in that 
special order of a few days ago, and that is government's appetite for 
land.
  Just as you can never satisfy government's appetite for money, you 
can never satisfy government's desire for land. They always want more, 
and they have been getting it at what people should realize is an 
alarming rate.
  Today, over 30 percent of the land in the United States is owned by 
the Federal Government. Another almost 20 percent is owned by State and 
local governments or quasi-governmental agencies.
  So today you have about half the land in some type of public or 
governmental ownership.
  The most alarming thing is the speed with which this government greed 
for land has grown over the past 30 years or 40 years.

[[Page 4128]]

  Another alarming aspect of this trend is the growing number of 
restrictions that government at all levels is putting on the land that 
does remain in private hands.
  A few years ago, the National Home Builders Association told me if 
there was strict enforcement of the wetlands rules and regulations, 
over 60 percent of the developable land would be off limits for homes.
  Now some who already have nice homes might think this would be good, 
to stop most development. But you cannot stop it, because the 
population keeps growing, and people have to have someplace to live.
  So what happens? When government keeps buying and restricting more 
and more land, it does two things: It drives up the costs and causes 
more and more people to be jammed closer and closer together.
  First, it drives up land and building costs so that many young or 
lower income families are priced out of the housing market, especially 
for new homes.
  Second, it forces developers to build on smaller and smaller postage-
stamp-size lots or build townhouses or apartments.
  Do you ever wonder why subdivisions built in the 1950s or 1960s often 
have big yards and now new subdivisions do not, or why new homes that 
should cost $50 a square foot now cost $100 a square foot or more? It 
is in large part because government keeps buying or restricting so much 
land.
  This trend is causing more and more people to be jammed into smaller 
and smaller areas, increasing traffic, pollution, crime, and just an 
overall feeling of being overcrowded.
  It is sometimes referred to as the urban sprawl, and environmental 
extremists are attacking it because they know it is unpopular, but they 
are the very people who have caused it.
  Most of these environmental extremists come from very wealthy 
families, and they probably have nice homes already or even second 
homes in the country.
  But it is not fair and it is not right, Mr. Speaker, for the people 
who already have what they want to demand policies that drive up the 
costs and put an important part of the American dream out of reach for 
millions of younger or lower income people.
  Make no mistake about it, when government buys or restricts more and 
more land, it drives up the costs of the rest of the land. And this 
hurts poor and lower income and middle income people the most.
  Even those forced to live in apartments are hurt, because apartment 
developers have to pass their exorbitant land and regulatory costs on 
to their tenants. When government takes land, they almost always take 
it from poor or lower income people or small farmers.
  We have way too many industrial parks in this country today. States 
and local governments, which do almost nothing for older small 
businesses, will give almost anything to some big company to move from 
someplace else.
  Is it right for governments to take property for very little paid to 
small farmers and then give it to big foreign or multinational 
companies or even to big companies to develop resort areas for the 
wealthy? I do not think so.
  One of the most important things we need to do to insure future 
prosperity is to stop government at all levels from taking over more 
private property. Anyone who does not understand this should read a 
book called The Noblest Triumph, Property and Prosperity Through the 
Ages by Tom Bethell. The whole book is important, but a couple of brief 
excerpts: The Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman has said, 
``You cannot have a free society without private property? Recent 
immigrants have been delighted to find you can buy property in the 
United States without paying bribes.
  The call for secure property rights in Third World countries today is 
not an attempt to help the rich. It is not the property of those who 
have access to Swiss bank accounts that needs to be protected. It is 
the small and insecure possessions of the poor.
  This key point was well understood by Pope Leo XIII 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.''
  Over the years, when government has taken private property, it has 
most often taken it from lower and middle income people and small 
farmers. Today, federal, state and local governments, and quasi-
governmental agencies now own about half the land in this Nation. The 
most disturbing thing is the rapid rate at which this taking has 
increased in the last 40 years. Environmentalists who have supported 
most of this should realize that the worst polluters in the world have 
been the socialist nations, because their economies do not generate 
enough income to do good things for the environment, and that private 
property is almost always better cared for than public property and at 
a much lower cost.

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