http://www.truth-out.org/rep-bishop-says-federal-control-public-lands-unconstitutional/1319736024
Representative Bishop Says Federal Control of Public Lands Is
Unconstitutional
Thursday 27 October 2011
by: Scott Keyes and Lee Fang, ThinkProgress
<http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/10/27/351357/rob-bishop-public-lands-unconstitutional/> |
Report
The House Resources Subcommittee on National Parks Chairman Rob Bishop
(R-UT) made a startling claim at a Republican conference late last week:
current federal control of public lands is unconstitutional.
Bishop was on a panel during the Western Republican Leadership
Conference to discuss federal control of public lands in the West. After
comparing the large tracts of public land that exist out West to the
Soviet Union, Bishop told the conservative crowd, “I defy you to find
anywhere in the Constitution where this is allowable.”
BISHOP: *Federal government owns one out of every three acres in
this country.* If it’s west of Denver, it’s one out of every two
acres. If this kind of federal control is good, then the Soviet
Union should have been the Garden of Eden. *But what this presents
to us – and I defy you to find anywhere in the Constitution where
this is allowable -* but what it defines to us is – the second slide
if you would – everything in red are the states that had the hardest
time funding their educations system.
Listen to it:
ThinkProgress caught up with Bishop after the event to find out more
about public lands’ supposed unconstitutionality. The Utah Republican
told us that federal control of lands out was “never intended” to be
permanent. He conceded that national parks were acceptable – “because
they’re not moneymakers anyway” – but said that other public lands
“could easily be developed and should be developed and there’s no reason
for the federal government to keep them.”
KEYES: You mentioned that there’s not constitutional justification
for federal control of [public lands]. Can you just elaborate on
that a little bit?
BISHOP: The Constitution actually allows very specific reasons for
the federal government having land. Almost all of those are for
military purposes and like [inaudible] and stuff. *The lands in the
West transferred over to the federal government prior to statehood
was never intended that the federal government would keep that.* It
was only in the early 1900s that all of a sudden the federal
government changed its policy and they codified that with the
[inaudible] back in the 1960s.
KEYES: Would you like to see most of that control of federal lands
rolled back then?
BISHOP: There are some lands – I’d be happy to let the federal
government keep all the national parks, because they’re not
moneymakers anyway. We spend money on those. *But there are whole
other pieces of land and property that could easily be developed and
should be developed and there’s no reason for the federal government
to keep them.*
Watch it:
Despite Rep. Bishop’s belief that he can simply declare public land
ownership to be unconstitutional because he doesn’t like the amount of
federal land that exists in the West, the Constitution clearly
contemplates federal land ownership. Among other things, Article 4,
Section 3, Clause 2
<http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/tocs/a4_3_2.html> of the
Constitution provides that “Congress shall have Power to dispose of and
make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other
Property belonging to the United States.” And Bishop’s unfamiliarity
with the plain text of the Constitution is all the more troubling
considering that he is one of three founding members of the
Congressional Constitution Caucus
<http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=14730>, a Republican group
that prides itself on dealing with constitutional matters.
Moreover, if his suggestion that the federal government may only own
“national parks” were taken to its logical conclusion, the federal
government couldn’t even own the land beneath the White House unless it
was declared a park.
To learn more about the importance of America’s public lands, read CAP’s
new report
<http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/09/public_lands.html>, “The
Jobs Case for Conservation: Creating Opportunity Through Stewardship of
America’s Public Lands.”
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