As feared by everyone, the U.S. Senate and Harry Reid are bringing those fears to fruition and are set to destroy America’s future by taking all the private property they can with one bill, unless we act this week!
It used to be called the CLEAR (Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources) Act of 2010, but Mr. Reid pulled a legislative trick and substituted the CLEAR Act for a completely unrelated, bill S. 303, and now calls it the “America’s Great Outdoors Bill of 2010.”
Call your Senators today and demand they oppose S. 303 in its entirety. Demand that they oppose every section of this bill. No part of this bill is good for America’s landowners.
S. 303 was introduced and passed by the Senate in early 2009, as the “Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act of 2009.” It was amended and passed in the House and sent back to the Senate for passage where it has languished until now. In a near midnight Sunday session with no one on the Senate floor, Reid asked for unanimous consent to substitute the CLEAR Act for S. 303. The President of the Senate said: “Without objection, granted,” and S. 303 was placed on the Calendar for consideration.
Fred Kelly Grant explains how Reid slyly made the switch and the devastating implications the bill has for private property rights in today’s report.
In this one maneuver, Mr. Reid used S.303 as a shell bill completely gutting it, added 1,003 pages with 108 separate land bills, and renamed it “America’s Great Outdoors Bill of 2010.”
Among the bills rolled into this amendment are 13 sections covering the National Park Service, National Wilderness Preservation System, Forest Service, Department of Interior, National Heritage Sites, BLM, Rivers and Trails, Water and Hydropower, Insular Areas, Wildlife Conservation and Water Quality Protection and Restoration, Oceans and Fisheries, Indian Homelands and Trust Land, and Miscellaneous.
This means additional wilderness, wild and scenic rivers and trails designations, the expansion of EPA authority to control ocean beaches through regulations that will adversely affect all farms and ranches, and multiple land transfers, among other significant negative implications for America.
Early estimates are that this bill will cost Americans a minimum of $18 billion dollars, and that is just the cost of the bill, not the long term loss to our local and national economies as more of America’s land is removed from productive use.
Mr. Reid is pulling out all the stops before the old Congress adjourns. We must try to stop this bill before we lose more of our land and more of our liberty.
There is no time for any member of Congress to actually consider this type of massive legislation, some of which has not even had a hearing.
Contact your U.S. Senator and demand they oppose S.303, Reid’s massive Omnibus Lands Bill.
