Obama’s monument declarations propel his job-killing agenda

Source: The Hill | January 5, 2017 | Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah)

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Although Utah’s San Juan County is larger than the entire land mass of Massachusetts, the federal government controls 92% of the county’s land. How does a county fund basic services like public safety, education, health or assistance programs with a tax base limited to 8% of its area? It does so barely, if at all.

Low-wage seasonal jobs are welcomed, but they do little to bring prosperity. For prosperity San Juan County families count on ranching, mining or other extractive industries that are now closed off to them. These people do not measure government’s effectiveness by the generosity of its welfare benefits but by the opportunities created and freedoms preserved to allow them to earn their own way. In this they are no different than miners in Pennsylvania and Ohio, offshore drillers or constructors awaiting the go ahead to build the Keystone Pipeline; all have been stomped on by an “Envirocrat” president on his way out the door. The “tenure and trust fund” set will never understand that reality.

A monument designation grants federal bureaucrats life and death power over ranchers and others whose livelihoods depend on the land.  These federal environmental colonizers can close roads to private property and even prohibit ATVs used by local tribes for hunting and gathering.  Such a designation locks up over 100,000 acres of state school trust lands that should be generating badly needed revenue for Utah schools. 

Most egregiously, the action dismisses thousands of hours spent by hundreds of officials and residents hammering out a seven-county compromise to provide economic and resource development opportunities on non-scenic lands (with no archeological value) in exchange for expansive wilderness protections even beyond the vast monument’s boundaries.  (Mind you, this national monument is actually 1 million acres bigger than the largest of Utah’s 5 national parks.) 

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