Congress at its worst
CARA the worst piece of legislation to come out of Washington

By Henry Lamb
from eco-logic
http://eco.freedom.org/el/20010801/cara.shtml

CARA, the "Conservation and Reinvestment Act," also known as the "Condemnation and Relocation Act," may be the worst piece of legislation to come out of Washington in a generation - or more.

The bill will create a $3-billion annual slushfund - for 15 years, primarily to buy up private property.

Oh, there are a few other uses for the money, to maintain parks and the like, but make no mistake about it, the primary purpose for the Act is to get more and more private property under government control.

The "spin doctors" have done a magnificent job of convincing the public that the bill will "preserve open space," and "protect the last great places." These are goals that everyone can support.

The negatives don't make it into the press.

In the first instance, nowhere in the enumerated powers granted to the federal government by the U.S. Constitution, can I find authority for the federal government to own one-third of all the land area in the nation. Combined with state and local government land holdings, governments now own more than 40% of all the land. My Constitution authorizes the feds to own and govern the District of Columbia (ten square miles), and other land purchased from the states - with the permission of the State Legislatures - now get this, "for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards and other needful buildings" (Article I, Section 8).

Congress and the courts have managed to turn a blind eye to this limitation of power, and are refusing to even discuss Constitutional authority as it relates to CARA. Instead, they are spreading the loot around to the states, and to powerful environmental organizations, so they too, can share in your wealth.

Congress has overwhelmingly supported the bill because nearly every Congressional District and State will share the bounty by taking money from the taxpayers and redistributing it to the states that provide the greatest support. Alaska and Louisiana, for example, home states of the primary sponsors, get the lion's share. But nearly everyone gets a piece of the action.

If this were not enough reason to reject the bill, consider the fact that every time private property is sold to the government - or to a so-called "conservancy" group, the property taxes must increase for the remaining property owners.

A decade ago, the Patagonia catalog printed a center-spread promoting the "Wildlands Project." It showed three maps of the state of Florida. At the time, about 10-percent of the state was publicly owned and 90-percent was privately owned. The article boasted that in 10 years, nearly half of Florida would be publicly owned, and that when the Wildlands Project was fully implemented, a full 90-percent would be publicly owned. Thanks to your tax dollars, funneled through the federal government to state agencies and to favored environmental organizations, the State of Florida is well on its way towards public ownership. How will the owners of the remaining 10-percent of the land support the budgets traditionally funded by property taxes?

If neither of these reasons have persuaded you to oppose CARA, think about your children and your grandchildren.

Every time private property is sold to the government or to a conservancy organization - or when the development rights are sold, or the land is placed in a perpetual conservation easement, the heirs of the seller are denied their birthright - the privilege of using the resource to provide for their families, and further their pursuit of happiness.

The government - and its surrogate environmental organizations - are buying up the best land, around urban centers, along streams and highways. The government is buying up the land near parks - the most valuable land, and the most desirable land.

If this land is ever used for productive purposes - and it will be eventually - who will benefit? Not the heirs of the sellers, but the favored environmental organizations that are now using your tax money to buy the land, and the government.

The government has no business being in the real estate business. Realtors and home builders and contractors' associations should be up in arms about the government moving in on their free market place. The Farm Bureau and the Grange, and other agricultural organizations should be storming Washington to protest CARA - the bill designed to fund the rural cleansing efforts now underway at Klamath Falls, Oregon, and across the West.

The Oregon Natural Resources Council - one of the favored environmental groups - has already proposed a buy-out of the 1400 farm families devastated by the government decision to withhold the farmer's water. This is precisely the kind of rural cleansing that CARA is designed to fund.

Every time the government steps in to solve what some pressure group perceives to be a problem, the government just makes a bigger problem of it. While an open and free market place may not be fair, nor predictable, it is efficient and it is effective.

CARA is sold to the public as a means to "save" open space. There is no shortage of open space. All development exists on less than five-percent of the land area. We're not going to run out of open space . Let the cities grow - wherever the free market dictates. Let the farmers farm and the ranchers ranch - wherever the free market dictates. The free market will limit growth. Americans do not need the government - or environmental extremists - telling them where they may or may not live.

Let the government be about the business of cleaning up its own house - figuring out how we are going to meet the energy requirements of the next generation; finding the hundreds of millions of dollars unaccounted for in the various federal agencies; and providing some leadership in the international community that demonstrates faith in the free market system that made America great.

CARA is nothing less than the nationalization of private property in America. Hitler, Stalin, and Castro did it with brute force; Congressman Don Young, and his co-sponsors of CARA, are more generous - they are allowing you to pay for the nationalization of America with your tax dollars.

CARA is scheduled for a vote in the House Resources Committee Wednesday (July 25, 2001). Those who vote to enact this horrible legislation should be required to cite the Constitutional authority for their vote, they should be required to identify a source to replace lost property tax revenue to local governments, and they should provide a written explanation that can convince future generations that they didn't need private property anyway.

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