With the federal government controlling more than 640 million acres of land in the U.S., most of it in the West, the national Republican Party platform says it’s critical for access to these public lands be preserved for hunting, fishing and recreation.
The platform recognizes the absurdity of depending upon the absentee landlords of Washington to manage the lands, and provides for a way that western states can recoup lost revenues from the property that should be going to schools, police and emergency services.
“Congress shall immediately pass universal legislation providing for a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to states.”
This isn’t a wholesale disposal of property, but directed towards “willing states” who are able to care for the land.
We expect that Democrats and their cohorts in the environmental movement will deliberately mangle the intent of the language, and claim that Republicans went to sell off national parks wholesale, but that’s not the intent and it’s not written anywhere in the platform that national parks should go on the auction block.
The platform recognizes that the west is unique in our needs and that government for far to long has either ignored us, or over-regulated our backyards to the point where it’s now have a detrimental effect on the nation’s economic viability and energy production.