LAND GRAB PROVISIONS ATTACHED TO NDAA DRAW IRE FROM CRUZ AND COBURN

The inclusion of a public lands package in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) compromise has drawn criticism from two prominent conservative voices in the upper chamber.

"The decision to attach an extreme land grab to the NDAA is a disservice to members of the Armed Forces," says Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), in statement. "With the military's shrinking budget, it is offensive that this bill would be used to fund congressional pork. And, at a time where jobs are scarce and the federal government has removed billions of acres of land from productive use, Congress should not be restricting more than a half-million new acres.” “The House and Senate should reject this attempt by self-serving politicians to exploit the men and women of the military to serve their special interests,” he urges.

According to Cruz, the “extraneous” land grab provisions in the NDAA include:

Study to begin the National Women's History Museum The federal government already owns an estimated 640 million acres of land, more than one-third of the entire country.

Breitbart News reported that the text of the NDAA compromise reached by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers included a slew of unrelated public lands measures. The NDAA is considered must-pass legislation.

Is the federal government going to pay for this land as required by the Constitution’s Clause 17 of Section 8 of Article I and / or the eminent domain provision of the 5th Amendment?

Note that if this land is being taken for the purposes described in Clause 17 mentioned above that not only must state lawmakers approve of the sale of state land, but also consider this. If state legislatures still controlled the Senate as they did before the 17th Amendment was ratified, then I think that senators whose states are really not willing to sell any land to the feds would vote against the bill. So this land grab may be another example of major problems with the 17th Amendment.

Also, although I have nothing to substantiate the following concern, I understand that there may be bribes of state officials by the corrupt feds to support the land grabs. If such is the case then I wouldn’t be surprised if Constitution-ignorant state officials are clueless that they may be in contempt of the constitutional statutes mentioned above.

The freepers are confused again. There is nothing in this legislation involving the buying of land. It is about re-designating land already owned The only land being transferred is the 2500 acres in NM going to the mining company as part of a land swap.

This is being done the way it has always been done. If the state congressional delegation approves it, it gets done.

This all dates back to the days of Eisenhower and the Submerged Lands Act. As part of that deal were the future funding bills that would be enacted in the 60s and 70s. The land and water conservation fund was first, then park funding money, then historical/cultural site preservation money. This is merely the way that the royalties the fed collects from offshore drilling is transferred to the states.

Then in 2006, this was expanded when Congress gave "Royalty Sharing" to TX, LA, MS and AL as part of GOMESA, but purposely left FL out of the deal because FL won't allow offshore drilling. GOMESA was the last act of Congress in Dec 2006, before the democrats took over in 2007.

Because those 4 gulf states were given royalty sharing, now, VA, NC, and SC can get royalty sharing, so, offshore drilling will begin there.

"It is about re-designating land already owned"

Thank you for the additional details concerning the “land grab” not given in the article.

If this issue concerns land already owned by the feds, then I question why the article title starts with “land grab?” Is Breibart trying to get conservatives all worked up over nothing?

"If the state congressional delegation approves it, it gets done."

Given that this is Section 8 of Article I issue, please consider the following. Clause 17 of Section 8 doesn’t use the wording "state congressional delegation,” but simply refers to “the legislature of the state.” So not only must we now question if the so-called state congressional delegation is composed entirely of elected members of the state’s legislature, but we must also question if the corrupt federal government possibly bribed members of this commission to buy the land.

"This all dates back to the days of Eisenhower and the Submerged Lands Act."

As a side note to this discussion, please consider the following. With all due respect to the late President Eisenhower and his family, some of Eisenhower’s official actions show that he was clueless, imo, to the federal government’s constitutionaly limited powers. Other than the power to establish postal roads (1.8.7) for example, the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to build the nations intrastate highway system.

In fact, note that President James Madison had vetoed a bill comparable to the one that Eisenhower had signed to establish the nation’s highway system because Congress didn’t have the Article I, Section 8 authority to make the bill.

Veto of federal public works bill

So Eisenhower should have first led Congress to successfully propose a highway amendment to the Constitution imo, so that Congress had the constitutional authority to tax and spend for such a project.

Getting back to the so-called land grab by the feds, and given that other areas of concern have been raised on this message board concerning federal lands, the bottom line is that we have more lose ends to pull with respect to determining if the feds bought land referenced by this thread within the framework of the Constitution.

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