Democrats introduce “Voluntary” Grazing Permit Retirement Act

According to msn.com, over the past year in Phoenix,

…inflation rose 10.9 percent. That means that Phoenix residents paid about 16 percent more for meat, poultry and eggs, 6.5 percent more for milk, and 13 percent more for fruits and vegetables. It also cost 15.5 percent more to put clothes on their backs.

With food inflation at astronomical levels with no end in sight, one might think even the animal rights activists in the Democrat Party would think twice about introducing new inflationary bills. But no, on March 3 the Democrats introduced a bill that would inflate food prices even more. First, by spending more borrowed money for frivolous purposes, and second, by directly reducing the cattle supply.

On March 3, 2022, Representative Adam Smith (D-WA) introduced H.R. 6935, the  “Voluntary” Grazing Permit Retirement Act, into the House of Representatives.  The gist of the bill is that conflicts can be resolved between cattle ranchers and competing users of the federal lands by “progressively” putting the cattle ranchers permanently out of business and ranchlands permanently out of productive use.

The bill is has the full endorsement of the usual Big Green corporations. The lone cosponsor is long-time animal rights extremist, Representative Jared Huffman (D-CA-2).  In 2014, then-California Assemblyman Huffman even attempted to apply California’s latest radical animal rights legislation to meat and poultry products produced in other states.

The Wild  Earth Guardians claims it is backing H.R. 6935 with two million dollars.

The text of the bill can be read here. It’s the latest regurgitation of bills dating back to the previous century, all of which ultimately failed as unrealistic and deliberately misleading.  

Representative Smith’s Grazing Retirement Memo, posted on his website here,  recycles the same discredited propaganda from decades past. The memo specifically singles out and attacks livestock grazing –in Arizona.  One of the discredited but regurgitated arguments is the apples-to-oranges  comparison of “low” federal grazing fees to the higher fees a grazing lessee would pay a private landowner. Ironically, these complaints about the ranchers allegedly taking “welfare” off  the taxpayers happen to come from multi-million-dollar corporations that pay no corporate income taxes. They rake in millions more from the taxpayers annually from “sweetheart” lawsuits against federal agencies, most of which are settled out of court. The taxpayers even have to fund their court costs and attorney fees, often billed dramatically above market rates.

A representative analogy to the red herring complaint about alleged “giveaway” federal grazing fees is the fact that an overnight campsite in McDowell Mountain Park can be rented for just $22 per night. The public lands activists could cry crocodile tears over how “unfair” it is to the Maricopa County taxpayers that the camper pays only about one-fifth as much in rent than one would pay for an average hotel room in nearby Scottsdale.

Bottom line, we get what we pay for. On federal lands, the permittee erects and maintains his own fences, manages his own herd, works consciously and invests his own money to improve the soil and range conditions (in the self-interest of better forage), provides all labor, pays out-of-pocket for   predation by introduced wolves and other predators, vandalism, theft and other losses , and installs water and other improvements to better manage soil and vegetation. In addition, he shares the land with the rest  of the public.

Moreover, the federal grazing permittee spends endless uncompensated hours in meetings with government officials and is required to fully understand a veritable library of environmental laws. On private lands, similar to the fact that maid services and security are typically included in a hotel bill, a grazing lessee likewise enjoys many services and other costs that are provided by the landowner for a justifiably higher grazing fee.

Finally, the grazing lessee on private lands does not share the land with the public, and also suffers a great deal less harassment from the aforementioned, professional whiners. That’s worth paying a LOT extra for.

SACPA opposes H.R. 6935 and has opposed  similar  legislation since the 1990’s. SACPA STILL opposes permanent “voluntary” grazing permit retirements.