The Utah Republican has a message for President Obama.
The Obama administration, which has seized more land by executive fiat than any other U.S. president, is gearing up to finalize a 1.9 million acre land grab in the state of Utah.
Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah (A, 100%), representing his constituents in Utah, posted a Facebook video Tuesday evening in which he pleaded with the president, urging him to avoid the “mistake” of ignoring widespread local opposition to the designation of that land in southeast Utah as the Bears Ears National Monument.
The concern of Sen. Lee and of local residents is that designation of their land as a national monument will limit their access to it, rendering them unable to use the land for grazing or for mineral development, making them poorer.
In an op-ed Senator Lee wrote for the Washington Post this week, Lee frames this as an issue of land grabs without representation.
The framers of the Constitution made Congress the most powerful branch of the federal government, giving it the exclusive authority to make and change federal laws, because they knew it would be the most accountable to the people. They believed that a consent-based government such as ours would cease to function if Americans came to see it as illegitimate, so they put Congress in charge of federal lawmaking and then they put the people in charge of Congress.
That is why it would be a mistake for the president to listen to those urging him to unilaterally declare a Bears Ears National Monument in southeast Utah. Any such declaration would short-circuit an ongoing healthy debate, further sow distrust in government among the American public and push us another step closer to an imperial presidency.
Will Obama heed Sen. Lee’s warning?
Source: Mike Lee sounds the alarm on ‘disturbing rumors’ of Obama’s final imperial action
