GOP lawmakers protest efforts to expand wildlife refuges

Republicans in the House are criticizing the Obama administration's efforts to expand federally protected lands while the debt skyrockets. In protesting more federal wildlife refuges, the lawmakers also alluded to scandals at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the National Security Agency (NSA), and claimed all are the product of executive federal power. Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said on Thursday, "Regardless of our national debt, the Obama administration will not stop its insatiable obsession to acquire more and more private property coupled with a lack of a comprehensive strategy to maintain those lands in the future." "We're $17 trillion in debt in this nation," Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said. "We're borrowing money from China just to meet our own operating expenses as a nation and we're going to borrow more money from China to buy more property in Tennessee?" To expand a protected area, as the FWS has proposed to do with the Lower Hatchie and Chickasaw refuges in Tennessee, the agency goes through a public and internal review process, at the end of which it can purchase land from willing landowners at market rate. Acquiring the 120,000 proposed acres in Tennessee would, at current prices, cost about $300 million...more

One would hope they were opposed to expanding the federal estate no matter the size of the federal debt.

Why not put a freeze on all federal land acquisitions in the appropriations bills this year?