Democrats on the House National Resources Committee pummeled Interior Secretary Doug Burgum with questions about the Trump administration’s management of public lands in a combative hearing Thursday.
They probed the reopening of Alcatraz as a federal prison and whether the department has lost firefighters to the administration’s cuts.
Ranking member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) compared Burgum’s public statements on public lands to vulture capitalism: “Strip the asset, extract the value and move on.
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“You’ve often described public lands as part of a federal balance sheet, as if they are assets to be liquidated and sold off to please investors and creditors,” Huffman said.
