Letter: Congress should look to past to guide future

Saturday, Feb. 18, 2006 | 12:31 p.m.

Theodore Roosevelt, a great Republican, understood what was good for the Republican Party and the country. He once said, "To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."

And he further said, "The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life."

It is difficult for me to understand how the proposal by the Bush administration to sell about 300,000 acres of public forest for $1 billion - and is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years - is in concert with the ideals of a past great president.

My question: Is the Republican-controlled Congress willing to go along with the administration? If so, there should be a major change of the Congress in 2006.

Lou deBottari, Carson City