Capitol Hill's longest-running outrage: Congress winks while the mining companies shaft the taxpayers.

• Author: Bumpers, Dale
• Position: Mining Act of 1872 reform - Cover Story

Congress winks while the mining companies shaft the taxpayers

Joining the Senate in 1975 was a traumatic experience for me. I had been governor of Arkansas for four years and I was accustomed to making policy, giving my approval to legislation that I thought had merit, vetoing legislation that didn't, and, in general, making things happen with stroke of a pen. But the Senate is an altogether different place, and for those without yards of patience, an often maddening one. It is virtually impossible to accomplish anything significant without spending years shepherding, pleading, cajoling, begging, explaining, and compromising with your colleagues. And all that effort does not even guarantee a favorable result, or a result that hasn't been watered down until it's hardly recognizable.

I've learned this lesson the hard way. This is the ninth agonizing year of my effort to reform the Mining Law of 1872, signed by Ulysses S. Grant and intended to entice people to "go West" and settle. My successes have been marginal. Because I will leave the Senate at the end of the year, the conclusion of my fourth term, I have redoubled my efforts. But unless the American people are somehow awakened to this little-known abuse, I have no reason to be optimistic.

This archaic, 125-year-old law permits mining companies to gouge billions of dollars worth of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and other hardrock minerals from public lands, without paying one red cent to the real owners, the American people. And these same companies often leave the unsuspecting taxpayers with the bill for the billions of dollars required to clean up the environmental mess left behind. The Mining Law is as much a relic of bygone frontier days as the sod hut and the covered wagon. The era of the grizzled prospector seeking a fortune with a pickax, a tin pan, and a burro are long past. Today's prospectors are multinational corporations that scar and ravage the land with giant earth-moving machines and lethal acids like cyanide. But although our attitudes toward public resources have changed since the 19th century, the Mining Law has remained virtually untouched.

Even more galling, the same mining industry that benefits so handsomely from Congress' generosity has successfully used its money and lobbying influence to preserve this sweetheart deal. Meanwhile, members of Congress who perpetuate this unbelievable scam are never held accountable, because the public knows little, if anything, about the abuse. While this outrage surpasses most scandals that receive massive press coverage, it continues to escape notice.

Here's how the law works: Anyone, and I mean anyone, can drive four stakes into the ground on federally owned lands in the West, delineate the four comers of a 20-acre...