Did the GOP Just Give Away $130 Billion of Public Property?
POSTED BY: 1kiki
UPDATED: Monday, March 30, 2026 19:33
VIEWED: 1748
PAGE 1 of 1
That’s enough to provide every single unemployed American a minimum-wage job for an entire year. That’s enough to pay for a year of tuition at a public institution for every college student in the US.
Did the GOP Just Give Away $130 Billion of Public Property?
http://www.thenation.com/article/did-gop-just-give-away-130-billion-pu
blic-property/
In December, two Republican senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, pushed Congress and the president into giving away what could amount to over $130 billion in public property.
That’s enough to provide every single unemployed American a minimum-wage job for an entire year. That’s enough to pay for a year of tuition at a public institution for every college student in the US.
And yet the GOP big-shots call themselves “fiscal conservatives”! “Fiscal conservatives,” my you-know-what.
I’m talking about the huge giveaway to the mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton in the Defense Authorization Act. It was splayed across ten pages of the bill, pages 441 to 450 (out of 697).
Rio Tinto is a 142-year-old mining company headquartered in London with management offices in Melbourne, Australia. It has a market capitalization of $74-$87 billion. BHP Billiton is a 155-year-old mining company, also run out of Melbourne. It has a market capitalization of $124–126 billion. Based on market value, they are the two largest mining companies in the world. Rather than actually competing against each other (no chance of that happening!), they joined hands. Rio Tinto owns 55 percent of a company called Resolution Copper Mining LLC, and BHP Billiton owns the remaining 45 percent. And thanks to the maneuvering of GOP senators McCain and Flake, the US government is handing over land with more than $130 billion in underground copper to Resolution Copper.
In a land-swap deal, the Defense Authorization Act took four square miles of Tonto National Forest—public land in Pinal County, just outside Superior, Arizona—and gave it to Resolution Copper, so that Resolution Copper can build a copper mine on the site. According to Resolution Copper’s website, the copper resource under that land contains 1.6 billion metric tons of copper-rich ore, which itself contains 1.47 percent copper. (That’s roughly 30 pounds of copper in every ton of ore.) So there are approximately 23.5 million tons of copper sitting under those four square miles of public property.
As I write this, copper goes for $5666 per ton. So the copper under those 2,422 acres of national park land is worth roughly $133.8 billion, at current prices.
The law does say that if the land Resolution Copper gives the federal government in return is less than the federal land they just got, they’ll have to pay the difference in cash. But that Resolution Copper gets a say in which appraiser gets chosen, and it’s not clear that the appraisal will fairly incorporate the value of the copper reserves.
(Wouldn’t it have been much simpler to put the land up for competitive sale, with a prescribed mandatory royalty? That’s how oil and gas leases on federal property are handled. But then there would be no way to “throw” the property to Resolution Copper, or to finagle the consideration for it.)
McCain and Flake pressed hard for this rip-off to be included in the Defense Authorization bill, even though it has nothing to do with defense. The Defense Authorization bill is a “must-pass” bill, like appropriation bills and debt ceiling bills. It has passed Congress, and been signed into law by the president, fifty-three years in a row.
Rio Tinto and BHP’s minions had tried to get the Resolution Copper swindle through the House of Representatives as a separate bill. They failed, even when the GOP controlled the House. But when McCain and Flake stuffed it into a huge defense bill, it sailed right through. (I voted against it, by the way.)
There is a certain irony that Senator Jeff Flake, of all people, earmarked this public land for Resolution Co
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Giving away our posterity's heritage to foreign corporations???
Great, just great.
--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The best democracy money can buy...
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Stewardship program likely to expire after Wisconsin Senate fails to take up bills
https://www.wxpr.org/energy-environment/2026-03-26/stewardship-program
-likely-to-expire-after-wisconsin-senate-fails-to-take-up-bills
US Education Department headquarters set for relocation under Trump’s dismantling effort
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/us-education-depart
ment-headquarters-set-for-relocation-under-trumps-dismantling-effort/articleshow/129845221.cms
Senate panel pushes stricter reporting for foreign funding to US colleges and universities
https://www.montrosepress.com/news/senate-panel-pushes-stricter-report
ing-for-foreign-funding-to-us-colleges-and-universities/article_b3761acf-d850-4baa-a231-5d864660f909.html
Ohio commission opens up thousands of acres of public land for fracking
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ohio-commission-approves-fracking-
thousands-181127892.html
Squatter Tries Stealing a $600,000 Home
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME