George Leef uses his latest Forbes column to examine Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s approach to government use of eminent domain.
Donald Trump also loves big government and it’s hard to imagine him arguing for any significant downsizing of our governmental leviathan. His defense of using eminent domain for “the public good” is telling.
During the February 6th debate among Republican presidential candidates in New Hampshire, Jeb Bush attacked Trump for his willingness to resort to eminent domain when it helps him make money.
Trump replied, “Eminent domain is an absolute necessity for a country, for our country. Without it, you wouldn’t have roads, you wouldn’t have hospitals, you wouldn’t have anything. You wouldn’t have schools, you wouldn’t have bridges. And what a lot of people don’t know because they were all saying, oh, you’re going to take their property. When somebody – when eminent domain is used on somebody’s property, that person gets a fortune. They at least get fair market value, and if they’re smart, they’ll get two or three times the value of their property.”
That final assertion led George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin (an expert on eminent domain) to quip on The Washington Post, “if eminent domain really were a good way to make a fortune, the Donald Trumps of the world would be lobbying the government to condemn their property. But that rarely, if ever, happens.”
Put aside Trump’s hyperbole about the supposed impossibility of schools, hospitals, bridges and so on in the absence of eminent domain. Let us focus on is his claim that eminent domain is not objectionable because people who have their property taken make out just fine financially.
That claim is indefensible. The truth is that people who lose their property to eminent domain proceedings are almost never made whole.
