Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we have the nomination of Representative Ryan Zinke to be the Secretary of the Interior as the business before the body today, and I wish to spend a few moments this afternoon speaking about him, his qualifications, and why I believe he will be a strong Secretary of the Interior. Of all the Cabinet-level nominations that have an impact on my home State of Alaska, the Secretary of the Interior is almost certainly the most important and the most consequential. Two- thirds of Alaska--nearly 224 million acres--is under Federal management. To put that into perspective, that is more land than is occupied by the entire State of Texas, and it is an area about 177 times larger than the State of Delaware. The vast majority of that land is controlled by agencies within the Department of the Interior, from the Bureau of Land Management, to the National Park Service, to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Again, significant parts of Alaska--more land than is occupied by the State of Texas--are held under Federal management. It is for this reason we in Alaska call the Interior Secretary our ``landlord.'' He might not necessarily like that fact, but that is what he is effectively.…”