Political Quotes

“I wish to continue our earlier discussion a little bit more. I remind this body of the pending business that is before the Senate, and that is a package of parks bills, some 56 titles, and a couple of them are contentious--Utah wilderness and Presidio. And as we look at getting things done around here, it is inconceivable to me that we would not finish what we started. We started yesterday with this parks package. It was scheduled to come up throughout the day. We had about 7 rac{1}{2} hours of debate, good debate yesterday. Today, we were going to take amendments, and the first thing out of the box is the minimum wage. Putting aside the merits of the minimum wage, the question is, Why not finish what we started? The Utah wilderness debate is a legitimate issue for the State of Utah. The Presidio trust establishment is a legitimate issue for the State of California. The concern relative to Utah wilderness is whether or not 2 million acres of additional wilderness is adequate or, as some from the elitist group suggest, it should be 5 to 6 million acres. Currently, Utah has a pretty good chunk of wilderness. They have approximately 800,000 acres that is Forest Service wilderness. The proposed bill that we presented would increase that BLM wilderness classification to 2 million acres, making a total of 2.8 million. That is pretty significant, Mr. President, when you consider just how big a million acres of wilderness actually is.”