Political Quotes

“I would like to thank the gentleman from California, Chairman Calvert, for allowing me the opportunity to offer this important amendment. I rise today in support of my amendment. My amendment is simple. It removes $12 million from the EPA's environmental programs and management account and places $10 million into the U.S. Forest Service's forest and rangeland research account, which funds important scientific research through the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program and the Forest Products Laboratory. This will free up money from the Federal bureaucracy for use in on-the-ground scientific research into forest health, wood products, biomass, and threatened species. To make sound forest management decisions, it is imperative to quantify the amount of standing timber, the harvest and usage rates, how much is lost to insects and disease infestation, how many trees are lost to wildfire, and how much net growth occurs in our forest. The Forest Inventory and Analysis Program does just that. The data is used to assess the quantity and quality of our forestlands, both public and private. It lets us know if we are gaining or losing forestland, and it tells us if we have a net loss or net gain in trees and tree volume. This data is critical to calculate how much carbon storage we have in our forest, and without this data, we cannot understand our total carbon balance.…”