Bruce Westerman: “I thank the gentleman from California for yielding and for his hard work in putting together an appropriations product…”

“I thank the gentleman from California for yielding and for his hard work in putting together an appropriations product of the House, which is a far cry from what this bill is. It is not a product of the House. It is more like something you would get from the bill of the month club. It has none of the House priorities that have been debated here. Mr. Speaker, I would like to think about the number 85. Eighty-five people perished in the Camp fire last year in California. The blaze destroyed an entire community, burned 14,000 homes, and left hundreds of other Americans injured or homeless. Adding to that, the Camp fire was just one of thousands of blazes that burned 9 million acres across the country last year. Let's face the facts. More and more Americans are living closer to our Nation's forests. These forests are becoming sicker, drier, and overstocked with flammable materials. When the temperatures rise and the arid winds blow, we have seen firsthand how these unhealthy forests become objects of mass destruction. The U.S. Forest Service now estimates that there are at least 43 million homes in the wildland-urban interface. That is the part of our country where forests and communities intersect. This is a major increase from the 31 million homes that were located there less than 20 years ago. Meanwhile, millions of acres of public land are at a high or severe risk of wildfire.…”