Bruce Westerman: “I thank the gentleman for his leadership in the past in getting bipartisan legislation in place. I remember a couple of…”

“I thank the gentleman for his leadership in the past in getting bipartisan legislation in place. I remember a couple of years ago I was out around South Lake Tahoe and I saw the fruits of the efforts of Representative McClintock, working in a bipartisan manner with many groups, to do the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act, part of what was in the bipartisan WIIN Act. And I felt proud as an American from Arkansas to be in California and seeing the forest actually being managed and knowing that it was my colleague, Mr. McClintock, that pushed for that. And more of that needs to be done, enough of it is not happening. We need more land that gets treated like that. It looked like a park. From a forestry perspective, I would have maybe taken a few more trees out, but it was way better than what was left around it and it is making great progress, and that is because of solutions-based approaches to getting the job done and making a difference out on the ground. But we have got 80 million acres of forest land in this country that is subject to catastrophic wildfire. When you mix that with the drought conditions that we are seeing today, Madam Speaker, it is a recipe for disaster. Mr. McClintock talked about a lightning strike that was left to burn, when it could have been put out early. We see massive destruction. We are seeing that in eastern Oregon, and we will continue to see it. We are seeing one of the worst wildfire seasons that we have ever seen.…”