Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chair, I will state again that Republicans have a firefighter funding fix in the appropriations bill that, when it came to the floor, was not supported by my friends across the aisle. We want to provide more funding to our firefighters. This is an authorization bill. It is not an appropriation bill. It is regrettable that we are having to bring this bill up again already because we passed it last year with large bipartisan support. We had 55 of our friends across the aisle vote with every Republican to pass this bill, but unfortunately, it went nowhere in the Senate. We are bringing it back again because this is bipartisan legislation. I hope this is an example of how this Congress will go because I don't know that I have worked on a more bipartisan piece of legislation during my time in Congress. I thank my colleague, Representative Peters, for all of his time and effort in bringing this bill to the floor once again. I will say that the time to fix our forests is now. Actually, now is not the real time to fix our forests. The time to have fixed our forests was yesterday. It was last year. It was 10 years ago. It was 30 years ago. The condition our forests are in now is as a result of bad management decisions over a long period of time. It is like the saying about planting a tree. The best time to have done it was when you were a child. The next best time is today. If not today, we need to do it tomorrow.…”