John McCain

Unless we do something really different, we are literally in danger of losing our national forest.

The fact is that tribal sovereignty is a key element in management of your own lands and to criticize your management is, in a way, an affront to the tribe and their members.

An argument against forest thinning by some environmental activists is that thinning will hurt the endangered Spotted Owl habitat.

Unfortunately, we had to learn very, very sad lessons as so much of our forests have been destroyed in the last ten years.

Right now we have in Arizona, because of another fire that we had, these companies are telling us that they don't have enough NEPA-ready acres to sustain their stewardship contracts.

Mr. Brooks, I want to thank you for the great job you all are doing and your stewardship.

If you have any recommendations, Mr. Hubbard, as to what we can legislatively do, if anything, I would be more than eager to hear any recommendations you might have.

Forest clearing matters immensely as to the amount of damage. We are going to have forest fires and they are probably going to get bigger. We are in the 13th year of a drought, as I calculate, in the southwest.

In the State of Arizona, we have lost approximately 20 percent of our forest to wildfires over the last decade.

Frankly, we have had fits and starts on the non-Indian land.

Today, our Federal Government frequently spends over $2 billion fighting forest fires in active years.

The health of our forests is critical to the health of our communities.

We would like to see the budget cap lifted so that it can be treated like other national emergencies.

I'm not sure why the money for forest clearing should be in the same pot, very frankly, as fighting fires.

I think you would agree also that if these people go out of business, then no commercial enterprise is going to come back to places like Show Low and others where they are located.

You would agree that we can't do it just with government money? In other words, it has to be private enterprise.

As I am sure has already been mentioned, our forest communities are experiencing wildfires on catastrophic scales we have never seen before.

I continue to believe that the Affordable Care Act should be replaced and modified.

The economy continues to deteriorate. That is not because of anything the United States has done. It is because of the corrupt government.

It sometimes is a bit entertaining when administration witnesses come forward and talk about how tough various administrations have been on sanctions.

I want to thank you and Senator Rubio for your active involvement and commitment to trying to see that Venezuelan people are given a better government.

If we are not going to use military force, what are sanctions that might result in a positive outcome.

The repression of the government continues.

We need to show an iota of the courage that our men and women in uniform do every day.

Unless Congress and the President act together, all of these savings will pale in comparison to the challenge you will face as a resumption of sequestration.