Political Quotes

“this debate is not about corporate welfare and it is not about the Federal budget. It is about proper land management of our forests, our land. If you owned a piece of land, would you let someone else come in and build a road on your piece of land and let them control where that road was, what the quality of the road was going to be, and whether the road was going to be permanent or temporary and receded? Absolutely not. That is what this debate is about. It is not about corporate welfare. It is about who manages that decision. I talked to professional foresters today about this issue. They make it very clear, that the purchase road credit program allows them to manage these decisions. I listened just a few minutes ago to one of my colleagues come to the floor and say, if you are a fiscal conservative or if you are an environmentalist, you will support the Porter-Kennedy amendment. The absolute opposite is true. If you are a fiscal conservative, you would understand that there is no subsidy here. The timber companies do not keep the roads. We keep the roads. Recreationalists use the roads. And our professional forest managers need to design where those roads go, the quality of the road and whether it is a permanent or a temporary road. It is not also about the environment. If we allow the timber companies to build the road with their own money, they will bulldoze the cheapest, quickest road they can get in and do as much environmental damage as may happen.”