Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I thank Chairman Hastings for the time, for his leadership on our committee, and for including my bipartisan wildfire legislation--the Catastrophic Wildfire Prevention Act--in this forest health package. Mr. Chairman, we have a forest health crisis in this country, and this bill will go a long way toward restoring the environment, improving public safety, and putting thousands of people back to work. Due to redistricting, I have represented nearly all of rural Arizona in Congress--nearly 48,000 square miles of U.S. Forest Service land. These areas have been some of the communities most devastated by recent wildfire. In my first year, the Wallow Fire, now the largest fire in Arizona's State history, ravaged half a million acres of our treasured Ponderosa Pine Country in just a few weeks; and this year, our State was struck by the recent loss of 19 firefighters in the Yarnell Hill Fire. That fire was one of many to burn over 103,000 acres this year. We must come together, change the status quo, and facilitate conditions that minimize the chance that fires start, and we must reduce their size and intensity once they burn. The bill before us today does a few important things to achieve that goal: First, it prioritizes responsible timber production, and it ensures a reliable revenue stream for local governments. The Feds made a promise to our forest communities, and it must uphold that promise.…”