The time for political posturing is over. I'm ready to sit down with my colleagues and try to work on something that has a chance of being enacted into law.

The assumption is that appeals and litigation are an impediment to the Forest Service doing more work on the ground.

If we would prevail in a case, yes, we seek our attorneys fees if it turns out the government was wrong.

The time for political posturing is over. I am ready to sit down with my colleagues and try to work out something that has a realistic chance of becoming law.

We need to keep working and help manage our forests for all the reasons we have talked about: environmental, health and safety, watershed protection, keep jobs--what few jobs we do have, hang on to them.

There are two kinds of fires. There is coffee-and-bagel fire and beer-and-peanut fires.

There is a crisis in our forests. No one disputes this simple fact.

We failed to have a serious conversation about the future of management and what it should look like.

Absolutely. That is the end result of where this bill needs to bring us, because the bill before us is a pilot project to just prove that we can----

And those are the trends that should be getting our attention at this point.

We will protect our environment better than the current regulations do.

I am stating that because of the management protections on the Federal land, and the restrictions on the Federal land, it has given extra freedom for the State lands to be managed with different priorities.