Political Quotes

“I was always taught as a child that when you make a mistake, you admit it and fix it. I think that is what happened here. Many of us who voted for the bill in which this rider was contained believed that it would allow the logging of dead and dying trees. We did not intend for it to work out in a way that healthy old-growth trees would be cut down; they are surely our heritage. We have an obligation to fix this problem. I have to say for my friend, Senator Murray, because I have worked with her early on, this was a very difficult amendment to put together. What she did was to get the workers together with the environmentalists. She found that compromise between preserving a precious environment and preserving jobs. She deserves an enormous amount of credit. I personally know how anguished she was as she tried to put together these coalitions, because it is not easy. It is very easy to go with one side. It is not as easy to try to put together the coalitions, but she has done that. We have a chance to reverse a mistake, a mistake that opened up old-growth forests and undermined President Clinton's consensus Northwest forest plan. We finally have a chance to restore environmental laws for our forests. They are basically now, as I read it, forests without laws.”