Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. Peters, for your leadership in bringing to the attention of the entire Nation, and certainly to the 435 Members of this House, that there is a way to manage our forests and to deal with the fires that have plagued us so extensively over these many years. I think all of us have seen this before. It is Smokey the Bear. ``Only you can prevent forest fires.'' We need to add to it, ``But Congress can help.'' And Smokey turns to us and says: How can you help? Well, we can help by changing the way in which we budget for the fighting of fires. Instead of a rolling 10-year average and putting that money up every year and in 9 of the last 12 years blowing through that budget and then reaching back and taking the forest management funds that would allow us to reduce the risk of fires in our forests and in your public lands, instead of doing that, we would have a different system, as Mr. Peters just described. It is H.R. 3992. H.R. 3992 is a bipartisan bill, Democrats and Republicans. Democrat Mr. Schrader from Oregon and Republican Mr. Simpson from Idaho, the authors of the bill, say there is a better way of doing it. Set aside a special reserve, just like we do for tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods; a special reserve that could be tapped when we exceed the average and blow through that 10-year average with a megafire or a series of fires. We expect more than 38,000 fires this year in the United States. We are going to blow through that budget.…”