Richard Pombo: “Mr. Chairman, it is always interesting to get into these debates, and sometimes I wish we could all live in a perfect…”

“Mr. Chairman, it is always interesting to get into these debates, and sometimes I wish we could all live in a perfect world. We are in the middle of a very serious crisis on our national forests and on our public lands. The Udall amendment is designed to prevent new regulations from being implemented for our national forests. Those new regulations were proposed for a reason; and contrary to what some of the rhetoric is that we have heard tonight, the reason that those new regulations were proposed was because of this crisis that we are in with catastrophic fire, with our rural communities economically hurt because of policies that have been adopted by this Federal Government. It currently takes more than 7 years to adopt a 15-year plan. I do not care where one is on the issue. That is ludicrous. So they are trying to fix that. It currently costs in excess of $7.5 million to adopt that plan. I hear people talk about the conservative thing to do. Supporting that is ludicrous.”