Political Quotes

“I come to the floor today to talk about fires that Colorado faces right now--some of the most devastating fires in Colorado history. As of the writing of our comments this morning, there were 40 fires so far in 2018. This is one of them. I think this is the 416 fire, which I had the opportunity to visit just a couple of weeks ago. This past week I was in Colorado, where we were able to see the Sugarloaf fire. I drove by the Weston Pass fire. This is some distance away from the Lake Christine fire, and obviously, the Spring Creek fire in Colorado. As a result of these fires, over 355,000 acres in Colorado have burned. That is simply devastating right now. Congress has not been inattentive to the needs of our forests. Over the past several months, we passed legislation that would fix the fire borrowing crisis that had gripped the Forest Service. That was something that was forcing them to cannibalize dollars that could be used to reduce the next year's forest fires on this year's forest fires. We fixed that. We put fixes in place for that. We also passed legislation to give our land managers more tools to help address dead trees and insect- and disease-ridden forests so we could have healthier forests. I hope the work we do on healthy forest policies, which we have already made progress on, will continue in this Congress. These fires are certainly devastating. These communities remain open.…”