Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, we have heard a lot of debate. This has been a good debate. I have been struck by the fact that every single speaker from the Northwest, on both sides of the aisle, has spoken in favor of this piece of legislation. {time} 1515 I find that very remarkable. Rarely do we have that kind of consensus, and yet we have that here with H.R. 2083. Just to conclude, I would say that this is a commonsense piece of legislation. Unfortunately, the Federal Government sometimes has conflicting mandates. We have a law, on the one hand, that protects sea lions, but we have the endangered status of various salmon. These two are in conflict, unfortunately. So let's take the side of the endangered species. We can do so on a limited and scientific basis, with the way that this bill has been crafted through a lot of compromise. In fact, before it even takes effect, there will be an environmental impact statement, which is a very lengthy process with lots of public comment, lots of judicial scrutiny, and so on. So I find this to be a very commonsense piece of legislation with a lot of compromise built in, a lot of consensus. It makes so much sense that I hope that there would be no opposition or almost no opposition when this comes up for a vote. Let's all adopt H.R. 2083, a great piece of legislation for our environment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.”