Joe Neguse

I am grateful to Representative Espaillat for his efforts to preserve a critical part of the American experience.

I am just, again, grateful for the work done by our colleagues.

I welcome, of course, our newest member to the Natural Resources Committee, Representative Maloy, who I haven't had a chance to meet yet.

I hope that this Subcommittee can continue to build on the investments that we made in the last Congress.

This is a big week in Congress, of course.

I am grateful to him for putting together a list of bills here that I think encompass the greatness of our country.

This Subcommittee truly is a workhorse of the Congress.

I commend Representative LaLota for his fierce advocacy on behalf of his constituents.

Our broken and lengthy NEPA permitting regime should not be an excuse as to why we are not taking part in proper forest management.

I am a large proponent of expanding tools like Good Neighbor Authority or promoting root and stem projects, which Representative Newhouse's legislation would authorize.

We have been fighting here in Congress, myself and several others, to try to get wildland firefighters paid a decent wage, the wage that they deserve.

Roughly half of my congressional district, which is larger than nine states, is Federal land.

I wonder if you might be able to, I suspect you are aware of this, and if you could provide maybe the Committee some clarity on that front.

Thank you, Chairman Tiffany, and I am glad to be here, and certainly glad to see once again a slate of several bipartisan bills on the agenda for today's legislative hearing.

I think it is a common-sense bill, and my hope would be that we can move that quickly through the Committee.

I think the bill makes a lot of sense, and I am hoping that we can get it done in short order.

When our forests burn in Montana, it is not just Montana that suffers, it is the smoke that travels across the country and harms all of us.

I am grateful to you and to the work that the Forest Service is doing and has done over the course of the last several years.

Thank you, Mr. Smith, for both your written testimony and your oral testimony.

It is just a great example of common-sense legislating that cuts through the partisan divide.

As Members of Congress, it is our No. 1 responsibility to continue supporting their efforts, in my view, and to provide further resources to our Federal land management agencies as they prepare for the wildfires to come, and plan for…

It is time that Congress does its job and engages in bipartisan compromise and finds a real fix.

Their border bill is a fantasy.

We have eight million unfilled jobs in the country.

The response to such a significant challenge shouldn't be to demonize immigrants, but it also shouldn't be to refuse to compromise.