On the recordSeptember 28, 2023
I am glad to be here tonight with the Presiding Officer, a Member of this body who probably, more than most, understands the consequences of this government shutdown. Of the, maybe, 100 people in this body and of the 435 people in the House of Representatives, I would be surprised if there were somebody among us who would be less likely to close the government down over politics than the Presiding Officer from the Commonwealth of Virginia, because he knows how important it is, among other people, to the dedicated public servants who live in his State and work for the Federal Government. Tonight, I wanted to come to the floor to talk about a group of men and women who most people serving in this Chamber know very little about--or they may know nothing about. They are men and women whose livelihoods are at stake and are being held hostage by a small band of extremists dead set on shutting down the government for their own political purposes. And these are America's Federal wildland firefighters. This is a photo of Federal wildland firefighters who are responding to the Pine Gulch Fire in Colorado. The picture, in many ways, sort of says it all. One of the things it says is neither you nor I nor anybody on this floor really could fully imagine or describe what it must be like to do this work. I can't imagine parachuting through yellow skies that can't allow you to see where the ground is and dropping down in the total wilderness.…
