Political Quotes

“I thank the chairwoman. I want to remind the ranking member that the individual who actually ran against me who was the Department of Natural Resources director, Greg Walcher, for Colorado was one of the ones who helped to implement this program in Colorado, a very strong supporter. This was done in a bipartisan way, and most recovery programs are actually starting to be modeled after the Upper Colorado Fish Recovery Program. This is a way to keep fish from going on the endangered species list, and so I am very proud of this program. We do have goals. By the year 2023, everything should be in place. The infrastructure should be in place so that we can maintain the numbers of the endangered fish in the Upper Colorado River and the San Juan. Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I readily concede that if you put a gun to somebody's head, you can get reasonable people to do unreasonable things. The ESA is a gun to the head of the people of the West. It's time we did something about that. No one suggests that there's not an important mission for the ESA, but it has gotten completely out of control. It has breached all bounds of reason and logic, and it is time that we visited that issue rather than continue to squander tens of millions of dollars on programs like this, whose sole purpose is simply to keep that ESA litigation at bay. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.”