Political Quotes

“I strongly agree with my friend and colleague Senator Wyden from Oregon. He is absolutely right that we have been working on this for probably 5 years as we have worked to identify the solution and then build the coalition of support to implement the solution that is necessary for this critical problem. I am also very appreciative, as Senator Wyden has said, that we had the chairman of the Energy Committee, the chairman of the Budget Committee, and the chairman of the Agriculture Committee engaged in a colloquy last week discussing the urgency of resolving this issue. I believe we are now getting to a point at which the understanding of how critical it is to resolve this issue has penetrated deeply into the political fiber of both the Senate and the House. Now we need to take that momentum and continue to move forward. As we take stock of last year's fire season, the statistics are sobering. Senator Wyden referenced a little bit of it. Let me just add to that a little bit. Nationally, last year, we had 68,151 fires that burned 10.1 million acres and cost over $1.7 billion in suppression operations. These fires accounted for the loss of roughly 4,600 structures, and, most tragically, the lives of 13 wild land firefighters. This set of statistics is a set of statistics that is growing every year.…”