Mike Simpson

I want to talk just a little bit about wildland firefighter pay reforms.

Yeah. As you know, we don't want to be forced into a position where all of a sudden that, because of the annual appropriation process, you are going to have to lay off a couple thousand people or something like that.

And they ought to all be treated equally.

We got through a whole hearing without talking about quagga mussels. I just had to throw that term out there.

As long as we can keep the States and the private landowners and the Federal Government working together to preserve sage grouse habitat, I think we will get further ahead.

I have often said that I am not going to the Everglades until they get rid of those pythons down there because those will swallow you alive.

I won't be in Congress at that time most likely, but I don't want a Congress to be sitting here going, man, if we do that, you know, we could increase your budget by 5 percent next year, and we are going to have to lay off 2,000 people.

We need enforcement dollars to hold bad actors, like Norfolk Southern, accountable. They created the mess. We have to make sure that they clean it up.

It is like Tribes of the training grounds for everybody, and if they can get a job at a higher pay, then they go.

We have heard from Tribes about how increasing the pay of Federal employees only further exacerbates the hiring and retention problems for Tribal firefighters.

I have talked to the chairman of the Transportation Subcommittee, and he is very interested in trying to increase that amount that goes to Indian Country.

I appreciate that----

I appreciate that, and I didn't plan on bringing those up, but as I was listening to you talking about BOEM and the wind tower stuff, those came to my mind.

The worst thing you can do for sequestration is to burn that tree.

It is because of the process that we have created in Congress, whether it is with NEPA or any of the other things that allow you to challenge a decision almost every step of the way.

As a Western member of Congress, fire is far too familiar to the communities in my home State of Idaho and across the West.

Idaho has four salmon runs that are on the endangered list--it is downward.

If you talk to most economists, they will tell you a large part of the reason we have inflation is because of the excessive, and I mean, excessive spending that we have done over the last several years.

Do not fill in that cave, that $14 billion cave.

I just had to throw that term out there. It is something we are trying to keep out of Idaho and the Pacific Northwest.

Additionally, we have heard from Tribes about how increasing the pay of Federal employees only further exacerbates the hiring and retention problems for Tribal firefighters.

I think, $52 million went to, if I remember correctly, to Indian Country, which is totally inadequate.

If you are ever going to get to zero carbon, nuclear energy is an essential part of it.

What you have got to have is firm power, so that when you turn on your light, your light goes on.

Change is hard, and some of these parks we have got to find a better way to do it.