Mike Simpson

A Band-Aid on an artery that is bleeding has an effect, but in fact unless you sew that artery up, you are in trouble.

I think you are working in a system that is so totally broken that unless we reform this cotton-picking system, we are going to continue to fiddle around trying to fix, you know, put Band-Aids on when we are bleeding from the arteries.

That is bizarre, to say the least.

Congress has an obligation to address the great disparities that exist between American Indian, Alaska Native populations and other populations in the United States.

I take seriously Congress's responsibility to meet these needs and look forward to our discussions today.

Of the many challenges facing Indian Country, those issues related to law enforcement are among the most severe, troublesome and destructive in human terms.

There is a reason that if you want to reduce the price of gasoline, you have to produce more.

The worst fires in Idaho and in fact, in the Nation were in 1910.

Our commitment is to provide suppression up to the structure.

I will tell you that part of the problem is a lot of these agreements need to be worked out in advance.

This is a positive question.

If you want to build in the wildland urban interface, however that is going to be defined by a county ordinance or a State law or whatever, there could be insurance consequences which fund exactly what Representative Cole was talking…

Got no problem with that. I agree with that statement entirely.

I realize the previous Administration is responsible for almost everything, but let me ask a couple questions.

I do not know that there is any coordination between what we are all doing--if we are overlapping, if we are not overlapping, if we are leaving gaps and holes.

I would encourage all of us in positions of responsibility to take actions to address climate change based on what science tells us rather than responding to what our emotions may tell us.

I would like to see it, because that has been one of my concerns is that everybody is throwing money at global warming.

I mean, it just seems to me that we held hearings in the last Congress, brought in the federal agencies, and they all testified that they already can see the impacts of climate change, drought and bug infestation and the expansion of the…

I am hopeful that this committee keeps a very close eye, and I am sure we will, on how these funds are being used.

I am very concerned that a year or two years or three years from now we will be sitting here having hearings on the misuse of those funds or the waste of those funds.

If you can get people together beforehand, get them on the plane early, you can solve a lot of the problems that would come up later on.

If we could use those resources... in actually managing our public lands rather than managing attorneys in court, I think we would be a lot further ahead.

I always have figured that these are owned by the people of the United States and consequently if you allow someone else to extract them, that the people of the United States ought to get a certain percentage of that regardless of what the…

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

What are we doing to coordinate the hundreds of millions of dollars we are spending on climate change?