Political Quotes

“I just wanted to follow the minority leader's comments with the observation that we are in a war right now. We have people on the battlefield whose survival depends on good training. At many of our training bases around the United States, the environmental encroachments have become so strong that today at Camp Pendleton you can only use about a third of the training ground that is available. You have to build foxholes only where you have tape that has been laid out in an environmentally-sensitive manner. The Marines that replicate the Iwo Jima-type assault on the beaches have to dismount from the landing craft and get in buses and be bused up to an environmentally-acceptable point to where they can commence their assault to practice to give their lives to this country. Go to bases like Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, where only one plane at a time can train on the training field, which is like having one football player on the team be allowed out on the field at the same time. These are reasonable positions that we have taken, reasonable restrictions on the environmental laws to help our people stay alive on the battlefield.”