Political Quotes

“I say to my colleague, we have worked in good faith. We will continue to work in good faith. The Senate, which doesn't work together as closely at times the way we do, has negotiated a legacy fund that is a bipartisan negotiated provision by the chairman and the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Actually, more Republicans voted for that than Democrats did. This bill has been supported by a broad cross-section of Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats. Quite frankly, there are some of your Senate Republican colleagues who will only support it the way it is now. I have talked to many Republicans who want to see this bill go through. I don't know how the final vote will be today. I know people want to support it. By the way, it addresses a shared goal, what the Senate did, that third provision helping to move species off of the ESA listings more quickly. It contains guardrails on the use of funds that I know were important to my Republican colleagues. These include prohibitions on the use of funds to make any listing or critical habitat determination relating to the endangered or threatened status of any species or to acquire any Federal land, which I know is really important on your side. The broad coalition supporting the bill, including the State wildlife agencies and sportsmen's groups, have also backed all these provisions. We are not done.…”