Amy Klobuchar: “we have a vote before us today, and this vote is involving an unprecedented use of a procedural mechanism that would…”

“we have a vote before us today, and this vote is involving an unprecedented use of a procedural mechanism that would have far-reaching consequences, not just for the beautiful Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota, but for public lands across our country. And I want to thank my colleagues, including, of course, Senator Smith who you are about to hear from, Senators Heinrich and Baldwin for speaking out against this resolution on the floor last night. I have especially been careful when you look at a project like the one proposed here that is so close to the cherished Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and I continue to have concerns about this administration's intention and their disregard of science across the board in every Agency in the government, but especially when you are looking at something like this. So, as many of my colleagues know, I am the granddaughter of an iron ore miner. My grandpa loved that life, but he mostly also loved the time he had in the outdoors. He would go down in a cage 1,500 feet every single day with the lunch bucket that my grandma would pack for him, that black lunch bucket. I always thought, what did he think when he was going down every day, when he was saving money in a coffee can to send his two sons to college when he never even got to graduate from high school? Well, he would think of the outdoors because he loved to hunt, he loved to fish, and he loved to pick blueberries. In his later years, he became a foreman of the mine.”