On the recordMarch 25, 2015
Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, the Federal budget is a pressing concern for everybody in this body, including myself, especially given the political climate we have in Congress. We have been two Houses divided for some time. Back in 2011, the Republican House and the Democratic Senate agreed that Federal spending was out of control. They just couldn't agree on what to do about it. So Members from both Chambers came together to give Congress two options: either pass a responsible budget to help reduce the deficit or face drastic cuts to every discretionary Federal department. That threat of sequester was supposed to represent the end of the road, forcing Congress to put differences aside and to work together, but sometimes even a dead end is not enough to motivate some folks to do the right thing. Congress failed to come up with a bipartisan, long- term spending plan and sequestration went into effect 2 years ago. Sequestration has had devastating effects nationally and in my home State of Nevada. Take, for instance, sequestration's impact on our national forests. We have 17 million acres of national forest managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Under its current structure, the Forest Service uses the same pool of funds to manage our national forests that it does to fight wildfires. In bad fire years, suppression can use over 40 percent of the U.S. Forest Service's budget.…
