Max Baucus: “this has been a good debate. A lot of facts have come out. I might just note parenthetically, I chuckled a little bit.…”

“this has been a good debate. A lot of facts have come out. I might just note parenthetically, I chuckled a little bit. Here we are at the late stages of this debate. I concede to the Senator he has won the chart war. I have never seen so many charts in a debate in all my life. I acknowledge to the Senator he has a lot more charts than I have, and they are pretty good charts. Also, he has all that staff there. I see the army--there are about 10 back there on his side. He has won the staff war. We have only a couple or three on our side. He has won the chart war. He has won the staff war. And he has also won the time war. He has used a lot more time than we have. I will be very brief. Basically, there are a couple of points I want to make for the Record, for the Senator. He asked, very interestingly: Nobody has answered the point that the Secretary of the Interior, the refuge manager, basically controls this road. The fact is, in the bill itself there are provisions that the refuge manager--that is, the Secretary of the Interior--works with--I think it is the Aleutian Boroughs--to try to come up with a Joint Plan for the operation of the road. But the bill further provides, if no agreement is reached, that the borough controls. The borough can just decide within 24 months that that is what it wants to do. So it is not quite accurate to say this road is under the control of the Department of the Interior.”