Pete Domenici: “We continue to have meetings in our Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the Agriculture Committee of the…”

“We continue to have meetings in our Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the Agriculture Committee of the Senate trying to analyze why it is we are unable to address the issue of thinning our forests and getting rid of blighted areas in large manner rather than taking so long and sitting by and watching the forests of America deteriorate to the point that they become tinderboxes. They are so filled with overgrowth that fires are inevitable. And when fires happen, very big trees burn because the bottom is totally filled with too many trees, too much brush, too many of the branches and leaves that have fallen. Then thousands of acres are blighted and dried and nobody is doing anything about it. Then comes a fire. Then we come along and we say: Let's put up extra money to put out these fires, so-called disaster money. Then groups across America begin to run advertisements, have meetings and say: What is the matter with Congress? We can't get our forests thinned. We can't get them fixed. We cannot get the kind of reform that will get work done.”