Political Quotes

“Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from Montana. I think one of the great things about New Mexico and Montana is that we are both from States that absolutely cherish the outdoors, and we have a lot of constituents who care about the activities that generate so much income from the outdoors. Obviously, I hear from an enormous number of my constituents asking us to reauthorize and permanently authorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund--to fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In fact, recently there was a letter which was sent to me but was also sent to the chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee--to the chair and to the ranking member, the good Senator from Washington. It was signed by dozens of businesses saying: Hey, this is important to our bottom line. Please extend the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Please continue to support this bipartisan legacy of standing up for our natural resources in this country. My good friend from Montana mentioned the scale of what that means in his State, and it is not a dissimilar story in New Mexico. In fact, over $6 billion annually comes from outdoor recreation activities, and 68,000 jobs in our State are directly related to outdoor recreation. In fact, when I go home this weekend, we are going to be celebrating the Valles Caldera National Preserve and its management by the National Park Service. That was a property that for decades my constituents could not access. They could not hunt; they could not fish.…”