Martin Heinrich

We are not even really having the decency to maintain all of the infrastructure that previous generations have built and given to us.

Around here it's become more and more politically difficult for many of my colleagues to honestly pay for things.

That is absolutely right. I hear from constituents all the time who will never be able to afford one of those $5 or $10,000 elk hunts on private land but who can enter the lottery every year and who do and oftentimes rely on that to get…

Ironically, the money in the Land and Water Conservation Fund is not tax dollars. It is literally a deal that goes back five decades now where we opened up large swaths of our natural resources, our oil and gas offshore, and took a…

I would ask my colleague from Montana--we have heard a lot about reform. When we had the hearing in front of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, we heard people on both sides of the aisle talking about how well this program works…

So if you take those figures, you take $685,000 up to a billion, you subtract out $100 million, and we are still talking about $500 million to almost $900 million in costs that are not covered.

But, yes, you know, folks in New Mexico, we like to work together, we like to help our neighbors, but we like to do it on our own terms.

I suspect, certainly in my case and I suspect many of my colleagues would love to know your thoughts on improving those post-9/11 GI benefits.

Shifting the terms of competition is really going to be key to beginning to arrest some of these unsustainable increases both in terms of tuition and in terms of student loan debt.

We would like to see more transparency in being able to telegraph our deterrent, because we all know that--looking back into the Cold War, that our deterrent was very important.

Unfortunately, until we find a mechanism for cleaning this stuff up and actually get serious about issues like 1872 Mining Act reform, I can pretty much guarantee that someday this is going to happen again because it has happened in the…

I would urge you, as Senator Bennet said, to talk to the local communities.

Thank you, Chairman Barrasso.

I have demanded that the EPA react with urgency to protect our health and safety and to repair the damage inflicted on this watershed.

I do think that buy in is probably the single biggest hedge we have against litigation.

If there is one thing that is a certainty in New Mexico it is that my local forest communities want to play a very active role in the management of their local national forest.

Fire suppression has grown from 16 percent of the Forest Service budget in 1995 to over 40 percent in 2014.

The fact remains that quadrupling commercial timber projects on national forests would take resources.

I think one of the challenges is that it's going to be very hard to address this issue without a specific technological proposal or fix to be able to discuss.

I want to thank you for holding a public hearing on this topic and giving us an opportunity to discuss these issues.

I thank my friend from Oregon. I think he could not have chosen a more appropriate way to end than to reference what Ben Franklin said so many years ago, that great quote that ``those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a…

If we were to mandate levels, would we be potentially locking in levels above what could be sustained in drought years?

Shouldn't rangeland condition dictate what your grazing levels are?

I think this is a very balanced approach. I appreciate all the work that has gone into it.

I really want to thank you for including my bill, the Sueldos del Norte Conservation Act, on today's agenda.