Political Quotes

“I am struck by what we are debating off the floor, which is timber health. At the heart of that is how we deal with judicial appeals, which has brought a new dynamic to that debate on forest health and how we manage our public lands; that is, not a denial of judicial appeals, but also in the area of timber restraining orders. People can file appeals--we do not want to deny that--but also how we deal with the decision-rendering process, which does cause some concern with folks using timber restraining orders as a tool in the process to get their way. Basically, that is what we have here. We are on a time line, if we go off this. Those who do not want to see anything move press us into a time line, and then we go on home knowing there is a timeframe on that debate. Given the time we have and the leader's decision to double-track these two issues in order to facilitate and deal with these issues in a short time line, we have to take a look at that. I know the leader is. I congratulate him for his push on this and to make it a reality. But so far, it hasn't come to be and does not get us to where I think we want to be before we go home in October.”