Political Quotes

“I think the minority leader brings up a good number. How do you reorganize a bureaucracy? That is always a great challenge in this town, especially if you work in Washington, what I refer to as 17 square miles of logic-free environment. There are some folks who want to catch some transportation out of town. I will remark what the schedule will be. We will be talking quite a lot about wildfires. We have good news: Four inches of snow this morning at Glacier National Park and the temperature is dropping down now to where we can get our arms around these fires. Nonetheless, it did not take away from the devastation those fires brought to the west this year and how we manage the dollars it takes to fight those fires. And it is every State's responsibility in this Union to respond to a national problem. If you look just at this year--this did not make great headlines--27 firefighters died this year in wildfires on national lands--27. And 789--at last count--homes and other structures were destroyed, and 2.8 million acres have burned. During the recent Labor Day weekend, 25,000 firefighters were still working on fires in the West. Now that is subsiding, that is over. Of the 2.8 million acres, 600,000 acres are in my home State of Montana. What does that mean? That means lives are disrupted and resources lost. Tourism was curtailed almost to nothing this year in those particular areas that always see high summer tourism activity--Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park.”