Rob Portman: “Thank you, Senator Heinrich. Thanks to my colleagues for being here. This is an opportunity to do the Land and Water…”

“Thank you, Senator Heinrich. Thanks to my colleagues for being here. This is an opportunity to do the Land and Water Conservation Fund expansion and provide fishing access through our States and local communities and the parks that they need and want, but it is also an opportunity to fix our parks, and this is desperately needed. Our national parks are in trouble, just as more and more people are returning to our parks for recreation and fishing and all the other access we have. There are 84 million acres of true treasures in America, thanks to Teddy Roosevelt and many others who followed in his footsteps. We preserved this land and protected our history, but there is a $12.5 billion maintenance backlog in our parks. As visitors go to our parks as they reopen this summer, they will find that the trail is closed or the toilet doesn't work or the lodge has a leak in the roof, and therefore they can't use it. When you get a leak in the roof and you get the mold in the walls and the floor, that is what is happening, and we haven't funded it. Part of the reason is it is so expensive. These are infrastructure expenditures that require significant funds. So part of what this legislation does is finally allow us to catch up here in the U.S. Congress. It is a debt unpaid. In other words, we should have been paying all over these many years to ensure this wouldn't happen but, unfortunately, for decades it has.…”