Political Quotes

“I appreciate the comments of both of my colleagues from Maine and Tennessee. They are both absolutely right. This legislation is ready to be passed. We have done the hard work and the research. We have looked at a number of creative ways to handle this backlog that everybody wants to get at. Everybody agrees that our national parks are the jewels of our country, and we need to address them. Everybody knows that if you don't fix the roof and the building ends up falling down, you have to pay a lot more. So if this is to the point where this is a debt unpaid, it is also a debt that grows because it compounds over time. These are two former Governors who just spoke, and they did this in their own States, capital budgeting; in other words, not just looking at your annual expenses--in this case, park rangers and naturalists--but actually looking at how to take a building that is about to fall down and put an enormous amount of expense into that to ensure that you save money over time. I will say that I have been all around my State. We don't have parks that are quite as big as Acadia or the Smokies, but we do have a lot of new parks in Ohio. One is Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which is actually number 13 in the country now in visitation, between Akron and Cleveland, OH. It is a fantastic opportunity for young people--school kids--to come every year. By the way, there is lots of volunteer work going on at all of these parts, including in Cuyahoga Valley.…”