Don Nickles: “One, on the parks bill, I want to commend Chairman Murkowski and other members on the Energy Committee who worked hard…”

“One, on the parks bill, I want to commend Chairman Murkowski and other members on the Energy Committee who worked hard to make this happen. This is a large bill, and unfortunately now it has a lot of items throughout the year that many of us have been working on for a long, long time. The Senator from Alaska has been generous enough to withdraw one of the bills he felt very strongly about, that was important to his State, so we could get it signed. I asked him to do that. I appreciate his willingness to do it. The Senator from Minnesota dropped an item. Again, we heard it being in there meant it would be vetoed, so we dropped two or three of the most contentious items. We dropped a project in Utah that, again, other people talked about would bring a certain veto. Now, all of a sudden--we thought we had really taken away the veto objective so we could pass this bill. I committed to the Senator from California that I would try to help pass the Presidio bill this year. I want to maintain that commitment. I would like to pass this bill. I urge my colleagues to work together. This bill has been put together in a bipartisan fashion. I have not counted up the number of Democrat and the number of Republican bills, but there are a lot on both sides of the aisle that impact parks all across the country and most of the States across the country. It would really be a shame to have that much work and that much time invested in that bill not to see it passed this year.”