Political Quotes

“I do agree with my colleague the gentleman from Oregon, that we ought to learn from the past. But I am afraid that debate here today is largely beside the point. First and foremost, the bill today addresses something that simply is not a problem. The information I have received from my State, and we know something about flooding; if it is not wet, if we are not under water, we are wet in Oregon. We have had lots of flooding. But we have had our experience that the opportunities under the ESA right now, the emergency consultation, do provide adequate provisions in dealing with problems. To the extent that we think that it needs clarification, the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York and the gentleman from California here will address that. But I think the arguments that we are hearing today are reinforcing a tragic notion that somehow we are going to engineer our way out of the flooding. We have spent billions of dollars treating our water systems as machines and there is the notion, the false notion, that somehow by passing more levee construction, more money, that we are going to stop it.”