Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am coming to the floor to talk about the challenge we have with forest fires that have been raging in the West, in Montana and Idaho and Washington and Oregon and California, and periodically we have devastating fires in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. We have to figure out how we do a better job in a multitude of ways. First, it is very important that we quit treating terrible fire years, enormous fires, as if they are some ordinary event because there is currently no FEMA-style reaction to terrible forest fires. We respond with FEMA for tornadoes and for floods and for tidal waves and for hurricanes and for earthquakes but not forest fires. Well, the result is, the Forest Service runs out of funds to fight the fires in a bad year, and then they have to drain all the other programs they are working on, including the programs to prepare for future timber cuts, the programs to thin the forests, the programs to repair the infrastructure in the Federal forests, all these other efforts, and then they can't resume those efforts until we have restored their funding, which can come often far later. This fire borrowing has to end. That is why we absolutely need to support the bill Senator Wyden, Senator Crapo, and others have been working on to say: Let's create a FEMA-like structure for these worst fires so we end this fire-borrowing devastation of the fire accounts. That absolutely needs to happen. Right now, there are three funding issues we need to address.…”