Jeff Merkley

The key is that we maintain this agreement, when it comes up for renewal in 2024.

You know, it is clear that the purchasing power of the strategy has diminished significantly.

It is essential. People can't take jobs if they can't afford a place to live.

It is an incredible national parks system, but it only works if we have people staffing it.

There are two routes to doing this. One is kind of a voluntary effort through the Xerces Society, but the other is for us to have a regulation that says you can label these plants pollinators safe if they have been raised in this manner.

One of the goals was to develop a program that would provide labeling so you have pollinator safe according to certain standards.

This is kind of a last ditch five alarm fire

They need to be put at the top of the list for consideration of being labeled as endangered.

I think if I had a magic wand, I would, you know, throw a couple more billion dollars into these key ecosystems that are threatened.

About ten miles from my house, there is a Maya Lin designed bird blind on the Columbia River, where Lewis and Clark camped.

Do you like that term, tribal sovereignty fees?

I want to emphasize that word, 'required'.

Always better if a problem never occurs, a crime is never committed.

The Tribal Law and Order Act report shows an unmet need of $3.5 billion for public safety.

Boosting the boots on the ground, if you will, across Indian country seems to be a central tenet of this request.

The budget you have put before us proposes $642, I am rounding off, million for Bureau of Indian Affairs' public safety and justice programs.

I advocated for and we included in last year's funding bill $7 million for startup funding for the Department to begin consultations with tribes.

Your position as the first Native American Cabinet Secretary is historic.

We must recognize as a Congress that non-defense funding is just as important as defense spending.

Thank you, Senator. You timed it just perfectly.

Well, I can see the argument both ways, and we will continue in that discussion.

It is difficult to understand how fuels projects would be completed if firefighters are routinely called up for wildfire duty.

I think it is actually something that you would have the power to do without legislation.

I think it would be very significant to the tribe.

Somehow the prospect of working for the Forest Service while you live in your car is not such an entertaining one.