Jeff Merkley

Yeah, absolutely. We are determined to try to prevent that fire borrowing, which is why we are keeping the window open for a supplemental of another $450 million.

I want to turn to tribal co-management. The Klamath Tribe in the southern part of Oregon, their reservation was taken back by the Government when the tribe was terminated.

I want to thank Congress for the Fire Fix, because it certainly helped in terms of limiting our ability.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Act provided for investment in high-risk firesheds.

It addresses the housing issue, so we have money set aside there, about $45 million.

The proposed fiscal year 2024 President's Budget addresses a lot of the concerns and challenges we have with the recruitment and retention.

The primary reason that I have been hearing, personally from firefighters, is the pay gap.

Forest Service salaries--I should say, Federal salaries, in many of the locations across the country is not holding up to salaries in other non-Federal jobs.

Everywhere I go in Oregon I hear people say: Let us do everything we can to make the forest more resilient.

All three provide transformative investment.

We need to double down on other forest management activities critical to forest resilience and forest health.

We can no longer view these villains as natural disasters, what they really are, are human-caused unnatural disasters.

I feel strongly that if we want to build a safer, more competitive country, we can't give up on the need to invest right here at home.

Funding for the Forest Service is a perfect example of why we need to invest in non-defense spending, to defend our communities from wildfire, improve public health, protect jobs, and increase the health and resiliency of our forests.

One of the things that both Russia and China have been engaged in is transnational repression.

We found the three C's, if you will. We found the cartels. We found the corruption, and we found the climate change.

I am quite impressed by the way we have responded, but I do think that the circumstances regarding Hong Kong, Ukraine, and China's use of high-tech to suppress the Uyghurs are very appealing strategies to many authoritarian leaders.

I am going to keep working to pass the Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act, to clarify in statute.

I introduced bill, the Children's Safe Welcome Act, which we have shared with your team, which was designed to kind of lay out the gold standard.

I remain concerned that as many as 35 states are not using this block grant funding for stillbirth prevention activities.

I encourage you to persist aggressively, given the consequences of failure, and we certainly have a deeply entrenched company, or companies, determined to keep addicting children.

I wanted to address vaping, and the standards that are established for candy-flavored, fruit-flavored vaping.

The DFC is doing exactly what we have to not do.

Transitioning to LNG is not decarbonization.