Political Quotes

“according to the Forest Service--and we checked with them this morning--there is right now an 11,000-acre fire burning in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. This is just April, not the time when one normally thinks you are going to have fires when the fire season is on. But there is a fire burning in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia that has already cost more than $3 million. This is the second largest fire in Shenandoah National Park history. I have come to the floor this afternoon to once again make the case for the Senate, on a bipartisan basis--Democrats and Republicans--to come together to fix this dysfunctional system of fighting fire in America. I am going to describe it, but let me talk first a little bit about the consequences. In the American West, we used to talk about the seasons in a way that Americans had done for decades and decades: harvesting crops in the fall, skiing in the winter, fishing during the spring salmon runs, and camping in the summers. We fought fire during the wildfire season. But when Americans in the West talk about the seasons now, they are talking about the seasons of yesteryear. That is because the wildfire season raging across our forests and special places is no longer limited to a single time of the year. Fighting fires has become a continuous battle virtually year-round throughout the country.…”