Political Quotes

“Mr. President, yesterday I joined with Chairman Bingaman to introduce legislation to address an urgent threat to America's national forests: the lack of resources to fight serious wildfires that at this very moment are burning on more than 300,000 acres in our country. To date--and it is certainly early in the fire season--more than 830,000 acres already have burned. The heart of the problem is, as the fires have gotten bigger, the Forest Service airtanker fleet to fight these fires has gotten smaller. In 2006, the Forest Service had 44 large airtankers under contract in their fleet. Last week, they had just 11 large airtankers under contract, and 10 of those averaged 50 years of age. After the very tragic events of this past weekend--in which one of those airtankers crashed and its courageous pilots were killed and another had a failure of its landing gear and sustained serious damage--the Forest Service is down to nine large airtankers. This is an extraordinarily serious problem and a solution is long overdue. The reason I have come to the floor this afternoon is that Congress has an opportunity to expedite what could be the beginning of a solution. The Forest Service now is ready to begin awarding contracts for the next generation of airtankers, consistent with their large airtanker modernization strategy. On May 25, as is required by law, under 41 U.S.C.…”