Ron Wyden

Our wilderness future on the Rocky Mountain Front depends on it!

It is thoughtful and includes all local interests.

There may be more to work with than meets the eye.

It's not only is there a sense of protecting these special places. It's recognizing that there's economic benefit.

I urge you to advance S. 2001 and work to insure that our irreplaceable Rogue River and its supporting watersheds are protected for future generations.

If my colleagues don't have any other questions at this point, we'll excuse both of you and go to our next panel.

I thank my colleague.

If enacted, it would designate all 1,000 acres of the BLM land in the San Juan Island area as a National Conservation Area ensuring that they would remain a national treasure.

S. 2001 has wide support at state and local levels, as well as from a wide range of local citizens and stakeholders.

The end is in sight on this topic.

How can we figure out a way to come up with a consistent approach that would again bring the kind of predictability and certainty that would allow us to strike the kind of balance we've been talking about today?

I just hope, I appreciate the direction you're trying to outline, that you all will really look at the public lands as a place where we can think about best practices.

This is a place we can bring together industry folks, environmental folks, the scientists.

This is an advantage for us. We've got to figure out how to nurture it and build on it.

I think that's so key. On this committee we try to put together a bipartisan coalition for some of these questions.

I think there are a number of ways. Speaking to the electricity side, for example, one of the things I think the FERC can do is to try to support, as much as possible, a bottoms up approach to system planning.

The Congress and the country deserves to know how FERC is going to look at that.

I want to know how you're going to measure the public interest as part of that responsibility.

What we're going to need is sensible policies that in effect, nurture this economic advantage.

This is good news. This is a shot in the arm to the economy.

Free trade does not mean trade free from rules.

It seems to me that as you drill into this and look at the various kinds of loans, you come to the conclusion that not all energy loan guarantees are created equal.

I think your question hits on that.

I thought Senator Murkowski also made a lot of sense when she was saying right from the get go, nobody goes into this thinking that everything is going to be 100 percent, you know, winner in a dramatic opportunity for creating scores of…

The Baucus amendment is a lifeline for rural America, particularly for the West and the South, where the Federal Government owns so much of our land. This money is absolutely essential to keep school doors open, to keep cops out there…