Ron Wyden

Halting a program at this point would not be helpful for jobs.

I was recently having a townhall meeting in Condon. It's Condon, Oregon, population 600.

My concern is that this is going to be too little, too late to keep the mills open.

If this proposal goes through in its present form, we're going to lose mills, we're going to lose jobs, and some of the most hard-hit communities in our country are going to lose their futures.

My concern this morning is that forestry takes a real pounding in this budget. My home State of Oregon is all about forests.

On the very significant cut in hazardous, you know, fuels reduction, our additional concern is that the focus, now, is on the wildland-urban interface.

We've got to get, you know, in there.

These fires that we're seeing in our part of the country, they are not natural fires, they are infernos that come about as a result of years and years of neglect.

The $50 million for the priority watersheds and job stabilization effort, in my view, is exactly the kind of targeting that we're going to need in the future.

If we lose the infrastructure in eastern Oregon, which is absolutely pivotal to bringing people together, then you don't have the tools, for example, to have a real biomass, you know, industry.

There's no question that having proposals that add up, that can be a model, you know, for the country, are critically, you know, important.

We just cannot have this situation, where it seems that most of the discussion, most of the focus goes to the urban.

I'll fight like crazy for those kinds of thinning programs.

I appreciate the fact you want to accelerate the hiring, and we've just got to keep the pressure on.

I'm going to ask you, at every hearing when you're here, about what's being done to get more folks in place.

I am pleased about a number of things in the budget, the support for fire suppression.

I just want you to know how strongly I feel about this.

Again and again, Mr. Chairman, you and Senator Franken are standing up for people who do not have power and do not have clout.

On our watch we are not going to tolerate this kind of moral blot.

What they have been subject to, in my view, is slavery, pure and simple.

Mr. Chairman, thank you, and filibusters are popular around here, but you will not get one from me today.

I am anxious to work with you personally on this matter that you are going to get back to me within 45 days on because that 48(c) of the tax code is a trampoline in my view for us to be able to tap the opportunity, with foreign demand…

I would like to Dr. Chu, somebody I like and respect, just go out and knock heads, get this done.

I guess I am going to have to try and write a law that requires you to do it.

Respectfully, Mr. Secretary, I think you would have given me that answer before the State of the Union.