Political Quotes

“I thank my good friend from Hobbs, New Mexico, for yielding. Representing part of Pennsylvania, it is an honor to be part of the Western Caucus. I represent western Pennsylvania and central Pennsylvania and a little bit of eastern Pennsylvania. My district is so large, so rural. It has many of the same issues, Mr. Speaker, that fit very well within the Western Caucus. We have public lands. All of these issues you are hearing about tonight in terms of what government does as a huge barrier and to kill the jobs, they are the same things that we certainly experience in western Pennsylvania. Now, I am proud. I chair the largest subcommittee of Agriculture, Conservation, Energy, and Forestry, so I want to go down another road in which how government kills jobs, western jobs, whether it is the West or western Pennsylvania or, frankly, throughout the United States. We recently had a hearing reviewing the proposed United States Forest Service plan. Our National Forests, it is very clear they are not National Parks. Our National Forests were created to provide sustainable resources, predominantly timber, but timber is not the only thing. Our forests were created to provide us energy, access to oil, to natural gas, to coal, to minerals. So that is why they were put in existence.…”