Political Quotes

“I thank the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee for his support, and also Mr. Westerman from Arkansas, the author of this bill. The Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017 is a bipartisan solution to address the growing economic and environmental threats from catastrophic wildfires. As we have heard already, 2017 has had the costliest wildfires on record, with the Forest Service spending over $2 billion. We have had the loss of communities and lives lost. The greatest cause of this uptick in wildfires is the severe lack of forest management. {time} 1545 This legislation pairs a responsible budget fix with forest management reforms, improves the health and resiliency of our Nation's forests and rangelands, and provides Federal Land Management agency tools to increase the pay scale and cost efficiency of forest management projects without sacrificing environmental protections. The bill permanently solves the wildfire borrowing problem by allowing FEMA to transfer limited funds to the Forest Service or BLM when the rest of their wildfire suppression funding has been exhausted.…”