Political Quotes

“I appreciate that. Mr. Speaker, I have one last category I want to cover here, and that is how we increase the markets, because you have to have a place to sell timber that is harvested. There are a number of things that we can do. Just quickly, we need to expand our trade. That is why I am so pleased with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The trade ambassador and his chief negotiators actually have eliminated basically all of the tariffs that really hindered our ability to export whether it was raw timber or boards or pellets. It was just very difficult in the past. This trade proposal, members of the subcommittee and members of the full Agriculture Committee worked very closely with the trade ambassador to make sure that that was one of our priorities that was achieved, and it looks like it has been achieved. I think that is going to increase markets. We need to do that with all of our trade agreements. We need to expand the use of timber products within the green building standards, LEED standards. It is an original renewable, but it was excluded from those. It makes no sense whatsoever. We need to develop the lamination technology that has taken timber, and being able to use that really for skyscraper type construction very successfully. The research is done by our U.S. Forest Services, as well as our land grant universities, such as my alma mater of Penn State.…”