Political Quotes

“Madam President, to most Americans, the so-called Great American Outdoors Act is a mistake. It is expensive, shortsighted, and it is wrong; but to those of us who live in the American West, it is a disaster. Despite its rosy claims, this legislation combines two bills that will only tighten the Federal stranglehold on our lands and drive us deeper into debt, to the detriment of our economy, our environment, and the livelihoods and the freedom of the American people. So just how, you might ask, does it do that? Well, let me explain. The first title containing an expanded version of the Restore Our Parks Act attempts to address the roughly $19.3 billion maintenance backlog on our Federal lands, concentrated primarily within national parks projects, which approach a $12 billion maintenance backlog just on their own, but it seeks to do so by spending $9.5 billion of Federal offshore energy revenues over 5 years, without any means whatsoever of offsetting those extra funds. Now, that, to be clear, is money that is currently going to the U.S. Treasury to pay for a number of other costs, a number of other expenditures--from aircraft carriers to Federal courts and everything in between--and will only add to our already ballooning national debt. It is, we have to remember, Congress's job to set priorities for the funds in the Treasury.…”