Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I appreciate the insight and the observations of my friend and distinguished colleague, the Senator from Delaware. I appreciate the amount of effort that he puts into this and I am sure a lot of hard work. He raises some good points, and there are points that I might find persuasive if they were accurate. He seems to be under the impression that these would be broad categorical inclusions, that these procedures we contemplate would apply broadly to all Forest Service operations. It wouldn't. This is talking only about fuel breaks and only about fuel breaks in narrow sets of circumstances. He suggested incorrectly that there is no requirement in place to make sure that the States have the resources financially, regulatorily, and otherwise to undertake the analysis contemplated under this. It does. He has been misinformed on that point. Finally, I might feel differently about this if, like my friend from Delaware, if I were from a different State, if I were from the State of Delaware. But when you look at the Western United States, we have Federal land everywhere. In every State to the east of Colorado's eastern border, the Federal Government owns less than 15 percent of the land in each State, and in most cases, it is in the single digits. In many States, it is in the low single digits. I don't remember what the percentage of land is in Delaware. I can find that out. But in Utah it is two-thirds of our land. It is 67 percent.…”