Joe Barton: “Well, I thank the gentleman from Oregon. I am not going to be demagogic. I certainly respect the comments of the…”

“Well, I thank the gentleman from Oregon. I am not going to be demagogic. I certainly respect the comments of the gentleman from Oregon and the gentleman of California. I was actually going to pay the gentleman from California a compliment. I just wanted the country to know these are serious issues and there are differences of opinion based on philosophy, but there are not personality conflicts. The gentleman from California was gracious enough several weeks ago to invite me into his home for a meal. He makes a delicious grilled chicken and is quite the chef, and I just wanted to thank him. And at the appropriate time after the gentleman from Oregon and the gentleman from California have made their points, if they would like to enter into a little bit of just an honest policy debate, I would be happy to do that. But I know it is the gentleman from Oregon's time, and I don't want to take away from that. Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for those very tempered remarks and the kind remarks about the gentleman from California. I would like to talk about a couple of other impacts. Some are in the Interior budget; some are in another budget we haven't touched yet. Mike was talking very eloquently about the fact that these impacts are falling most on rural residents and on rural small businesses, areas that are for the most part pretty darned depressed in this country. A lot of my rural areas are well into double-digit unemployment.…”