Orrin Hatch: “I have taken a long time here, but, frankly, this needed to be said. I realize that many people on the other side of the…”

“I have taken a long time here, but, frankly, this needed to be said. I realize that many people on the other side of the issue are very sincere people. I happen to believe in the environment myself. But I also know if we do not worry about human beings, there will not be an environment in the end, because sooner or later someone is going to rise up and an extremist on the other side is going to take control if we act like you cannot have balance on these matters. All the sincerity in the world does not make it right. I think we have done a very good job of crafting a bill here that brings the vast majority of all people together, while leaving the extremists still screaming at us; but even they will die down once the bill is passed, just like the two ends of the extremist spectrum who moaned and groaned about the Utah Forest Service wilderness proposal. We went through this with that bill, too, when we came up with 800,000 acres. Once it was passed, the screaming basically went away. Everybody understood that it was a good bill. Today, people are bragging about it all over Utah.”