Political Quotes

“Today the House asked for conferees to meet with the other Chamber to work out differences on the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, H.R. 1904. This evening, I am pleased to be joined by some of my colleagues on the House side to talk about the importance of this legislation that passed the House of Representatives nearly 6 months ago and, yet, has still not been resolved. This issue has been debated for literally years. Former Committee on Agriculture Chairman Bob Smith of Oregon attempted to address this issue after the Sierra Grande fire which destroyed hundreds of homes in New Mexico in the year 2000. The other Chamber considered similar measures. Last year, a similar bill was reported out of the Committee on Resources. This year, I worked with two other distinguished full committee chairmen, the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) of the Committee on Resources and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) of the Committee on the Judiciary. We crafted a bipartisan bill that garnered 90 cosponsors. The bill went through three full committee markups before coming to the floor. Our bill takes a truly national approach to a national problem. We passed this bill on May 20 of this year by an overwhelming and bipartisan majority. I think it is critical to note that we appointed conferees today. We also unanimously accepted a motion from the minority to instruct our conferees to finish work on this bill within 1 week.”