Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Fix Our Forests Act, and I rise to fight what could be the first successful attempt to undermine the Endangered Species Act. I believe that the California people deserve our urgent support to recover and rebuild from the tragic wildfires, and I am disappointed that this was not a productive discussion and a bipartisan discussion to help address what they need. There are many excellent pieces of legislation that we should be looking at for that support, including many that are bipartisan, like the Modernizing Wildfire Safety and Prevention Act. Those bills provide much-needed funding, deliver desperately needed support to firefighters, and address the needs of frontline communities. This bill does not. Instead, it regurgitates long-held logging industry priorities to reshape environmental laws on Forest Service land and allow profit, not science, to dictate forest management decisions. As a co-chair of the Endangered Species Act Caucus, I am particularly troubled by this bill's rollback of Endangered Species Act enforcement by overturning the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' Cottonwood decision. This decision basically says that when new science emerges or develops on endangered species, it must be considered in the Endangered Species Act protections. By the way, the science goes both ways. It can both identify new dangers, but it can also identify successes and reduce stresses to threatened species.…”