Political Quotes

“I advise the gentleman from Oregon that I am prepared to close, so if he wants to use his time, then I will close. I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. I will close where I ended my opening remarks, 25 major fires burning in the West: seven in Oregon, six in California, four in Washington, two in Utah, two in Idaho, and one in Colorado. And by this time next week, probably twice as many, but next week Congress will be out of session. The agencies will run out of money. They can't stop fighting the fires. So what they will do is they will pull back money that would prevent future intense wildfires from prevention programs. They will pull back money from recreation programs. They will pull back money from a host of things that Americans care about and want to have funded just to fight these fires. It is an endless cycle. We need to deal with it. We could have dealt with it here today instead of spending multiple hours on a bill which is going nowhere, which is poorly drafted to the point where anybody, any city, county, tribe, State who writes on the back of a napkin can submit that to the agency and it must be considered the best available science and commercial data. And under the law, the Secretary has to use that to make a decision. How the heck is that going to work? You are saying you are worried about attorney's fees; you are creating a universe for new litigation with this misguided approach.…”