Political Quotes

“I yield myself the balance of the time. Mr. Chairman, I want to point out this poster behind me. I know one can't read all of the details here, but this is the process by which somebody goes through a lease process to try to develop some activity on Federal lands. This is the process that one goes through, which, of course, is pretty long. Now, I mentioned in my opening remarks that there are 15 different ways there can be a protest made or a voice heard, or whatever, in that whole lease process. At the back of me on this chart, it is denoted by the red dots. You can see all the way along, starting way over to my right, where right at the start there are places you can have input and that continues throughout, all the way to virtually the end. When you have a process like this--and I will say it--in many cases, some of these red dots are used for frivolous purposes. Well, if they're used for frivolous purposes, there has to be a way, it would seem, to mitigate that in some way so that the government can do its job and do its work under the law as to those who are trying to lease public lands. That's simply what the fee does because the fee goes to the agency that processes this. That means you can ensure, from my point of view at least, that you'll have a process that's fair and open. Nothing is taken away. There are no red dots taken away whatsoever. We're just simply saying there has to be a means by which we finance this process.…”