Jaime Herrera Beutler

I appreciate the opportunity to advocate on behalf of revitalizing the economy of fisheries in the Pacific or the REFI Act.

It is time to update the terms so the industry can continue to do what they do best.

I am saying we need to work together to make sure that some of these missions are fulfilled.

I recognize you have less funds. I mean, if you look at the Forest Service budget over the last 25 years, it has been straight down.

Every time I sit through a Forest Service hearing, I get excited and frustrated because I feel like we have got a partial solution.

There seems to be a growing understanding that managing an entire ecosystem for one species is not as effective as we could be.

If we are able to harvest some more of that timber, which is healthy for the species, it is healthy for the trees, it is healthy for us, we want to recreate there because we are not afraid of the--I mean, it is a win-win-win.

I do not think I have seen you since you came out and visited some of our forests. I really appreciated that, and I appreciate the time you took to come see some of the challenges.

Absolutely. I guess from your perspective, maybe speak to the difference between the billion dollar cut in the President's budget for the Corps.

I am specifically speaking of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, fully utilizing the trust fund.

I believe in that. Another way we can address this is we can fully spend the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund.

We are hoping moving forward, and we will provide you with more information.

I urge you to see if there are more ways to fully spend the money.

Absolutely. My point is, having worked on development for a small nonprofit, you don't get the award unless you can demonstrate you can fulfill the obligations and requirements of the award generally, and I assume that is how you operate.

To require them kind of to be on that same playing field seems to me to be putting those rural communities at a disadvantage.

I fully intend on helping protect their access to these things.

So I don't understand why--what we were told was you are going to stop them leading up to the vote and I don't know if it was because there was push from with the administration to get the project going and so you felt like holding the…

The administrative fees are crucial and to go from 68 percent to 75 percent in the Ryan-Murray budget

I applaud that you are looking for places to get financing, but what we really need is a long-term, big-picture plan to pay for repairing our aging infrastructure.

But to take the money out of the industry that is in large part small business and private, jobs come from there.

So that is money taken out of the industry.

Hopefully you will be willing to work with the community and help fund what the community comes up with.

I think you hit the nail on the head, the community needs to decide what is best for them.

But will you all refocus and help us come up with a real solution that both Oregon and Washington can support?

I guess I want to know why the administration is still pushing a project on States and citizens who appear not to want it.