Political Quotes

“I come to the floor to talk about S. 47, a bill I authored with Senator Murkowski. It is a package of public land issues that has been working its way through the Congress now for several years. I would like to point out to people who may not be as familiar with the Interior side of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee's work, that the Interior side has a long history in our Nation. We decided a long time ago that we needed to have oversight and management of our public lands. S. 47, the legislation that is before us today, is a recognition that our climate is changing and that we need new tools to carry out new responsibilities as it relates to managing those public lands. I thank my colleague from Alaska, Senator Murkowski, for her incredible leadership. I know we are going, hopefully, to go to final passage of this bill sometime today, and I thank her for her good bipartisan work on this legislation. It is safe to say that even though we both come from the Pacific Northwest, we don't see eye to eye on every issue, but we have worked hard to try to give local communities the resources they need and to maintain the national interest where the national interest was at stake. So I can't applaud my colleague enough for her hard work and for her dedication to getting this particular package moving through the Senate. I also want to thank a lot of the staff who have worked on this issue because I know that it is about the hard work of legislating.…”