Maria Cantwell

I am concerned that we are shifting 35 percent of the current air tanker contracts to call-when-needed.

Now this new NIFC forecast will have the Pacific Northwest in July/August on the side of what we have seen in the past few years in terms of a fire season.

I understand that, well, we'll get the air tankers. I just want to say that the last year fire managers requested, but did not receive, an air tanker 371 times because none were available.

I guarantee if you asked people in Puget Sound, would you tolerate a little bit of smoke in those months (May, June) to reduce the constant summer-wide haze that was present because of August wildfires . . . I guarantee you, they would say…

Hopefully people will be working very quickly to put those out, but it's just a very early reminder of how challenging this season could be.

Just a drier environment in which we all have to be very, very mindful of.

The changing climate and environment is making fire a more challenging environment for our Forest Service, for our wildland firefighters, for our communities.

I hope that the Department of Agriculture will work on that.

We just need to fight that.

The Medicaid expansion is so critical to that.

This statement by you about how where you live should not determine if you live resonates a lot in my State.

No student should fear for their life while attending school.

What I think is helpful is every agency has their challenges, is to see just what that prioritization is and date.

We have a responsibility to ensure that all Americans have access to reliable transportation.

I hope you are aware that at the end of 2017, we had a horrific Amtrak derailment in Washington which killed three people.

I hope our colleagues will take time to really deeply understand how much this Act says. It's about small businesses starting something new and being competitive and that's why we need to have Net Neutrality.

I think what consumers are worried about is that the app economy is going to get hijacked.

I've always said we need to be more aggressive about our coding education.

I hope that you will take that charge on aggressively because I think there is so much that people would like to know.

I believe that Tara Sweeney is the right person for this important position.

I would say a lot of our Pacific Northwest tribes have counted on those environmental laws to make sure their issues on fishing rights and environmental issues are looked after in a government-to-government relationship.

I will not be seeking a waiver.

No, we put some money toward that, but obviously we all know that distributed generation could help in the reliability of this.

I hear them and a lot of them think this tragedy happened and now we're going to build this most resilient grid.

It is such an important hearing because we want our small businesses to be able to keep pace.