Tom Tiffany

The posters behind me show the sobering devastation that this unprecedented crisis has caused, and will cause again unless we drastically change course.

Will we be able to do that if the lawsuits continue, if there is not lawsuit reform?

In the last 5 years alone, we have lost over 38 million acres of land to wildfire.

How do we get them back? They were there 30, 40 years ago.

We must also recognize the human impact this crisis is having on our nation's wildland firefighters.

This is a political choice, and yet headline after headline states that the electricity grid is stretched thin.

The bipartisan Lower Energy Costs Act, which has now passed the House twice, would allow us to develop our resources and permit in reasonable time frames.

I am going to ask one real quick final question. We saw the impact of illegal aliens causing fire on Federal lands down in southern Arizona.

Is it possible that it may not happen, that climate change may not be the end of the world, as so many people, like yourself, claim?

What if you are wrong about climate change? What if it turns out that we don't see 3 degrees additional global temperatures by 2050?

Are you familiar that FERC last week... said there was an elevated chance of blackouts?

Does the public want to see transmission lines where they have never seen them before?

That is certainly something we are going to watch very closely, is how many acres are being treated.

We just heard that we are going to see the end of the world by 2030 by the person sitting in the Ranking Member's chair in opening remarks.

Does the public want to see all the endangered species that are being killed by these Cuisinarts in the sky?

Does the public want to see windmills and solar arrays on those public lands?

I would like to encourage my friends to recognize the reality that the influx of funds provided to our forest management agencies have thus far failed to deliver the increase in pace and scale of fuels treatment that is truly needed.

In regards to the letter that you wrote to the United States Forest Service, and you said you always follow the law, is tree spiking following the law?

Until recently, our country had never lost more than 10 million acres in a year.

Encouragingly, we are no longer debating the cause of this crisis in this Committee.

What used to be called fire seasons has now morphed into fire years, as wildfires blaze year-round.

You may be correct that these wildfires, with all the smoke that is coming up as a result of improper management, that may be befouling the environment and helping cause it.

Over the weekend, my district tragically lost the life of another police officer in the line of duty. We mourn the loss of St. Croix County Sheriff's Deputy Katie Leising. No amount of words can express the loss that Wisconsin has felt for…

We can mine everywhere except in my back yard. That is the message we get. Not in my back yard.

Yes, so we can taconite mine, but not the other stuff.