Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. PANETTA. Madam Chair, I thank Mr. Westerman for all of his work on this.

Madam Chair, our amendment would provide $10 million in additional funding to the U.S. Forest Service and its State and private forestry account. That account is set up to help State and local landowners recover from damages caused by wildfires and to provide more resources for proactive forest management.

What we have seen, unfortunately, in the last few years is a number of horrific fires throughout our Nation, and especially where I am from in California and the central coast of California. But what we know is that we must do something about it.

This amendment does something about it by providing the necessary resources to maintain certain areas in which human beings are living close to forests and, therefore, making sure that there are certain requirements that are met by the local entities.

But we can do this without sacrificing our environmental protections. This is why we are basically able to increase resources for wildfire mitigation practices such as prescribed burns and maintenance of fuel breaks and technical assistance to landowners. We can make sure that they are advanced, but that they can also be in compliance with environmental safety guards. We can do both in this amendment, and this amount of money does that.

So, Madam Chair, I continue to ask for support of this amendment, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``yea'' on this.

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