Cuts to Forest Service Endanger Millions

Floor Speech

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Mr. MIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge the Trump administration to consider reversing its reckless and dangerous terminations of Forest Service employees.

I represent an area in Orange County that is prone to the same types of wildfire risks that we saw devastate Los Angeles not too long ago. We are about a month or two away from fire season. We have had a number of fires similar, but smaller in scope, to the one that just hit Los Angeles due to the Santa Ana winds that come through our area in southern California every year and also due to drier conditions because of climate change and droughts. We know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and so we need to have these types of resources in place.

As wildfires grow more and more intense, as the risks of wildfire become more and more ubiquitous, our firefighters are tired. They are understaffed, underresourced, and underpaid. We need more funding to protect our communities from megafires. Instead, this administration is choosing to strip our key first responders in the U.S. Forest Service of resources that make millions of Americans safer, including the ones I represent in Orange County.

Let's be clear, if we are looking for efficiency, this is the opposite of efficiency. There is nothing efficient about firing essential public safety officials right before fire season. These are the people we deploy to try to clear the brush. They are the first responders who alert our fire departments of early onset wildfires before they become deadly multibillion-dollar disasters. That is why we rehired so many of the very same people that DOGE tried to fire in the first place due to the inefficiency, the gross incompetence of Elon Musk and the people who are working with him.

This administration is also lying about retaining employees to help fight fires on the ground. Around 75 percent of those who were let go had firefighting experience, and now we are having to rehire some of them. This is what happens when you have 21-year-old hackers named ``Big Balls'' deciding how to cut our agencies as opposed to experts who know what they are doing. The incompetence of DOGE and Elon Musk is exposing Californians and millions of people around the country to unprecedented danger. We have to do something about it before it is too late.

I urge Congress to intervene, reverse these cuts, and stop this administration from putting more Americans in harm's way.

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