Richard Pombo Quotes (19 Quotes)

My philosophy has always been that if you work toward some type of compromise, you've actually got a chance to get the bill signed into law, ... On a lot of issues, we've spent years debating them. Unless we can reach consensus ... we'll spend another 20 years debating them.

The purpose of this bill is to protect my private property owners, ... and to make them willing participants in protecting species and their habitat.

You're not excusing them from following the law, you're just trying to make the law work so that they can take care of the levee systems or the dams or whatever it is,

The bill will place a new emphasis on recovery and eliminates dysfunctional critical habitat provisions, ... It's about a new era in protecting species and protecting habitat at the same time we protect property owners.

This month Mother Nature proved just how vulnerable America is to supply disruptions, ... We must do more to increase and to diversify domestic supplies.

It's been a pleasure watching Matador grow.

the states should have ultimate authority over resource production, including the power to prevent it, in the deep waters off their coasts.

If the federal government comes and takes someone's land, we all pay for it, ... If we take land to make a wildlife refuge, we pay for it. No one's down here screaming that's (the government's) entitlement.

You cannot continue to oppose any new (energy) resource development in this country.

This is an aggressive deficit-cutting measure that raises revenue for Uncle Sam so Uncle Sam doesn't take it from the taxpayers themselves. We will generate these new revenues by increasing domestic energy supplies at a time when American consumers need them most.

A lot of guys were really upset. Looking at what we face as a country right now, with escalating energy prices, the shortage of natural gas, a lot of guys believe that this is our last best chance to increase American production of energy.

There's something wrong with that, and I don't know how anyone can defend taking someone's private property for a public use, for the public good, and not paying them for it just because you've gotten away with it for 32 years.

I'm told this is also an issue that has been tested in court and a settlement has been reached and it's not necessary to address the issue in the underlying bill,

What we were able to do was reach a compromise where states would have much greater control over their coastlines than what they do under current law and current regulation, ... It protects those states who do want to protect their coastline and don't want to have more coastal development.

Rural American families who depend on firewood to heat their homes will be hit just as hard as those who use oil and natural gas.

In our bill we protect the small property owners, ... It was a compromise, a reasonable way to protect endangered species, to protect the habitat which they need to recover.

Picking up four or five votes by pulling (arctic drilling) doesn't make up for the 25 or 30 votes you're going to lose,

Everything we do when it comes to taking land for a public good or a public use, we pay them for it. But when it comes to the Endangered Species Act right now they get it for nothing, so they don't want to have to pay for it,

Thirty years of critical habitat have done very little if anything to help species, ... The current system does not work.