[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 11097]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

  Mr. REID. Madam President, I listened closely, as I try to do every 
day, to the Chaplain's prayer. He mentioned the terrible fires in the 
West, which brings to my attention the fact that when there is trouble 
in the country, the place one has to look is to the Government. After 
one has completed their prayers and the spiritual things they do, the 
Government is next in line.
  If we think about the wildfires that sweep the West every summer, it 
is the Federal Government that steps in to help. Tens of thousands of 
Federal employees fight those fires. They are professional 
firefighters. They come in every summer. They do very dangerous work. 
They place themselves in harm's way to protect property and people's 
lives. We have these firefighters who jump out of airplanes and 
parachute, heavily loaded with all kinds of equipment, to fight these 
fires. We have firefighters who rappel off the back of helicopters to 
fight these fires.
  So for all the bad that people hear about Government, I think we 
should stop and think about the people who fight these fires that are 
consuming--there is one fire now in Arizona that is raging in an area 
about 10 times that of the District of Columbia. The fire line is 50 
miles long. Again, we have there professional firefighters who are 
trained every summer. The Federal Government has programs for feeding 
them.
  We have had fires, of course, in Nevada, and I have seen the 
tremendous logistical problems in feeding thousands of firefighters, 
for example, and having a place for them to sleep. Government is there 
to help us, not to hurt us.

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