Politics & Power Quote by Norm Dicks

The numbers are the point, but the emotion is the payload: a park that once ran on 130 summer workers limping along with 25. Norm Dicks isn’t trying to poeticize public lands; he’s trying to make austerity feel concrete. Instead of arguing abstractly about “budgets,” he stages a before-and-after that any listener can picture: fewer rangers at trailheads, slower rescue response, dirtier bathrooms, longer lines, less protection for fragile ecosystems. It’s a civic service downgrade you can smell.

The phrasing does strategic work. “In fact” signals he’s correcting a fantasy that government can endlessly do more with less. “In my district” localizes the damage, turning a national funding debate into constituent-level evidence. The specificity of “3 years ago” compresses the timeline, implying this isn’t a long-term demographic shift but a policy choice with immediate consequences. And “temporary work” subtly evokes the kind of entry-level, seasonal jobs that stitch together rural economies around parks; cuts here ripple into gateway towns, not just the agency.

There’s also a quiet accusation embedded in “because they cannot afford more.” Parks don’t fail because nature got expensive; they fail because lawmakers decided upkeep was optional. Dicks is aiming for a classic Washington conversion: translate environmental stewardship into basic operations and public safety, then dare opponents to defend the understaffing. It’s less a lament than an indictment, delivered through a receipt.