[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 35 (Thursday, March 14, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2005-S2030]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  BALANCED BUDGET DOWNPAYMENT ACT, II

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair lays before the Senate H.R. 3019, 
which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 3019) making appropriations for fiscal year 
     1996 to make a further downpayment toward a balanced budget, 
     and for other purposes

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.

       Pending:
       (1) Hatfield modified amendment No. 3466, in the nature of 
     a substitute.
       (2) Lautenberg amendment No. 3482 (to amendment No. 3466) 
     to provide funding for programs necessary to 
     maintain essential environmental protection.
       (3) Grams amendment No. 3492 (to amendment No. 3466) to 
     establish a lockbox for deficit reduction and revenues 
     generated by tax cuts.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
Washington, [Mrs. Murray] is recognized to offer an amendment dealing 
with timber sales, on which there will be 2\1/2\ hours equally divided.
  The Senator from Washington is recognized.


                Amendment No. 3493 to Amendment No. 3466

     (Purpose: To repeal the emergency salvage timber sale program)

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask 
for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Washington [Mrs. Murray], for herself, Mr. 
     Leahy, Mr. Baucus, Mr. Bumpers, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Bradley, 
     Ms. Moseley-Braun, and Mrs. Boxer, proposes an amendment 
     numbered 3493 to amendment No. 3466.

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading 
of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under 
``Amendments Submitted.'')

[[Page S2006]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise today to make a case for a 
commonsense, responsible forest policy. Today, I want to plead with my 
colleagues to fix a mistake that this Congress made last year and put 
in place a long-term plan to restore the lawful expeditious salvage of 
dead and dying timber in our Nation's forests.
  Today, our national forests are at the center of extreme controversy. 
My constituents are angry and many believe that the salvage rider from 
last year went way too far. It is very critical that we address this 
situation now.
  Let me remind my colleagues about the course of forest policy in 
these past few years. I will spend most of my time discussing the 
Pacific Northwest, because that is where much of the forest controversy 
is right now about salvage timber and it is where it is currently 
focused.
  When I came into office in 1992, the national forests of the 
Northwest were locked up, they were closed to timber management because 
the agency had not followed the environmental laws of this Nation. The 
courts prohibited the agency from selling trees, and Congress was 
gridlocked. Nothing was moving, and there was war in the woods. Rural 
communities were hurting, and environmentalists were winning in the 
courts of law and in the courts of public opinion because the public 
saw mountainsides ravaged and felt betrayed.

  President Clinton held a forest conference early in 1993, listened to 
all sides and eventually endorsed a plan developed by scientists for 
the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management that would provide 
a sustainable flow of timber while protecting species diversity, 
watersheds, and other important values.
  Few people liked the plan, I will admit, but, once again, the forests 
were finally open for science-based timber harvests.
  Unfortunately, the timber sales program established under the 
Northwest forest plan has not produced the volumes many of us had hoped 
that it would. I, like my opponents, am very frustrated that the Forest 
Service has been unable to produce a timber-sale level even close to 
what scientists believe is sustainable under the President's forest 
plan.
  Near the end of 1994, delays under the forest plan, combined with a 
rash of forest fires in the inland West, brought frustration to a 
boiling point. But instead of working within the plan or trying to 
reach a compromise on a reasonable approach to salvage logging, this 
Congress lowered the boom. The rider that passed last year suspended 
environmental safeguards, it cut the public out of Government 
decisions, and, under subsequent court rulings, mandated unscientific 
timber sales.
  This rider may have sped up the flow of timber to mills marginally, 
but it also has sparked a war in the woods in my State and my region. 
Like so many other environmental proposals pushed by this Congress, it 
just went too far. I, too, want the President's forest plan to deliver 
and I, too, want dead timber to be salvaged from our Nation's forests. 
The big difference between my approach today and my opponents is how we 
move forward. Do we allow the public to be involved? Do we give 
agencies discretion to follow the law? Do we provide 1-year fixes or 
establish a long-term approach?
  I believe that we can salvage trees quickly while still allowing 
public involvement in sales that comply fully with the laws.
  I want to take the time to explain my amendment.
  The first title simply repeals the timber rider whose consequences 
shocked so many people. How many Senators envisioned this kind of sale 
when we discussed timber salvaging dead trees, this kind of sale where 
the result is a tremendous damage to our ecosystem, to our salmon, to 
our fish, to the wildlife, where we cut without regard to what happens 
to the environment or what happens to the timber around it? We cause 
slides, we cause backups, we cause flooding, and we cause tremendous 
damage to many of our timber areas and to the salmon and the fish that 
depend so much on it.
  How many of my colleagues, when we voted last year, thought that we 
would see a sale like this?
  My friends, this picture is of a tree that was cut down under the 
rider from last year. This tree is well over 250 years old. This tree 
is older than the Constitution of the United States of America. We hear 
so much today about the fact that we need to take care of our children 
and our grandchildren, that we want something there for them in the 
future. This tree will not be replaced for my grandchildren, my great-
grandchildren, or my great, great-grandchildren.
  This is what we did when we passed the rider last year. This is not 
the type of sale that the public believes should be exempt from 
scrutiny or statutory safeguards.
  The second provision of this title addresses how we fix the mess we 
have made. Even the senior Senators from Washington and Oregon admit 
that mistakes were made. They agree that the administration needs some 
flexibility to right the wrongs brought about by these old-growth 
sales. Unfortunately, the approach they take in this bill does not 
solve the problem. It allows the Secretaries to negotiate with 
purchasers for alternative volume, but then it gives the purchasers the 
final say. Furthermore, it allows buyback of these harmful sales, but 
only using funds other than timber sales money; apparently, watershed 
restoration money, trails money, and wildlife funds. I do not agree 
with that approach.
  In contrast, my approach provides the administration and the 
purchaser equal negotiating position but gives the Secretary the final 
say. It establishes that the priority should be alternative volume. 
However, if that is unavailable, the Secretary has a whole package of 
tools available to assist the purchaser. He can offer cash, bidding 
credits, loan forgiveness, or any other available option under current 
law.
  The final provision of this title addresses the problem of salvage 
timber sales throughout the country. Under the timber rider passed last 
year, the agencies were not required to follow environmental laws and 
their decisions were not subject to administrative appeal or 
substantive legal challenge. The public, you and I, were cut out of the 
process. While I believe that the vast majority of sales comply with 
environmental laws, as the administration promised they would, some of 
the salvage sales likely would not withstand administrative or judicial 
scrutiny.
  Some people have raised concerns that my amendment will allow 
frivolous appeals to gridlock reasonable agency decisions to award 
timber sale contracts.

  Let me be very clear; this is not the case at all. My amendment 
allows judicial review of awarded sales and gives a judge discretion to 
provide injunctive relief when necessary. The goal is twofold: First, 
to allow one check on sales that have received no checks at all, and 
second, to allow legally awarded sales to move forward.
  Title II, I admit, is a bit parochial. As I complained about earlier, 
we simply must make the Northwest forest plan work. The way we make it 
work is to get the scientific underpinnings in place by finishing the 
watershed analyses as soon as possible. In this amendment, we direct 
the agencies to expedite sales under the plan and use available funds 
first and road construction funds as a backup to complete these 
important watershed analyses.
  The Northwest forest plan has to work. We have too much riding on it. 
Both the States of Washington and Oregon and many private companies 
either have developed or are in the process of developing habitat 
conservation plans to protect threatened and endangered species. These 
State and private lands supply the vast majority of timber available 
for harvest in Washington State. Without a sound Federal policy 
underpinning, these HCP's may no longer provide sufficient habitat 
protection. This will put our timber workers and our communities in 
jeopardy once again.
  Title III of my amendment is the most comprehensive. It is a section 
that sets forth in a number of ways, I believe, that reasonable timber 
salvage can be expedited on Federal lands without cutting people out of 
the process. Unlike the rider from last year, it limits the definition 
of ``salvage'' to true salvage: dead and dying trees. It establishes an 
expedited process for getting at those trees because the trees are

[[Page S2007]]

dead or dying, so they must be harvested quickly in order to get any 
economic value from them.
  Maybe it is our puritan heritage, but most Americans do not like to 
see deadwood going to waste. Why not get some economic value out of the 
devastation caused by wildfires or insect epidemics or blowdowns? I 
agree and I try to expedite that often cumbersome process.
  Both the timber interests and conservationists have criticized this 
title. That tells me I must be in the middle. Some people say it will 
establish a whole new bureaucracy. That is not correct.
  One provision does require agencies to work together to shorten the 
time required for consultation under the Endangered Species Act. At 
first, I wanted to codify the memorandum of understanding that is 
working in the Pacific Northwest to reduce the amount of time it takes 
for the regulatory agencies to approve Forest Service and BLM sales. 
However, that document is quite cumbersome, so I simply adopted the 
streamlined consultation methods that it contained. In other words, 
this system is already in place. It was put there to expedite salvage 
under the timber rider, and it is working.

  Timber interests are also concerned that this more limited definition 
of salvage is unscientific and alters current law. I have two answers 
for that. First, the current definition, whose eligibility requirements 
include such sweeping phrases as trees ``imminently susceptible to fire 
or insect attack'' is too broad for the widespread use to which salvage 
sales are now being offered. A few years ago the Forest Service had a 
very small timber salvage program and, because of its relatively small 
scale, was not under public scrutiny.
  Second, while my definition is narrower, it does not prohibit the use 
of the other definition. That is an important point. My bill does not 
limit the agencies' ability to perform salvage under the older 
definition.
  What my bill does is this: It says, where we need to get in to 
harvest timber quickly because it will lose its economic value if we do 
not, we need expedited procedures. On the other hand, in situations 
where the timber is not dead or rotting, the agencies can take the 
longer route of compliance with lengthier documents and lengthier 
appeals. The old salvage program would be better suited to forest 
rehabilitation activities such as thinning of overstock stands or 
establishing multilayered canopies to mimic old-growth forests.
  Some people have expressed concern that the new NEPA regulations will 
not be completed for at least a year. That is true. However, I want to 
emphasize that we are putting in place a new long-term policy to allow 
salvage logging. The agencies and the Council on Environmental Quality 
will develop that process within a year, which is very fast for the 
Federal bureaucracy, and it will remain in place as long as this 
Congress wishes it to be there.
  Let me turn to the issues raised by conservationists. They are 
greatly concerned about the ``salvage'' definition contained in the old 
rider that we passed last year because it is too broad and it 
encompasses virtually any standing tree. They want only dead trees to 
be cut, and they do not want any new roads to be built.
  My amendment narrows the definition to focus directly on dead trees 
and minimizes the risks of subjecting healthy trees to harvest under 
the moniker of ``salvage.'' In addition, my amendment limits new road 
construction under the salvage program to quarter-mile spurs. My 
definition does not go nearly as far as they wanted, but it does 
represent a responsible, sensible compromise.
  They want all sales prohibited if arson is committed and believe the 
burden of proving someone committed arson to create a salvage sale is 
too onerous. They want this bill's expedited provisions to apply to 
sales located outside of any wilderness areas, not just those 
wilderness areas in which timber harvest is currently precluded.
  Others expressed reservations about the provision that gives the 
agency more discretion to provide guidelines for purchasers regarding 
tree marking. They believe that too many trees are mismarked, and they 
do not trust the agency to develop reasonable guidelines. However, my 
language comes directly from feedback received by people on the ground 
that I talked with, and it is designed to save time in laying out these 
sales.
  Some environmentalists have raised concerns about provisions limiting 
the time to appeal sales. They feel their rights have already been 
reduced by the provisions included in the 1992 appropriations bill 
establishing a time of 45 days. My amendment reduces it to 30 days.
  My theory was that the bill gives the public more access up front in 
the process by allowing them to participate in interdisciplinary team 
meetings. They will then hear agency experts discussing timber sales 
and may be better able to suggest helpful changes early, thus reducing 
the likelihood of bad sales and the need to appeal at all. Again, this 
is a reasonable approach.
  The amendment facilitates up-front public involvement, public 
involvement in a second way. It waives some Federal Advisory Committee 
Act requirements if the agency feels public involvement would be 
facilitated by doing so. As we saw in the Applegate project in Oregon, 
FACA thwarted a particularly useful community-based effort to manage 
resources. Where communities can resolve these thorny natural resource 
issues, I want to do everything I can to endorse and encourage those 
solutions.
  Finally, conservationists are nervous about the increased flexibility 
allowed under the pilot program for stewardship contracts. Senators 
Mack and Baucus and Representative Pat Williams introduced legislation 
this session that encourages this type of contracting that allows the 
agency's flexibility to design sales to foster stewardship goals, 
rather than necessarily producing a high financial return to the 
Treasury.
  I have spoken to timber workers, and they believe this program holds 
great promise. I share their enthusiasm, and I am certain it can be 
implemented in a constructive and beneficial way for our workers.
  Let me conclude this with a note about the final title that is simply 
an effort to increase our knowledge about forest health and healthy 
timber stands. This title is primarily directed at tree health. As 
conservationists have repeatedly pointed out to me as I discussed this 
topic, forest health is not just about tree health; it is about 
watersheds and soils and other vegetation, wildlife, and a whole host 
of noncommodities. I agree. However, I also agree that in some areas of 
our Nation, our timber stands are unhealthy. We need to use science to 
figure out a way to help restore them.
  This title asks the agencies to identify unhealthy stands and 
prioritize those that would benefit from rehabilitation. I know that 
Senator Craig and others, including Senator Daschle, have been very 
interested in this approach. The bill directs the agencies to 
prioritize areas based on their health, their ease of access, and their 
probability of arousing controversy. Why not rehabilitate areas that we 
can most easily reach with the least amount of outcry and treat those 
first?
  Finally, the bill concludes with a study recommended in Senator 
Bradley's timber salvage repeal bill. It directs the National Academy 
of Sciences to study the ecological health of forests. It should 
provide us information with which, if necessary, we can modify our 
approach to forest health in the years to come.
  This has been a rather lengthy explanation of my amendment. However, 
I think it is important to discuss so that my colleagues can understand 
the reasons for the decisions I made in this amendment. This amendment 
is not perfect, but it does provide us with a real opportunity to do 
the things that the vast majority of Americans can agree on. We should 
harvest dead and dying timber quickly on our national forests while 
giving people--people--the power to influence agency decisions.
  It is also critical to point out that this bill is not a referendum 
on how the administration has handled this issue. Opponents are going 
to argue that the administration has changed its position or sent us 
mixed signals. This is not about the executive branch. This amendment 
is about people.

  Under the rider, Federal agencies are out in the woods running timber 
sales with little or no accountability. Under

[[Page S2008]]

the rider that we passed last year, ordinary citizens--you and I--have 
little or no ability to influence Government decisions. Under that 
rider, timber communities have once again been dragged into a political 
storm. My amendment puts the public--us--back in the process and 
implements a long-term salvage program.
  Mr. President, this Congress reignited a war in the woods in the 
Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. The rider passed last year was 
legislative overkill on the environment. I do not want to have to face 
my constituents and tell them that this Congress did not want them 
involved in management decisions about the forests they own. I want my 
constituents to know they have a place in our Government and in our 
forests. Likewise, I want our timber communities and families to know 
that we value the services that they provide to this Nation.
  They have borne a lot of criticism for supplying us with wood and 
paper products. That criticism is shortsighted and hypocritical. I want 
to make it very clear: One of the messages of this amendment is that 
timber salvage is good if it is done correctly and wisely. It is a 
beneficial activity that should be encouraged where it is 
scientifically sound. We should stop the pendulum from swinging so 
wildly--from no cutting to no accountability.
  Mr. President, through this amendment we can show the American people 
that this Congress can pass a piece of legislation that gives neither 
side everything but both sides something. I urge my colleagues to 
support this amendment that repeals the timber rider and replaces it 
with reasonable, a long-term, expedited timber salvage program 
providing commodities for this country and protection for our forests.

  One more note, Mr. President. This amendment is fully paid for from 
Forest Service accounts. I urge my colleagues to support this 
amendment. I withhold the balance of my time.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, first of all, I commend my colleague for 
her keen interest and her willingness to become involved in one of the 
great issues that confronts the Pacific Northwest--not only the Pacific 
Northwest, but the entire country, and not just for the entire country, 
but now something that is an issue that is worldwide.
  I want to just say briefly that we get ourselves oftentimes so 
focused on our own geographic focus of interest, we sometimes forget 
the impact of policies that affect the entire world. A group of us went 
to Siberia to see the timber situation in Siberia this last August and 
to review the cutting policies of that part of the world. Due to the 
stalemate and the gridlock in the Northwest, which has succeeded pretty 
much in eliminating this Northwestern part of the United States which 
is, worldwide, the greatest productive area for softwood timber in the 
world, effectively eliminating it from the area of supply for one of 
the great demands in our own country, housing--housing for many people: 
poor, middle income, rich, everybody. The only product for housing that 
really is a renewable product that is grown by free solar energy and 
that can be replaced and renewed, renewed, and renewed, as it is a 
thesis of our whole timber policy, is a renewable resource.
  Let me just say that we are, today, witnessing what I call a modern 
type of environmental imperialism, much the same as the 18th and 19th 
century imperialism of Britain and the European powers. For what we 
have not found available, in part due to our own policies on the home 
front, we are going to the rest of the world, to exploit the rest of 
the world--the rest of the world that has no policies in place.
  Siberia has a great hunger for hard cash. Let me just say that this 
is a reality. We have 10 small mills in the Northwest consortium, and 
in the 10 small mills--6 from the State of Oregon--they have gone in to 
make purchases of Siberian timber because of our own lack of supply. In 
Siberia, there is a multiplier of 15. What we can produce in the 
Northwest on 100,000 acres takes 1.5 million acres of timber in 
Siberia--1.5 million.
  It seems to me that we have to begin to lift our eyes to not only the 
environmental needs of our own area within this country, and in this 
country on this continent, but also the whole world.
  The same is happening in South America. The demand has not been met 
in our own country, and, as a consequence, we are looking to other 
markets in South America. Again, let me emphasize, even our Canadian 
friends have not fully implemented a national timber policy governing 
the way in which timber is managed in Canada. The pressure is on 
Canada. Our 13 Southern pine States, mostly made up of small wood lots, 
are stripping their lands to meet the supply.
  That is just one facet of what we do here and its environmental 
impact on the rest of the world. I think the day has come when we have 
to take seriously the right of the United States to go to the rest of 
the world and exploit and extrapolate their raw materials to feed our 
own need here domestically.
  Now, I think also that it is very important to recognize that these 
pictures that we see absolutely chill my blood--about the same as if I 
went to a slaughterhouse to watch sausage being made would chill my 
blood. But I still like sausage. I am a tree planter. I do not know how 
many people in this Chamber planted trees. I have planted 1,800 of them 
on 5 acres of seedlings. I do not like to see the process of providing 
us housing material or beautiful paneled walls in our offices, and the 
other myriad of ways in which we use the timber product. And I think, 
also, our history is very, very limited.

  We have had some floods in the Pacific Northwest. There are those who 
are trying to say those floods were tied directly to timber harvests. I 
think in some areas that is true. But to say that the floods were 
created solely, or exclusively, or in the main by this is not 
historically accurate. The greatest flood we had was in 1891. We were 
not doing much timbering in 1891 in my State, nor I do not think in the 
State of Washington either.
  We also have a short history when, in World War II, the National 
Government said, ``We have to have timber for the war effort, and we 
are not using our Federal timber. We are asking the private timber 
landowners to produce the timber now for the cause of the war, and we 
will replace it from Federal timber after the war.'' That is an 
important factor in this history of timber in our Pacific Northwest. A 
lot of people like to go around and say, ``Look how they have stripped 
the land of the timber.'' That was because we had locked up our own 
Federal land timber and, for the sake of the war effort, calling on 
people's patriotism to strip their land for that timber because it was 
faster to be gathered and cut, rather than having to wait to build 
roads into the Federal area.
  I want to now just recall something in 1989. That is not that long 
ago. In 1989, Mr. President, Speaker Foley, Congressman Les AuCoin, and 
I called a timber summit to face the problem we had at that time of a 
shutdown of our Federal forests for any timber harvesting. In 1989. It 
is very interesting because in July 1989 the Ancient Forest Alliance, a 
coalition of environmental groups, proposed their own short-term timber 
supply solution. What did the Ancient Forest Alliance propose? They 
proposed a 9.6 billion board feet harvest--a 9.6 billion board feet 
harvest in 1989 and 1990, a 2-year period. That was to take place on 
the Federal forest lands and the BLM lands in Oregon and Washington 
alone.
  They had other parts to their proposal, such as minimizing the 
fragmentation of old growth using the Forest Service definition and 
PNW-447, or regional guide, and protecting the spotted owl. These were 
all components. But can you imagine a 9.6 billion board feet proposed 
cut from the Ancient Forest Alliance?

  History changes. And this is obviously another example of change. But 
let us keep a continuity of that history, and let us look at all parts 
of that history, and let us remember that at that particular time we 
had just left the period when the so-called ASQ, the allowable cut, was 
5.3 billion board feet annually from the Pacific North region, never 
having reached that level of cutting; the highest was 4.8. But that has 
changed, too.
  Now, let us be very straightforward and historically correct on this. 
No one should be surprised about the rider. The administration 
negotiated every dot and every comma in that rider, fully cognizant of 
its meaning and fully understanding of what it proposed to

[[Page S2009]]

do and what it proposed not to do. It was a rider to what? An 
administration bill, a rescissions package. The administration, let us 
face it, had a higher value on getting the votes for that rescissions 
package than they did at that moment in negotiating a rider on timber. 
That is a fact, too. I was one of the negotiators.
  So for people to say somewhat that this is a great surprise, that all 
of a sudden we opened it up and here was the fine print, that is not 
true. Everybody that was involved in that, including the 
administration, understood precisely what it said in that.
  Now intervene the next step: A Federal district judge and a suit that 
he had to rule on relating to his interpretation of this rider. Now, 
when it is said that Senator Gorton and I found that it was not the 
best rider or the best effort we could have made, or whatever, it was 
the intervening interpretation by a Federal district judge that caused 
anybody and everybody who understood what the rider was and that it had 
gone too far.
  Now, let me say that the administration then began to discuss and 
negotiate a modification to this rider. They asked for five points. 
First of all, before I give the five points, what are we talking about? 
We are talking about contracts that had been negotiated in the past on 
the basis of the forest procedures, on the basis of all of the in-place 
regulations. Nobody has done this in the dark. All of those were fully 
operative and negotiated, and they were fully publicized, as all timber 
sales are. In other words, we moved down not to the subject of timber 
sale, but to the right of contract.
  Three points of contract: Offer, consideration, and acceptance. I 
learned that in my one and only year of law school. My colleague 
graduated; I did not. So we are talking about a legal instrument that 
is fully enforceable under our American jurisprudence system. 
Consequently, we are talking about a contract. When they say, ``Well, 
any substitute sale has to be agreed to by both parties,'' of course, 
you cannot violate a contract. Two parties had entered the contract, 
and if you are going to modify that contract, you have to have the two 
parties agree to the modification. This is not anything strange or 
weighted in the favor of one side or the other. It is a fundamental law 
of contracts. So we have these contracts, or a $150 million value of 
contracts, that the Federal Government entered into in good faith, and 
the buyer, in good faith, with consideration.

  OK. What were these points then? The administration said, ``Your 
language is too narrow, as it has been interpreted,'' and so forth. The 
language was, in effect, and I want to quote it:

       The administration has the ability to offer replacement for 
     those areas where a marbled murrelet is known to be nesting.

  Oh, did we have long discussions with the White House on how do you 
define the presence of a marbled murrelet. They are reclusive kind of 
birds. If you find an eggshell, is that sufficient evidence? If you 
heard one fly over? So we said, ``nesting.'' And we said the 
replacement for those areas and those sales, if you found a marbled 
murrelet nesting, could then be set aside and replaced in like kind as 
a substitute sale. They said those were restrictions that they felt 
could not produce the best environmentally sound replacement policy. 
Two points: Expanded beyond the marbled murrelet, and do not make it 
replacement sale in kind. That would require an old growth, or no 
growth, or second growth, or whatever.

  So, consequently, we lifted both of those out of the rider 
modification. In effect, we said, for any reason that you feel it would 
be environmentally unsound to pursue a sale, set it aside, and you do 
not have to replace it in kind. Replace it in volume with a mutual 
agreement because there were two parties to this contract.
  We have no other way to do this except to legislate it and invalidate 
an existing contract. I do not think the Congress wants to get into 
that business.
  All right. Those were two issues that we cleared up.
  Then they said, ``Well, there are times when, perhaps, we do not want 
to have a substitute sale. We would like to have a buyout of the 
contract,'' which is always possible under contract, any contract. So 
we said, ``All right. Have a buyout.'' There is a little question as to 
where we are going to get the money for the buyout. But the point is, 
we would give them authorization for a buyout and work with the 
administration. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I have a 
little flexibility to do things of this kind, to make commitments. We 
will find ways to help finance an agreed financing system for the 
buyout. Then they said, ``Put a date of December 1996 as to when all of 
this has to be accomplished.'' That might rush us into premature 
cutting in order to meet a deadline. So it took a deadline off.
  The last thing they asked for was a repeal on the sufficiency 
language, which is a red light, a red herring, or a bell in the minds 
of most environmental groups. But based on history and based on the 
record, there were people who were filing an injunction on every single 
timber sale to tie up every timber sale whether it had an environmental 
issue or not an environmental issue. We had the woods being run by 
lawsuits or locked up by lawsuits.
  So the sufficiency language which we used in other cases, in other 
laws in this Congress and in this Government--wait until Superfund 
comes out. There will be sufficiency language in that. That is OK 
because that is against corporations who use the courts to stall their 
responsibilities to clean up. I will support it. I think it is a 
legitimate instrument if used carefully, and the record will show that 
there is plenty of evidence why sufficiency was going to have to be the 
implementation on this.

  By the way, it went clear through the court system from the district 
to the ninth circuit to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court sent 
back the ruling, the ninth circuit having invalidated section 318 when 
the first sufficiency language appeared, and, in effect, said, ``Leave 
the management of the forest to the experts,'' and unanimously 
overruled the district court and the ninth circuit court. Of course, 
the ninth circuit court has a great record of being overruled. It is 
probably overruled more than any other circuit at certain times.
  But the point is simply this. That was very legitimate. So four of 
the five--but listen to what we did with the four. You do not need 
sufficiency from the standpoint of the administration, or administering 
the forest, because it said for any reason you want to indicate that 
you do not feel a contract should be implemented, do not implement it. 
Have a substitution or a buyout--all power.
  Let me make an observation. If the administration's position now is 
one of surprise, or they did not realize what they were signing and 
they want it repealed, let them talk to their foresters, their experts, 
and not to the pollsters and the political counsel at the White House. 
This is not a forestry issue, Mr. President. This is purely a political 
issue. And they need to repair that base of their support in the 
environmental community, and this is the only way the environmentalists 
say it: Do it this way, our way, or we will go out there and trash it. 
And they have already been doing that, when this first came about.
  So, this is not a forestry or an environmental problem. This is a 
political problem being put into environmental wraps for the sake of 
the political election cycle we are in. They knew every inch of the way 
and every word of the rider, and now they are trying to get out from 
under it. By the same token, we have given them all the leeway, all of 
the flexibility necessary to cancel any sale by a buyout, or a 
negotiated replacement.
  I yield the floor.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I yield 20 minutes to the Senator from 
Oregon.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon, [Mr. Wyden] is 
recognized for 20 minutes.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this past January 31, around 2 o'clock or 3 
o'clock in the morning, I tried to imagine what I would say in my first 
Senate floor speech. I reflected a bit on what I had learned from 
Oregonians during the campaign that sent me here.
  Though I had not slept a whole lot for many days, I had no problem 
piecing together what the election was all

[[Page S2010]]

about: Oregonians, regardless of who they voted for, are hungry for 
real solutions. In many ways, ideological purity--looking at Government 
through a set of partisan blinders--is far less important to the people 
of my State than making the Government work.
  The message from our electorate was blunt: Put aside the partisan 
differences, shed the political armor, and find common ground.
  I am by nature an optimist, and I believe that there are plenty of 
reasons to see that the water glass of democracy is more than half 
full. Both political parties now understand how important it is to 
downsize the Federal Government. Both parties recognize that our Nation 
needs real welfare reform. Soon the Senate will deal with a bipartisan 
health insurance reform bill. These are all areas where Democrats and 
Republicans can come together and find consensus.
  But, frankly, I did not expect in the early morning hours of January 
31 that my first speech would be about the so-called ``salvage rider,'' 
a subject that seemingly defies consensus building. And that is why our 
job today is so critical. More than half the forests in Oregon are 
owned by the Federal Government. For many Oregonians, the responsible 
management of these Federal lands is the acid test for determining if 
the Government really works or is actually broken beyond repair.
  I believe that the Senate can help bring peace to our forests. Our 
challenge is to help persuade the warring forest factions to lay down 
their ideological clubs and work together so that America has healthy, 
productive forests in the next century.
  Eminent forest scientists agree that our Western forests have genuine 
health problems that can be cured through salvage logging. For example, 
Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber's expert panel has made a number of 
important findings with respect to our State's Blue Mountains. They 
found that sizable amounts of certain species, such as Douglas fir and 
true firs, have died as a result of overcrowding on drier sites, 
drought, and insects.
  A major portion of the live forest is under stress because stands are 
too dense, especially the true fir and Douglas fir understories beneath 
pine and larch, and it increases the likelihood of future mortality in 
both understory and overstory.
  Restoration treatments including thinning and fuel reduction could 
reduce the risk of loss from insects and fire on large areas of these 
forests. Time is of the essence to capture economic value and reduce 
risk of catastrophic losses in the future. Salvage and restoration 
treatments have the potential to pay for themselves and provide funds 
for ecosystem restoration projects.
  This story is not unique. Similar situations exist in forests 
throughout the West. A science-based forest health and salvage policy 
is needed to end this crisis, and as an Oregon Senator I am going to 
work with anyone, anywhere, anytime for a forestry policy that works.
  In 1995, the Congress enacted a new salvage logging program. The 
supporters said it was a win-win policy, arguing that dead and dying 
trees would be salvaged for our mills and that the harvest would reap 
the added benefit of improving forest health. As a Member of the House, 
I felt compelled to vote against the plan because it was hard to find 
what we call the good wood in these arguments.
  First, buried in the technical language of the bill was a definition 
of salvage that was so broad that virtually any tree in the forest 
could be cut. That definition specifically allows salvage sales to 
include what were called associated trees that are not dead or dying as 
long as that part of the sale did include salvage of dead or dying 
trees.
  Second, the lack of hearings on the measure was a sure ticket, an 
absolute glidepath to the legal bedlam that Senator Hatfield has 
described.
  Third, whether or not you support the President's forest plan, a 
Federal judge has ruled that timber-dependent communities can actually 
harvest trees under it. The salvage rider threatens that harvest for a 
short-term gain.
  Finally, I voted against this rider because it embodies what citizens 
have come to mistrust in American politics. While supporters of the 
rider said it was a good Government plan to prevent catastrophic fires 
and insect infestation, it has turned out to be a Trojan horse that 
would allow for the lawless logging of healthy old growth trees. The 
outcry that followed the rider's enactment is predictable and is why we 
are in the Chamber today.
  My colleagues, it did not have to be this way. The Congress could 
have addressed these problems through the proper authorization process. 
The Senate could have let the public in on the debate. Senator Craig's 
bill, S. 391, squarely addresses forest health and could serve as a 
valuable starting point for a discussion of this issue. In our previous 
life in the House, Senator Craig and I worked very well together. I 
have always enjoyed working with Senators Hatfield and Gorton. They 
have both been very kind to me in these early days of my service in the 
Senate, and I know we can work together again to achieve better Federal 
forest management.
  The Senate needs to understand that the frustrations in resource-
dependent communities that gave birth to the salvage rider are 
legitimate. That is certainly the message I got in my recent townhall 
meeting in Prineville, OR. Thousands of families in these communities 
are losing hope, and the Congress has to respond to their needs.
  Under the President's plan for northwest forests, timber workers and 
communities were promised a harvest level of more than 1 billion board 
feet by 1999. This is down from unsustainable but peak harvest levels 
in the 1980's, but timber workers and their communities rightly feel 
abused when even meager promises are not kept.
  Some of the original supporters of the salvage rider agree that the 
old growth logging that is occurring goes beyond what they have 
intended. In an effort to fix the problem, they have included language 
in the appropriations bill to give the agencies some additional 
flexibility to substitute alternative tracts and authority to buy back 
environmentally damaging sales.
  These provisions are only a partial fix. They provide only a brief 
45-day period allowing Federal agencies to substitute new timber for 
old sales which would be environmentally damaging or for a buyout of 
these sales. If the purchaser is not happy, the agencies have little 
leverage. Environmentally sensitive sales are going to go forward. The 
deck is stacked heavily in favor of the purchasers so that in effect 
they can dictate the terms.

  In addition, provisions currently in the bill continue the exempting 
of salvage logging from environmental laws even extending this 
exemption for some of the most troubling sales. If these environmental 
laws are not working, then it is the duty of the Senate to change them. 
But it ought to be done in the open. It ought to be done in the clear 
light of day. As a new Senator, I am not going to support the politics-
as-usual process by circumventing the law.
  I also have no intention of turning my back on working families. If 
you oppose the salvage rider, you have to stand up for an alternative. 
You have to say what you are for if you are going to keep faith with 
folks in timber-dependent communities. I support a strong legally 
constituted forest health and salvage logging program that provides a 
real timber harvest and real hope for rural Oregonians.
  That is why, today, I am going to support the amendment offered by 
Senator Murray. I compliment the Senator and her staff for her efforts 
to reach out to the broad section of stakeholders who care so much 
about this issue. I intend to work actively with other Senators to 
improve this legislation, but I believe that the Murray bill is a 
sounder, more comprehensive solution than the language now in the bill.
  I believe that the centerpiece of reforming the salvage rider is 
ensuring that those who voluntarily relinquish contract rights to old-
growth timber receive replacement timber. If the Murray amendment is 
adopted, I wish to work with my Northwest colleagues to strengthen the 
Murray proposal by making it a legal duty for the Clinton 
administration to find acceptable replacement timber from nonsensitive 
areas. My own view is that failure to provide certainty on the 
replacement timber issue virtually guarantees that this body will be 
back debating yet another fix to this problem.

[[Page S2011]]

  The Murray amendment provides the agencies with tools they can use to 
deliver on the critical requirement of replacement volume. And the 
Murray amendment has other positive features. First and foremost, it 
restores critical habitat, forest and streambed protections in our 
current law. It gives citizens the right of legal redress, but the 
legal process will no longer drag on interminably. Instead of using 
scarce tax dollars for salvage buyouts, the buyouts are used as a last 
resort. The Murray amendment encourages and expedites legitimate 
salvage logging where it can treat genuine forest health problems.
  There is more to do, and let me outline some followup steps if the 
Murray amendment goes forward. For example, I believe it is important 
to expedite the harvest of any remaining 318 sales that are not 
environmentally sensitive. These are sales that were planned under the 
process set up in the 1990 appropriations. The salvage rider orders the 
release of 318 sales which had been held up for environmental concerns. 
There are some who would claim that all of these sales should be 
suspended because of their potential environmental impacts. The fact 
is, Federal agencies do not challenge the release of all of them. A 
number of them have already been cut. If, in fact, some of these sales 
do not impact environmentally sensitive areas, I hope they will move 
forward.

  A related concern is that bona fide salvage sales not be held up 
when; they do not trigger environmental concerns. Delay in salvaging 
dead and dying trees can cause the value of timber to decline 
substantially, even making it unmarketable. Automatically suspending 
salvage sales when an appeal is filed could invite meritless appeals 
that frustrate legitimate salvage efforts.
  Finally, I am concerned that the forest health provisions in the 
amendment are somewhat duplicative, and that more work needs to be done 
on the roadless area provisions.
  Mr. President, I would like to conclude my first speech in the Senate 
with one final comment. I am the first Senator from Oregon elected from 
my party in more than 30 years. But what I want to do most in the 
Senate is get beyond party labels, get beyond urban versus rural 
politics, and find common ground to help all our people. Whether you 
are an environmentalist or a mill owner, a fisherman or a logger, a new 
policy for creating and maintaining healthy forests is the common 
ground on which we all may stand. I urge my colleagues to support the 
Murray amendment and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington is recognized.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, due to the prominent nature of this 
debate, perhaps the first thing we ought to do is to put in context how 
much, in the way of our national forests and our timber, we are talking 
about in the contracts that go beyond pure salvage. As a consequence, I 
have a picture here. The President's forest plan for the Pacific 
Northwest involves some 24 million acres in the States of Washington 
and Oregon. Mr. President, 19 million of those acres, more than three-
quarters of them, are protected as statutory wilderness or park areas 
or set aside as research, old growth, and riparian acres.
  Ten thousand acres in existing contracts are called for to be 
harvested in this amendment. I have indicated those 10,000 acres here.
  Oh, you say, Mr. President, you cannot see it? Maybe this magnifying 
glass will help.
  Mr. President, you still cannot see it? That is because what we are 
talking about is so small that, on a graphic illustration like this, 
you literally cannot see it. Ten thousand acres of harvest in the 
Pacific Northwest, already under contract, will be canceled 
automatically by this amendment should it pass.
  As Senator Hatfield pointed out, these 10,000 acres are not some 
permanent forest plan. They are unharvested acres in contracts which 
the Federal Government offered, received bids for, accepted the bids, 
and signed the contracts between 1990 and 1995. They are legal and 
binding contracts. And, of course, the amendment is closed-ended 
because it applies only to those contracts that were already signed.
  But, Mr. President, let us say that we have made this a permanent 
amendment and said that every year the Forest Service had to execute 
contracts for 10,000 acres, and let us weigh it against this chart. Mr. 
President, grade school math tells us that it would then take 100 years 
to get to 1 million acres. It would take 1,000 years to get to less 
than half of the acres shown here in the President's forest plan.

  Let me say that again, Mr. President. Out of 24 million acres, in 100 
years, if this were permanent, we would get to 1 million acres; in 
1,000 years we would get almost to half of these acres being harvested 
once. But, of course, this is not a permanent provision. It just says 
the Government made a deal, it entered into a set of contracts. It 
ought to keep those contracts.
  That is talking about acres here, Mr. President. Let us talk about 
board feet. This is the almost 400 billion board feet of timber on 
those acres. This is the almost 300 billion board feet that are in 
those protected areas. This is the less than 100 billion board feet 
left. This is what we are talking about, 650 million board feet, 
somewhat less than one-tenth of the amount of growth each year.
  Mr. President, you say you cannot see this line? I cannot see this 
line, standing as close to it as I am, because the number is so small. 
The number is so small.
  What did the President of the United States say when he signed this 
bill, barely 6 months ago? President William Jefferson Clinton said, 
``The final bill does contain changes in language that preserve our 
ability to implement the current forest plans and their standards and 
to protect other resources such as clean water and fisheries.'' That is 
what the President said in July of last year about this proposal.
  Mr. President, this is presented as some kind of modest change, 
moving toward balance. In fact, of course, this amendment would not 
only cancel the contracts that have already been let that create legal 
obligations on the part of the Government, that are the subject of the 
charts that I have just shown, it would also cancel all of the 
provisions relating to salvage timber, the actual dead and dying 
timber, and all of the provisions relating to option 9.
  Senator Murray, in her comments, spoke about the President's timber 
summit. At the President's timber summit after he was elected, his 
statement of balance ended up being what is now called option 9, which 
called for a harvest of about 1 billion board feet a year in these 
forests. In the nonprotected lands, that would take almost a century to 
work through.
  But, as Senator Murray has admitted, almost none of that was actually 
harvested, even though that summit took place in 1993. Why? Because of 
the endless opportunities the law gave for appeals and for delay. It is 
almost impossible to find a single harvesting contract that was not 
subject to such an appeal. The Forest Service, President Clinton's 
Forest Service, tells us that in 1994 and in 1995, 92 percent of all of 
these appeals were turned down. They were frivolous. But an appeal in 
connection with salvage timber is as good as a cancellation. That 
timber is dead. It falls to the forest floor. It rots. If you go 
through one season stopped by these appeals, for all practical purposes 
the value of the salvage timber is gone. If you go through two seasons, 
it is absolutely and totally and completely worthless.

  So the timber rider in the rescissions bill included three parts. One 
part said: Mr. President, you have offered the people of the Pacific 
Northwest option 9. The timber communities do not think it is adequate. 
It is a harvest of 20 percent, one-fifth of what the normal harvest is. 
But it was something, it was some offer. You have not been able to keep 
your promise. We are going to allow you to keep your promise. We are 
not going to change any of the environmental laws at all. No, you still 
abide by them. That is why the President was able to make this 
statement. But once you have determined that a particular offering is 
valid under option 9, you can go ahead and do it and you cannot be 
stopped by this frivolous appeal.
  Second, for the whole country with respect to salvage timber, we said 
the

[[Page S2012]]

same thing. Mr. President, once your very green administration, your 
very environmentally sensitive administration says that a salvage sale 
ought to go forward, we are going to allow it to go forward. We will 
not allow it to be stopped by a frivolous appeal until the salvage 
timber has rotted out and become worthless.

  But, Mr. President, nothing in either one of these provisions, option 
9 or the salvage timber provisions, requires the administration to 
execute a single contract under option 9 or across the country for 
salvage timber. It is forced to do nothing that it does not want to do, 
and yet Senator Murray would cancel its ability to do something if it 
wants to do something.
  The only mandate in the rescissions bill was this 650 million board 
feet, this tiny amount of existing contracts that the Federal 
Government signed, followed all the rules that were in effect at the 
time it signed them and for which it is liable if it cancels them.
  Senator Murray's proposal will cancel all of those contracts, will 
allow the suspension by appeal of all of the contracts under option 9 
or under salvage timber while those appeals are pending, will, in 
effect, result over the next few months in this season in no harvest at 
all in the Pacific Northwest and will create both a loss of revenue to 
the Federal Government, which it now expects from these sales, and very 
large liabilities on the part of the Federal Government to people who 
hold valid contracts.
  Mr. President, how does she pay for it? She does not add to our 
deficit directly. She takes it out of general administration of the 
Department of Agriculture's Forest Service and out of forest research, 
interestingly enough, the very research which the amendment says is so 
vitally important. That is for the loss of income, the money that would 
go into those accounts.
  For the loss of judgments to people who have valid contracts, she 
says, interestingly enough, the Secretary concerned can take it from 
any money appropriated to them. Mr. President, did you know that? Did 
you know that the Secretary could take that money from the account for 
Rocky Mountain National Park? Do my colleagues know that it can be 
taken out of agricultural research in South Carolina? No appropriation, 
no direction from the Congress at all, just wherever an imperial 
Secretary wants to take the money, no matter what it was appropriated 
for--to the Department of the Interior or the Department of 
Agriculture--the Secretary literally can take that money from anywhere.
  I listened to the eloquent maiden speech of the new Senator from 
Oregon who wishes for a balanced and a thoughtful approach, and I 
wholeheartedly join him in that desire. I believe, as Senator Hatfield, 
dealing with the administration both back in July and at the present 
time on this has provided exactly that. Senator Hatfield's original 
work resulted in this statement by the President. That statement is: No 
problem, no problem at all, we can do everything for the environment we 
wish consistently with this rider.
  But over and beyond that, this bill, the bill we have before us, 
allows buyouts as long as they are agreed to by both contracting 
parties, allows transfers, as long as they are agreed to by both 
contracting parties, allows all of the flexibility necessary.
  The President of the United States promised balance. All of us want 
that balance. The President of the United States now, in supporting 
this proposition, says, ``No, this is a tough year and it is an 
election year. There has been a furor over this.''
  There have been all kinds of misstatements. No one in the world would 
understand from what we have seen how little we are actually talking 
about: ``You must cancel the whole thing. You must allow appeals to 
stop any harvest of salvage timber, any harvest under option 9, cancel 
all of the sales under section 2001(k)'' and, besides that, another 200 
million board feet of sales that there has been no controversy about 
whatsoever. Almost half again as much as we told the President to 
execute is canceled by this amendment about which there has not been 
any controversy, but it will be canceled if this amendment is adopted.
  Mr. President, this is not balance. It is not a fair approach. The 
definition of what is allowed in salvage in here is so tight that there 
will be no salvage. You cannot salvage in any area without roads. You 
cannot salvage in any wilderness area. You cannot salvage in any lake 
or recreational area. You cannot salvage in any conservation area. That 
is what the whole forest system was created for.
  There is no money in the salvage account, because it is all used for 
something else. If that is not enough, if you get around that and find 
one or two, it can be stopped by an appeal.
  Mr. President, this amendment is a prescription for an end to all 
harvesting of timber in the national forests of the Pacific Northwest 
and, therefore, should be defeated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from 
New Jersey.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey [Mr. Bradley] is 
recognized for 10 minutes.
  Mr. BRADLEY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington for 
yielding time. I do not know if I will use the entire 10 minutes.
  Last year on an appropriations bill, we passed the timber salvage 
rider which I consider one of our bigger, if not the biggest, mistakes 
in natural resource management of the last 18, 19 years. We abandoned 
our environmental principles and endorsed a program of logging 
essentially without laws which undermines protections for precious 
resources, with only slight economic justification.
  It is very difficult to accomplish all those things with one piece of 
legislation, but that is what the rider did. We passed the original 
rider with little knowledge of its potential impact and without holding 
any hearings. I remember standing on this floor during the debate on 
that rider and focusing on the language that said any tree susceptible 
to fire or insects could qualify as a tree for salvage, which meant the 
entire forest.
  Members thought that they were voting to remove dead and dying trees 
from our national forests in order to protect forest health and capture 
the remaining value of trees which had been damaged by devastating 
fires. But we argued against that, pointing out, no, that is not what 
the language of the rider says. The language was not just for dead and 
dying trees that needed to be salvaged, but that vast areas of the 
national forests--healthy trees--would be cut as a result of this 
rider.
  Unfortunately, in our view, the rider, more or less, prevailed in its 
breadth. The courts interpreted the law to mandate the cutting of some 
of America's most valuable trees.
  I hope that everyone has a chance to see the pictures that the 
distinguished Senator from Washington has on the floor, to look at the 
old-growth forests that are being cut because of this rider. Anyone who 
has ever walked in old-growth forests understands that there is a 
dimension to those forests that is beyond the material. And cutting 
trees that are 50, 60, 100 years old means that it is going to take 
that long for them to regrow, if they do, and destroying habitat in the 
process.
  Mr. President, the areas that are subject to cutting under the court 
decision include the healthy old-growth forests of western Oregon and 
Washington that have been long off-limits to timber sales because of 
their environmental sensitivity.
  Mr. President, it would be irresponsible for this Congress to ignore 
those environmental problems and take actions which could make them 
worse. For example, a recent long-term study of the effects of timber 
cutting in the Northwest found that there was increased flooding even 
after 20 years, resulting from clear-cutting in sensitive areas. How 
can we appropriate millions more in this bill to repair flood damage in 
areas without taking the steps that the Murray amendment represents, to 
reduce the risks of future floods by assuring a full-growth national 
forest? How can we do that?
  If you had the forest restored, you would have fewer floods; but we 
cut the forests, and we have more floods. Then we take taxpayers' 
dollars to make those individuals that are affected by those floods 
whole.
  Mr. President, the timber salvage is not just an issue for the 
Northwest, which is another point. Even though

[[Page S2013]]

the focus is on those old-growth forests, the riders apply equally to 
forests nationwide by requiring salvage sales in areas that would 
otherwise have been rejected for legitimate environmental reasons.
  Although agencies such as the National Marine Fisheries Service, Fish 
and Wildlife Service, and EPA have objected to many of those sales, 
courts have held that they must go forward because of this salvage 
amendment rider, because they are required by the letter of that law. 
Even worse, Mr. President, the rationale for the rider rests on 
improving deteriorating forest health conditions.
  That is supported with very little data. We lack even the basic 
information needed to justify cutting trees on the scale endorsed by 
the rider, under conditions which suspend environmental laws and 
terminate almost all avenues for administrative and judicial appeal.
  Senator Murray's amendment, I believe, would supply this missing 
information by requiring a new National Academy of Sciences study for 
forest health that provides the answers that Congress needs to regulate 
the forests sensibly. We do not have the answers right now. The law was 
passed, essentially mandating the cutting, and we do not have even the 
information to back it up. Last year's rider also undermines President 
Clinton's consensus Northwest forest plan, which took many months to 
produce and gave some hope for settling the region's longstanding 
timber wars.
  Instead, under the rider, the timber wars have resumed at full force. 
The distinguished Senator from Washington pointed out that the 
President said he thought that he could work with it, and that is why 
he signed the bill. That was before the court decision said no. There 
were vast areas that were now open for salvage that the President had 
no idea of under the language of the law as he read it. The court 
broadly interpreted it so that now you are not just going in to pick up 
a few dead trees and dying trees, but you are slashing old-growth 
forests, as in the pictures that the distinguished Senator from 
Washington has shown to the Senate and to the country.
  Mr. President, we have a chance to reverse these mistakes. We have a 
chance to take a more measured approach to timber salvage. That is the 
Murray amendment. It is supported by a wide variety of environmental 
groups. I know that that is not important to everyone, but it should be 
registered. The Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society, Wilderness 
Society, National Resources Defense Council, regional groups throughout 
the Pacific Northwest, they understand the significance of cutting old-
growth forests. All this Murray amendment does is put laws back into 
the timber program. It is probably the biggest environmental vote that 
we are going to take, at least so far, this year. I urge my colleagues 
to support the Murray amendment and restore lawful logging to our 
national forests. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. BURNS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I yield such time as the Senator from 
Montana uses.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana is recognized.
  Mr. BURNS. I thank the Chair very much, and I thank the leader on 
this.
  Here we go again, talking about health of the forests, talking about 
the elimination of jobs in research, when more research is needed, and 
talking about a situation that existed in damaged forests before this 
salvage bill was passed a year ago.
  It was simply management by committee at that time, and that did not 
work very well. It was not successful. Professional land and resource 
managers could not have or they could not have been allowed to apply 
good conservation measures when dealing with renewable resources. We 
are talking about renewable resources here.
  And the salvage program gave some hope, hope of predictability in the 
communities across the Northwest that depend upon that healthy, viable 
forest. A diseased forest supports nobody, not this Federal Government, 
not people who want to own houses, not people who use wood products, 
nor the people who live in those communities that are dependent on the 
conservation or the wise use of a renewable resource.
  The salvage program was passed by this Congress, with bipartisan 
support, as a tool to deal with forest health. The fires of 1988, 1994, 
and 1995 were devastating, so this Congress did exactly what it should 
have done in light of what the President and Vice President had 
promised the folks in the Northwest.
  Now, are we seeing the rug pulled out from underneath them again? I 
just want to draw the attention of my colleagues to a couple things 
that I think are very, very important whenever we start considering 
this issue. This is where we want to get to: healthy, growing, young 
forests. The subject of the fire, now with a lot of things cleaned out, 
a lot of the undertow cleaned out, this forest is well on its way to 
recovery. That is where we want to get to. I think that is very 
important.
  I want to draw your attention to this photograph. Here is a diseased 
forest as we find some of our forests in the State of Montana, dead and 
dying, with a green tree every now and again, basically a forest that 
has matured. If we are to regain any kind of value from this resource, 
we should take these forests, take the dead and dying trees, because if 
we do not--if we do not--as the years of 1988 and 1994 proved, this 
will be the scene across the great landscape of my favorite State of 
Montana.
  This is up in the Yaak--a very dry year, lightning fires. You want to 
talk about air quality. Let us talk about air quality while we are 
talking about an environmentally impacted area. That is what it looks 
like when you get up a little closer, as it takes everything, the dead 
and dying and, yes, even the green trees. It takes it all. Devastating, 
dangerous. Again we can talk air quality. Want to get up a little 
closer? Anybody ever look down the throat of a forest fire? I have. In 
1953, Edith Peek, Tango--I can name a lot of fires, most of them caused 
by a very natural thing called lightning. But with all the fuel that is 
on the forest floor, once it starts there is no stopping it. Again, it 
burns the diseased, the dying, and the healthy trees.

  Now, after this little episode is over, this is what you have. This 
is what we are talking about as far as salvage is concerned. Some of 
these logs that are on the floor of the forest are actually usable, but 
as a year or 2 years goes by, they lose their value. There is no value 
there at all. So the salvage is not taken care of.
  Another picture, same way, the subject of fire. Only take the ones 
that are on the floor of the forest. It makes a resource for us and 
everybody in this country.
  A while ago we talked about water quality. This is in a forest that 
is subject to disease. A stream, drainage--that was not caused by man, 
but it can be healed by man--to protect this water quality, and 
nobody--nobody--is better at it than the State of Montana, or is more 
aware of it and more sensitive to it than my State of Montana.
  When the provision was signed into law a year ago, it was a sound 
land management decision then. It still is. Instead of keeping an 
active forest salvage program in place, this amendment does a couple of 
things. It adds back new layers of bureaucracy while it takes away from 
other areas, areas where we could put more research and technology--
this also promotes brandnew litigation. You know who wins in 
litigation. It is not the forest, and it is usually not the resource 
producers or the resource managers.
  The salvage bill was passed by Congress and signed into law by the 
President. It provided a speedy process of processing and preparing. It 
called for environmental assessment and biological evaluation to be 
completed upon each sale. Let me tell you something that has happened 
as a result of this: Knowing that it may not end up in the courts, the 
different groups--both the logging industry, both the Forest Service 
who has responsibility of taking care of and managing that forest, and 
groups outside that were concerned about the environmental impact on 
that forest--all came together and they went into the forest and looked 
at some proposed sales. Everybody signed off on them. What it is, it 
brought them closer together because they knew that this problem was 
not going

[[Page S2014]]

to be taken to court, that we had to participate in the dialog. 
Everybody signed off. Everybody was happy. I think that was through the 
leadership of some people who worked for the Forest Service in the 
State of Montana that understood that if we are going to make the 
salvage law work, and protect the integrity of that law, we had to 
include a lot of people. They did that.
  Really, all the groups concerned fundamentally agree to the same 
thing. They want a healthy forest. They want a renewable forest. They 
want one that is growing. Not only does it make good sense for the 
amenities of the area, it also makes good economic sense for the 
communities that depend upon the harvest of timber, and the harvest in 
an environmentally sensitive way--to involve people. That is what we 
did in Montana.
  The courts are a terrible place to resolve our disputes. What 
happened in our case as a result of the salvage rider is this: When two 
sides or three sides are forced to settle their differences on the 
ground, knowing that the only way they will attain resolutions on the 
ground, they try to because reasonable people find ways to solve 
reasonable problems.

  There was a copy of a letter sent to me from the commissioners up in 
Lincoln County, MT, testifying, ``We are here to personally testify 
that these salvage sales on the Kootenai National Forest are being done 
responsibly and in compliance with environmental laws, improving forest 
health conditions damaged by fires, creating jobs and generating a 
return''--a return--``of funds to the general Treasury of the United 
States of America,'' where those funds will dry up if this amendment is 
approved.
  It is a testimony of people who live in the area who are concerned 
about their forest and who testify that, yes, the salvage rider is 
working. What criticism it may have, we must not lose the sight that 
our only goal is really for a healthy forest. Our communities cannot 
live without a healthy forest.
  I urge my colleagues to defeat this amendment, allow us to proceed in 
a way where there is balance, where the balance is responsible and 
where we can find answers by talking to people and not yelling at them 
in a courtroom. That is where we solve problems--when it comes to our 
natural resource management, in the areas that are totally dependent on 
that natural resource.
  Mr. President, the timber salvage provision enacted last summer is 
doing what it was intended to do. But the amendment offered by Senator 
Murray turns the clock back on sound land management policy and job 
security.
  The lack of management over the years has left our communities at 
risk. Not only are Montana's communities which depend on the wood 
products industry on economic shaky ground, we have placed them at risk 
of serious fires.
  We must not lose site of the fact that the timber salvage provision 
signed into law last year was in reaction to the serious fire load on 
the ground in the West. The fires of 1994 and 1995 were damaging. Human 
safety, community stability, and jobs were at stake. The work that is 
being done on the ground today under the salvage provision will help 
alleviate the potential threats during the 1996 fire season and beyond.
  The provision signed into law last summer is a sound land management 
plan. But, with this amendment we have turned away from reason. Instead 
of keeping an active forest salvage program in place, the amendment 
would repeal sales which have been prepared, add new layers of 
bureaucracy, and promote new litigation. The proposal we have before us 
should be called the ``No Logging, No Logic, and Lots of Litigation 
Amendment''.
  It is important to remember what the timber salvage provision 
supported earlier by this Congress and signed by President Clinton 
accomplishes. The provision speeds up the process in which a sale is 
prepared and offered. It calls for an environmental assessment and a 
biological evaluation to be completed on each sale. The land management 
agencies are required to implement a reforestation plan for each parcel 
of land. Also, the enacted provision excludes wilderness areas, 
roadless areas recommended for wilderness by the land managers, and any 
other Federal land where timber harvesting is prohibited by law.
  These sales must be completed quickly because we are talking about 
dead and dying trees. The longer the diseased or dead trees stay in the 
woods, the more rapidly their value deteriorates. For instance, after 
fire damage a Douglas-fir will lose 20 percent of its value over 1 
year. This rate of deterioration increases more rapidly with time. We 
need to move quickly. If we do not, the potential for jobs are lost and 
fire hazard increases.
  Also, the funds acquired through these sales is being used on 
restoration activities in the woods. If we stop these sales, or 
decrease the value of the sales by waiting, we lose revenues for 
restoration activities.
  The timber salvage provision has resulted in 62 million board feet of 
timber being sold in Montana and there is 233 million board feet in the 
pipeline; 143 million of this is salvage from the 1994 fires on the 
Kootenai National Forest.
  There has been criticism that this salvage program has resulted in 
the sale of green trees. This simply is not true. If it were true, I 
would be the first in line telling the Forest Service they are not 
following the intent of the law and would support legislative changes.
  But the fact is, 90 percent of the salvage program in Montana is dead 
or immediately dead timber. The remaining 10 percent harvested fits the 
intent of forest health definition under the law. This is the same 
definition the Forest Service has used. Sometimes the harvesting of 
green trees is necessary to implement salvage activities. But, in 
Montana, only 10 percent of the timber harvested under the salvage 
provision was green.

  The amendment offered by Senator Murray moves us backward. It guts a 
fair and balanced provision and replaces it with legal bells and 
whistles, stopping aggressive management practices, and placing jobs at 
risk.
  Appeals are a lawyer's heaven and a timber man's nightmare. Yet, this 
amendment encourages appeals. The snowballing effect of stopping these 
sales is large. Due to similarities in all salvage sales, if one appeal 
is filed it has the potential of stopping all salvage sales.
  In addition, not only would this affect future sales, it would affect 
sales which have already been prepared. For folks on the ground in 
Montana, this means that they could be working today, but sent home 
tomorrow if this amendment were enacted.
  Senator Murray's amendment also sacrifices Montana's interests for 
the President's Northwest forest initiative. The amendment directs the 
management agency to pay for the trade or buy out of the 318 sales in 
Oregon and Washington in a 1-year timeframe. These sales were sold and 
then canceled by the Clinton administration. The cost is around $300 
million.
  In order to pay for these cancellations, financial resources from 
other States could be diverted. This means new visitors construction, 
preparation of new salvage and green sales, and other activities in 
Montana could be diverted to pay for the President's Pacific Northwest 
forest initiative.
  In order to address concerns raised by the White House over the 318 
sales, Senators Hatfield and Gorton included language in the bill which 
gives the Forest Service and BLM the opportunity to find alternative 
timber or funds to meet these contracts. The Murray language, however, 
has a 1-year period to trade or buy out these contracts. That certainly 
does not seem fair or balanced for the rest of the Nation, including 
Montana.
  One last point I would like to make is that the timber salvage 
provision enacted last year is temporary. It sunsets at the end of this 
calendar year. I am hopeful that this year the Congress will send, and 
President Clinton will sign, a comprehensive forest health bill. In 
fact, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has placed 
Senate bill 391 on its calendar for consideration.
  Mr. President, the timber salvage provision enacted last year is 
working. It is providing jobs to Montanans. It is helping to lessen the 
fire load on the ground in our forests. It is helping to minimize the 
risks of forest fires around communities.
  Yet, the amendment offered by Senator Murray takes us backward. It

[[Page S2015]]

adds new bureaucracy, litigation, and not much common sense.
  The days of not managing our woods has to end. Our national forest 
need management. I strongly oppose the amendment offered by Senator 
Murray because it will block effective land management decisions.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter to me from 
Governor Racicot, dated March 8, 1996, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                           Office of the Governor,


                                             State of Montana,

                                   Helena, Montana, March 8, 1996.
     Hon. Conrad Burns,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Burns: Timber salvage activities have been 
     controversial in Montana and throughout the west, and there 
     is no question that since July of last year--when the 
     emergency timber salvage law was passed by Congress and 
     signed by the President--the U.S. Forest Service has labored 
     under significant pressure and intense scrutiny in complying 
     with Congressional salvage timber mandates.
       Now, nine months after passage of the emergency salvage 
     law, Congress is apparently considering a partial reversal of 
     its previous action and abandoning the purpose and intent of 
     the emergency salvage law. Such a reversal has the potential 
     to infuse delay, disruption, chaos and economic uncertainty 
     into timber salvage operations with forest health the number 
     one casualty.
       While I cannot speak for Forest Service performance in 
     other states, I can speak with some certainty about the 
     performance of the Forest Service in Montana. In meetings 
     with the Regional Forester, in meetings with forest 
     supervisors and in discussions with various Forest Service 
     personnel from the Regional Forester's office to local ranger 
     districts, I can assure you the Forest Service has surpassed 
     expectations in forest stewardship and professional land 
     management in implementing the timber salvage intent of 
     Congress. It would be a disservice to the mission of the 
     Forest Service and to forest health in Montana to countermand 
     or withdraw the direction from Congress given in July 1995.
       Thus far in Montana, some 62 million board feet of timber 
     has already been sold under the provisions of the emergency 
     salvage law. Some of this has already been harvested, and 
     much of it is being harvested now. Some 233 million board 
     feet are in the timber salvage pipeline, and 90 percent of 
     this volume is dead or dying timber. Obviously, having been 
     burned two years ago in 1994, the value of this dead or dying 
     timber continues to decline and for the intent of the salvage 
     law to be met logging operations must continue throughout 
     1996. Under the proposed language form Senator Murray, 
     contracted sales could be delayed for months, thus 
     countermanding congressional intent to expedite salvage 
     operations.
       Like many Montanans, I had some concerns about the Forest 
     Service and its ability to meet the Congressional intent of 
     the salvage law and at the same time meet existing 
     environmental and forest health standards set by state and 
     federal law and national forest plans. Forest Service 
     personnel were granted significant discretion to implement 
     the salvage law, and the dual goals of accelerated harvest 
     and environmental protection seemed to present compliance 
     problems for Forest Service officials.
       To their credit, the Forest Service has walked this ``fine 
     line'' of compliance with an impressive commitment which has 
     yielded impressive results. The Memorandum of Agreement 
     signed by the Forest Service and three additional federal 
     agencies makes clear the commitment to follow proper 
     environmental guidelines. The State of Montana, and the 
     people of Montana, were assured by the Regional Forester that 
     environmental standards would not be compromised, water 
     quality would be maintained, fisheries protected, 
     endangered or sensitive species would not be jeopardized, 
     forest economies would be sustained and forest health 
     would be improved.
       In December of 1995, a member of my staff, joined by 
     personnel from the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & 
     Parks and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, 
     met with Forest Service officials to discuss timber salvage 
     operations. The Forest Service salvage team included 
     fisheries biologists, wildlife biologists, hydrologists and 
     others in addition to forest rangers and federal timber 
     managers. While the Forest Service salvage team made it clear 
     it would follow Congressional intend to accelerate harvest of 
     dead and dying timber, there were also assurances that 
     environmental laws and forest standards would be followed as 
     stipulated in the federal MOA. Thus far, those assurances 
     have been backed up with performance. During a recent tour of 
     salvage operations on the Kooetnai National Forest, a member 
     of my staff joined a large group which evaluated the Fowler 
     Fire Salvage Sale. The Fowler salvage sales is an ongoing 
     harvest and it was clear the Forest Service personnel who 
     planned and laid out the sale recognized environmental 
     sensitivities and the importance of water quality. The 
     logging contractor also did an excellent job of protecting 
     water quality and the integrity of the area.
       In addition, it was pointed out during the tour briefing 
     the Kootenai National Forest comprises some 2.5 million 
     acres. Of this total, some 53,000 acres burned in 1994. Of 
     the 53,000 acres, the Forest Service identified only 15,000 
     acres for possible salvage sale operations. Of this 15,000, 
     less than 7,000 acres will actually be slated for salvage 
     timber harvest activity. While the Kootenai will see more 
     timber salvage operations than any other national forest in 
     Montana, abuse of the salvage directive is virtually 
     nonexistent as was any evidence of so-called ``lawless 
     logging.'' What was seen was low impact snow roads. INFISH 
     buffer strips, intentions to close roads and a commitment to 
     produce timber with environmental safeguards in place.
       In a sense, Congress challenged the Forest Service with the 
     emergency salvage law. In Montana, the Forest Service appears 
     to have met that challenge. Through the salvage law, Forest 
     Service personnel received additional discretion. That 
     discretion has not been abused. If there are isolated cases 
     of poor federal stewardship, we should identify and correct 
     them. But it does not make sense for congress to order the 
     Forest Service to halt, do an about face, and send the agency 
     in conflicting and confusing directions.
       Montana experienced serious fire damage in 1994. Yet we 
     were fortunate that damage wasn't worse. It is imperative we 
     improve the health of our forests, create jobs and economic 
     stability for western Montana, and present--best we are 
     able--conditions for dangerous and uncontrollable 
     conflagrations in the future. The Public Participation in 
     Timber Salvage Act may be well intended, but it is 
     unwarranted in Montana, and if it prevents or retards the 
     proper harvest of dead and dying trees, it will not help 
     improve forest health.
       Thank you for your review of this information, and if I can 
     address any concerns or questions you may have regarding this 
     letter, please let me know.
           Sincerely,
                                                     Marc Racicot,
                                                         Governor.

  Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I yield the floor.


                   Modification of Amendment No. 3493

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I have a modification to my amendment, 
and I ask unanimous consent to send it to the desk. It has been cleared 
on both sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Shelby). Is there an objection to the 
modification?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The modification follows:

       Strike Section 13 of amendment No. 3493 and insert the 
     following:
       ``Sec. 13. Offsets.--Not withstanding any provision in 
     Title II of this Act, no more than $137,757,000 shall be 
     obligated for `Forest Research' and no more than 
     $1,165,005,000 shall be obligated for the `National Forest 
     System.' ''.

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from 
Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Thank you, Mr. President. I join with my colleagues this 
morning in opposition to the Murray amendment to the salvage law that 
became part of the law of this land last year, as we attempted to 
address the devastating fires of 1994. Of course, we have watched over 
the last good number of months as we worked with the administration and 
the Forest Service to implement the necessary regulations to carry out 
the salvage.
  I am disappointed this morning that we find ourselves in a situation 
now where for political purposes, I have to guess, we are here on the 
floor debating this issue. I say that in all due respect to the Senator 
from Washington who is attempting to craft an amendment to address an 
issue that obviously she is very concerned about.
  Here are my problems, and I will not go into the detail of the 318 
sales--those are valid existing contracts, carried out by 
multidiscipline groups on the ground, selecting the right sales, 
talking to the environmentalists, seeking the counsel. All of that has 
already been done.
  Now, if it had not been done, there may be a basis to argue. But it 
has been done. It has been done for over several years. I know that 
because sitting beside me on the Senate floor is a staff assistant who 
was a ranger in one of the forests, who developed the teams that 
brought the environmentalists to the table to resolve the issue of what 
ought to be in those sales. Those are facts on the books. Why are we 
debating 318 sales if the public has already had a full dimension in 
participating in how those types of sales would be brought about?
  The Senator from Washington said there were not adequate hearings. 
Mr. President, here is the record of the hearings, and these are not 
all the books. There have been a lot of hearings. I have conducted at 
least one in

[[Page S2016]]

the committee that I chair. We have had the administration and the 
Assistant Secretary before us to talk about the details of how this law 
gets implemented. This administration spent over 6 months putting 
regulations together, in a way that involved more and more people in 
decisionmaking, as to what were the right and the wrong sales. So there 
has been a phenomenal amount of involvement.
  The Senator's amendment proposes to take approximately $130 million 
from the remaining fiscal year of the Forest Service to implement what 
she suggests ought to be done. Here are some calculations that come to 
me from staff, based on what we believe are legitimate figures. The 
Senator from Washington, if her amendment becomes law, will require an 
immediate RIF of nearly 1,700 Federal employees off the employment 
rosters of the U.S. Forest Service. Because she could not find offsets, 
she goes immediately into the law and into the budget for the U.S. 
Forest Service for the remainder of the fiscal year, and it appears 
that that is what is happening. I hope she will explain that to us and 
correct that. The Forest Service, through a reduction in force, has 
reduced employees over the last 5 years 1,000 a year; 5,000 employees 
in the Forest Service are now gone from where they were 5 years ago.
  I hope the junior Senator from Washington can speak to us about where 
she finds her money and the impact on current employees and the ability 
of the Forest Service to carry out the remainder of this year's 
activities, not just in timber, but in trail maintenance, campgrounds, 
public safety, in all of the kinds of things that we expect them to do. 
I believe she is obligated to tell us the kind of impact this kind of 
reduction or change in the expenditure of the Forest Service would 
result in.
  I understand that the junior Senator has attempted to remove the 
clause which requires the immediate suspension of active logging. I 
appreciate that because in my State of Idaho it could cost us thousands 
of jobs this year of literally thousands of working men and women in 
small communities across my State, who are anticipating these salvage 
sales, based on the legal and legitimate approach the Forest Service 
has used. She is suggesting that they might not get those jobs.
  But here is the problem, and I wish, again, the Senator would address 
this. I believe that even though she has changed that provision to 
immediately suspend active logging, that is, through the clause 
required within the law, here is the result: What happens is the same 
effect occurs, because now all of these actions are again subject to 
appeal, and that could result in an automatic 60-day-plus stay or 
longer. And all of those sales that are now ready to be logged this 
spring as soon as the ground stabilizes and the snow is gone could be 
immediately back into the courts.

  I am suggesting to the junior Senator that she really ought to 
correct that problem if she is sincere in suggesting that active 
logging not get stopped. The reason I say that is because one sale in 
my State, which is kind of the ``poster child'' sale, called the 
``Thunderbolt,'' was one where every environmental group lined up and 
took this sale into court, and they kept it in court for nearly 6 
months. Finally, the courts ruled that the Forest Service had done all 
of the right and proper things to resolve this sale.
  Here is the result of it. This was a sale that was a product of the 
devastating fires in Idaho in 1994. It is to be 100 percent helicopter-
logged, not one new road built. Only 12 percent of the burned area, or 
2,200 acres, will be logged. About 16,000 acres will not be touched. 
The timber salvage will pay for the watershed restoration and the 
replanting that needs to go on in these devastated areas. That money 
will not now be there. Those trees will not get replanted.
  Peer review teams of watershed scientists have reviewed that and 
reviewed this and endorsed it. I think it is important for the junior 
Senator from Washington to understand this. The scientists have said 
that the proper management of this sale, under the way it has been 
developed by the Forest Service, will improve the environment of the 
Thunderbolt area, which is a critical watershed area to the Salmon 
River, which is, of course, a salmon habitat for a threatened and 
endangered species.
  Mr. President, the consequence of this amendment is dramatic. You 
have heard about the potential loss of jobs from the U.S. Forest 
Service because of the RIF's that would have to occur. Another example 
of the kind of job loss that is occurring in Idaho right now is as a 
result of not only current Forest Service action, but an inability to 
move these salvage sales to sale this last fiscal year because of this 
administration's very cumbersome process of crafting the regulation to 
manage this salvage requirement under last year's law, as designed by 
the senior Senator from the State of Washington.
  We lost 100 jobs in Salmon, ID. In Metropolitan New York City that is 
not a big deal, but in Salmon that was the single largest work force 
outside of the U.S. Forest Service.
  We lost 200 jobs in Council, ID. That mill shut down, and as we 
speak, that mill has been torn down and shipped off to a foreign 
country where there are logs to cut.
  The Post Falls mill in Post Falls, ID, 200 jobs down, men and women 
not working.
  Louisiana Pacific mill and Priest River, 100 jobs down, not working.
  Sandpoint, ID, 55 jobs down, not working.
  These are men and women who are on the welfare rolls or who are 
having to seek other forms of employment. They have had their lives 
devastated. They have had tremendous financial disruption in their 
families--not because there are not trees to cut, but because Federal 
policy, through the appropriate environmental restraints, will not 
allow that to happen.
  If we have salvage sales next summer, many of these people will come 
back to work. If the junior Senator's amendment passes, these people 
will remain on the welfare rolls in the State of Idaho.

  Another mill in Grangeville, ID, closed and lost 113 jobs. That mill 
was torn down, with pieces of it sold, I am told, to Argentina.
  That is 738 jobs in a State with a population of 1,338,000. Those are 
critically important jobs.
  Mr. President, in the fires of 1994, the Forest Service estimated a 
loss in Idaho of $665 million board feet with a salvage worth $325 
million. Half of that value is already gone because we could not cut 
the trees last summer. The rest of that value will leave this summer if 
the amendment of the junior Senator from Washington becomes law. There 
will be no value. It will have rotted away. In other words, the money 
she would use could be recouped if we simply allowed those sales.
  My time is up. I certainly encourage all of my colleagues to not 
support the junior Senator from Washington. I wish she would respond to 
some of the legitimate concerns we have about the impact of her bill 
and the loss of 1,700 jobs in the Forest Service and their inability to 
carry out the public policy needs for the remainder of this fiscal 
year, which her amendment will badly damage.
  I yield the floor.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I thank my colleague from Idaho for pointing out the 
concerns he has with the offsets. Let me first say that the money comes 
from general administration, and we have been assured that much of this 
can come from belt tightening for travel.
  I will also tell my colleague from Idaho that the offset has been an 
item of discussion all week long because of the sequencing of 
amendments that have come to the floor, and we were not sure which ones 
would pass or not pass. Senator Hatfield, chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee, has assured us that we can continue to 
discuss this legislation. It has a long way to go when it gets to 
conference, where we can reconsider this. A lot of dollar figures will 
be discussed and changed around. It is an item we will be able to be 
flexible with once it is passed.
  The important point of this amendment is that we go back to trees 
like that in the picture, which are 250 to 300 years old and are coming 
down because we have a rider in place that says people are not part of 
the process. That is what we are focusing on.
  Yes, we are concerned about jobs in the Pacific Northwest. The jobs 
the Senator has talked about have passed under current policy. My 
amendment says we are going to deal with jobs in

[[Page S2017]]

the long term. We are going to put a salvage amendment in place that 
assures that those jobs will occur when people are in the process, with 
scientific evidence in place, and in a way that is safe and healthy for 
all of us.
  Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to my colleague from Montana.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I would like to recognize and state what 
this amendment is all about and what it is not all about.
  This amendment is about harvesting dead and dying timber in an 
environmentally responsible manner. That is all this amendment is 
about. It is not about hurting the timber industry, taking away jobs, 
or stopping timber harvesting in our national forests. It is not about 
that at all. Once a person thinks clearly and thoroughly through the 
actual words of the amendment, particularly as modified by the Senator 
from Washington, one will see that this is about trying to find an 
expedited way to salvage and harvest timber in an environmentally 
responsible way. It is not about taking away jobs, once one reads the 
amendment, particularly as modified by the Senator from Washington.
  Mr. President, about once a month I spend a workday in my State as 
staff. I show up at 8 o'clock in the morning with a sack lunch. I work 
straight on. Sometimes I bag groceries. I deliver the mail other days. 
I serve meals to senior citizens. I was once a UPS worker delivering 
packages. I have done lots of jobs.
  I have also worked on the green chains in several mills of my State, 
in the plywood plants, the stud mills at various and different 
locations working with the mill workers--talking to the mill workers, 
men and women who work on green chains and work in the mills. And I 
have a pretty good sense of where people are and what they want. It is 
trite, but it is true: They want jobs. But they also want hunting and 
fishing. They want jobs in a very responsible and environmental way.
  During the summer of 1994, I spent one of my workdays with the fire 
crew on the Little Wolf fire on the Flathead National Forest near 
Kalispell, MT. I spent the day fighting the fire. It turned out that my 
chief was a person from the Fort Belknap Reservation, had a group going 
all around the country. This crew knew how to fight fire. I had a devil 
of a time keeping up with them. They are tough. They are good.
  The Little Wolf fire was just one of hundreds of fires that raged 
during that long, hot summer in Montana. There were lots of fires in 
the West, particularly in my State, and when fall of the year finally 
came around and the last of the fires was finally put out, there were 
thousands of acres of our national forests that were burned. It is 
amazing how many acres were burned.
  Like most Montanans, it is clear that a lot of that timber had to be 
salvaged. I supported and I encouraged efforts to harvest that burned 
timber, get it to the mills, and provide jobs. Following the fires of 
1994, I wrote a letter to Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas, and I 
asked him to make salvage logging a priority. I asked him to use winter 
logging--you can log in the winter under certain circumstances--to 
harvest these burned logs, because I believe, as I stated in my letter 
to him, when done in an environmentally responsible manner, it is not 
only good business, but it is also good, long-term, prudent forest 
management to salvage that timber.
  After all of that, Congress did act and enacted this so-called 
salvage rider. And I think that is where Congress went wrong--went too 
far. Rather than looking for responsible ways to promote the harvest of 
salvaged timber, what did Congress do? Essentially Congress passed a 
so-called salvage rider, passed a provision that exempted the Forest 
Service from complying with our environmental laws, from complying with 
the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Forest Management 
Act, the Endangered Species Act, and all of the Federal environmental 
and natural resources laws.

  The rider provision also prohibited the public from contesting timber 
sales that the public thought would impair the hunting or fishing on 
particular forests. It just cut the public out.
  So, first, it went too far because it said that the environmental 
statutes do not have to be observed. And, second, it cut the public out 
of the process.
  Some wise person once said that for every complicated problem--
believe me, this is a little complicated--there is a simple solution, 
and it is usually wrong. Most complicated problems do not lend 
themselves to simple solutions. Most complicated problems lend 
themselves to nonsimple solutions; that is, working hard, rolling up 
our sleeves, dotting the i's, crossing the t's, and trying to work out 
a pretty reasoned and balanced solution.
  That is what the Murray amendment does. It is an attempt to--and it 
is, if one reads the language, a provision that very much provides a 
framework to accomplish that result. Let me give you two examples of 
how the current salvage rider--that is, the so-called current salvage 
rider law that we now have facing us--has aroused opposition in my 
State.
  The first example is the Hyalite drainage in the Gallatin National 
Forest. Where is that? The Hyalite is located about 7 miles outside of 
Bozeman. It is a very popular recreation, hunting area. Bozeman is in 
Gallatin County, one of the more prosperous parts of our State. It is 
sought after. A lot of people moving into Montana like to go to 
Gallatin. It is very near the Hyalite. Locals hike and ride bikes in 31 
miles of trails. A herd of about 600 elk--and occasionally grizzly 
bears--make their homes in the Hyalite. And the city of Bozeman gets 
about 15 percent of its water from the Hyalite Creek.
  The Forest Service has proposed a timber sale in the Hyalite under 
the salvage logging rider. The Forest Service says that they can do it; 
they can harvest timber without hurting recreation, without hurting 
wildlife, or Bozeman's drinking water.
  I must say a lot of people in Bozeman are not too sure about that. If 
the Forest Service can cut timber and amply protect elk habitat and 
water quality at the same time, most people think the Forest Service 
should welcome accountability to the public. They should want explained 
to the public how they are doing this. Doing this under a law that 
evades all environmental protection raises obvious and understandable 
concerns in Bozeman.
  It is kind of like buying a used car. You buy a used car. You want to 
believe the salesman, but you also want to have your mechanic take a 
look under the hood just to be safe. And the Hyalite is very important 
to Bozeman. The people there want the safety that the Clean Water Act 
and the National Forest Management Act provides. I think that is 
reasonable.
  The second example is the Middle Fork salvage sale in the Flathead 
National Forest. This proposed sale is a narrow strip of land just 
between Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. The 
trees the Forest Service wants to cut in the Middle Fork are not 
burned. Rather, they are trees that the Forest Service has determined 
are infected by root disease.

  Like most Montanans, I have a very deep reverence for Glacier 
National Park and the Bob Marshall. We all do in Montana. Like the 
Grand Canyon is to Arizona or Yosemite is to California, Glacier and 
``the Bob'' are part of our Montana identity. So I do not think it is 
asking too much in any timber sale in this area to be held to a very 
high conservation standard.
  Ironically, I do not believe the Forest Service and the timber 
industry need to be excused from obeying the law. I have seen the work 
they do. It is good. And except for the rare exception, these men and 
women are good stewards of the land, and they harvest timber without 
hurting water quality or elk habitat.
  Where there are opportunities to harvest timber that has been ravaged 
by fire or disease-infected timber, or ravaged by windstorms, the 
Forest Service, I think, should move quickly. That is the whole point 
of the Murray amendment. The Forest Service does not, however, need to 
suspend environmental laws to do so. In fact, since this salvage rider 
has gone into effect, the Forest Service has committed to carrying out 
their salvage timber program in full compliance of all environmental 
laws. Rather, the Forest Service needs the flexibility to protect the 
planning

[[Page S2018]]

process and avoid many of the procedural requirements that simply slow 
their response time down.
  That is why I support the Murray amendment. It replaces the existing 
salvage law with a process which recognizes that salvage timber is 
different from green timber. It calls on the Forest Service to identify 
salvage logging opportunities, prepare the necessary analysis, and 
offer the timber up for sale in a very short timeframe--about 6 months. 
This is a quick turnaround when you consider that normally it takes the 
Forest Service much longer to prepare a green timber sale. The Murray 
amendment does this while honoring our environmental laws and the 
public's right to be involved in making the decision.
  Mr. President, I was struck by an article that ran in last Sunday's 
Great Falls Tribune entitled ``Finding Common Ground.'' This article 
does something that we rarely see these days; it told the good news. It 
let the public know about the impressive work that groups all over our 
State--like the Swan Citizens Ad Hoc Committee, the Smith River 
Coordinated Resources Management Commission, and Blackfoot Challenge--
are doing to promote jobs and economic development while protecting our 
quality of life.

  I believe the Murray amendment is such an amendment. It will provide 
the framework for future consensus building on how we can manage our 
national forests.
  I compliment the Senator for making the change which will help us 
moved toward our common ground.
  Let me say, in closing, let us not lose sight of what this amendment 
is. It is about providing jobs and protecting the environment. I urge 
Senators to support her commonsense effort to find the median in 
between the common ground to get the job done.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Montana for 
supporting the amendment.
  I yield 5 minutes to my colleague from Vermont.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I believe very strongly that Congress 
should repeal the salvage rider, and I believe that Senator Murray's 
amendment is a responsible, balanced proposal to fix a bad law.
  I concur with the words of the distinguished Senator from Montana, 
Senator Baucus, in commending her in working out a balanced amendment. 
I believe that is why her amendment is supported by conservation 
groups, by private businesses, resource-based industries such as 
commercial fishermen, editorial boards across the country, the League 
of Conservation Voters, a whole lot of others, because her compromise 
provides economic stability and jobs for workers in rural communities, 
and it also respects what has been a 25-year tradition of bipartisan 
environmental protection in this body.
  It is not an extreme measure. It is a very fair, very moderate, and 
very responsible measure. But the current law, the current salvage 
rider is not. It is not balanced. It is not fair. It is not moderate. 
It is not responsible. So let us come together as a Senate on a 
reasonable alternative for protecting the public's national forest 
lands. These lands are for us to share today but also to have for 
generations to come. That includes Senator Murray's children, who are 
going to live most of their lives in the next century, as will mine. 
But this public resource is being abused, and we have to ask what is 
going to be here in that next century.
  I look at some of the claims that were made. In July 1993, the 
American Forest and Paper Association claimed 85,000 workers would lose 
their jobs because of President Clinton's forest policy. Instead, 
14,500 new jobs were created in the top four western timber States. The 
predictions were completely wrong. The American Forest and Paper 
Association said that they had to have the salvage rider because it 
would provide new jobs for 16,000 workers. Instead, it went just the 
opposite: 8,000 timber workers lost their jobs since that piece of 
legislation passed.
  The salvage rider we are trying to correct is not a jobs producer--in 
fact, it is a jobs killer--whereas the Murray amendment will restore 
jobs and economic stability to working Americans. Also, the salvage 
rider is an expensive waste of the taxpayers' money. The Forest Service 
spent millions of dollars preparing salvage sales that nobody even bid 
on. More than 100 different sales totaling more than 200 million board 
feet of timber were being ignored by sawmills last fall. The sales that 
were supposed to be sold for more than $200 per thousand board feet 
could not be sold at half the price. We are losing money hand over 
fist. We have to agree to this amendment.
  In addition to the loss to the Treasury, many rural communities face 
enormous costs because of the environmental destruction caused by 
irresponsible logging.
  Mudslides linked to timber roads and clearcutting by a peer-reviewed 
scientific report have wiped out bridges, roads, drinking water 
systems, recreational resources, and fisheries. Local and Federal 
taxpayers will pick up the tab.
  While the amendment kills jobs, wastes money and hurts communities, 
there has also been a breach of trust. The Senate was informed on March 
20, 1995, that the salvage rider would apply to a ``group of timber 
sales that had already been sold under section 318 of the fiscal year 
1990 Interior Appropriations Act.''
  The day after President Clinton signed the bill, well-financed timber 
lawyers walked up the court steps to force a different interpretation. 
They won, and then proceeded to try to throw one of my former staffers, 
Tom Tuchmann, in jail for upholding environmental laws as a civil 
servant.
  We need to repeal the salvage rider because special interests have 
forced old-growth logging throughout Oregon and Washington way beyond 
any agreement that had been forced on this administration.
  Finally, it is important to reject a few other remaining myths that 
have been perpetrated by lawless logging proponents. Some people claim 
that dead trees on national forest lands have reached a crisis 
epidemic. The most recent Forest Service data show that through 1992, 
trees are dying faster on industry lands. I made sure every Senator had 
the facts about forest health before the original Senate vote on the 
rider in the spring of 1995. People claim that salvage logging protects 
firefighters from deadly forest fires. The families of dead 
firefighters came to Washington to stop the rider and support 
environmental laws.
  The Murray amendment is not exactly the provision I wanted. It is not 
even exactly what Senator Murray wanted. I do not believe any Senator 
ever gets exactly what he or she wants. Democracy includes two 
realities--compromise and majority rules. There are some who choose to 
operate outside this reality, and contribute only to a war of words. I 
oppose the ideological stands that in the end accomplish nothing. 
Senator Murray has worked to accomplish results and deserves support.
  I am proud to have been the lead cosponsor of an effort last spring 
to restore environmental laws, even though we lost by one vote. I am 
proud of the forest health data, the jobs data, the timber supply data, 
and Forest Service appeals data, and the letters I have sent to every 
Senate office in my attempts to turn the rider around. I am proud to be 
the lead cosponsor of the Bradley amendment to restore environmental 
laws. I am proud to be the lead cosponsor of Senator Murray's honest 
effort to get 51 votes to turn the salvage rider around.
  My only regret thus far that we still have not prevailed.
  We will soon vote on the Murray Amendment. I hope we can finally make 
progress on restoring environmental laws. As the weather warms we come 
closer and closer to a time when hundreds of millions of board feet 
will be cut without laws. I urge my colleagues to vote for workers, for 
economic stability, and for the environment. We need Senator Murray's 
amendment now.
  I hold up photos that the Senator from Washington State [Mrs. 
Murray], provided. Look what happens if you do not follow good forestry 
practices. Look at this mudslide as it comes down, choking off a river. 
What does that do to all the other resources? Ask somebody who makes 
their living fishing. Ask businesses that get income from recreation 
what it means to them. Let us go back to the kind of responsible, 
bipartisan environmental efforts that this body has been famous

[[Page S2019]]

for and let us adopt the Murray amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I thank my colleague from Vermont for his excellent 
statement and his support.
  I yield 5 minutes to my colleague from California.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California [Mrs. Boxer] is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Chair. I am pleased to be here in support of 
my colleague from Washington, Senator Murray.
  I was always taught as a child that when you make a mistake, you 
admit it and fix it. I think that is what happened here. Many of us who 
voted for the bill in which this rider was contained believed that it 
would allow the logging of dead and dying trees. We did not intend for 
it to work out in a way that healthy old-growth trees would be cut 
down; they are surely our heritage. We have an obligation to fix this 
problem.
  I have to say for my friend, Senator Murray, because I have worked 
with her early on, this was a very difficult amendment to put together. 
What she did was to get the workers together with the 
environmentalists. She found that compromise between preserving a 
precious environment and preserving jobs. She deserves an enormous 
amount of credit. I personally know how anguished she was as she tried 
to put together these coalitions, because it is not easy. It is very 
easy to go with one side. It is not as easy to try to put together the 
coalitions, but she has done that. I am very pleased to be able to 
support her. We have a chance to reverse a mistake, a mistake that 
opened up old-growth forests and undermined President Clinton's 
consensus Northwest forest plan.
  We finally have a chance to restore environmental laws for our 
forests. They are basically now, as I read it, forests without laws. 
That was the effect of the court case. And with the Murray amendment, 
we restore lawful logging.
  Our citizens must always have the right to take part in Federal 
decisions about how to manage our public forests. I have always 
believed that was very important. The Murray amendment will restore the 
right of appeal to citizens, and it ensures judicial review.

  The Murray amendment resolves the old growth issue by suspending old-
growth timber sales, commonly referred to as section 318 sales, and 
requires the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to 
provide substitute timber volume or buy these sales back from the 
purchaser.
  I believe that is very key because that is where we see the jobs are 
being preserved. The Murray amendment will expedite implementation of 
the Northwest forest plan by making sure that resources are available 
to complete recommended watershed analysis, and we need that analysis. 
We also see in this amendment a much needed National Academy of 
Sciences study on forest health.
  So, in brief, we made a mistake. We are losing old-growth trees. We 
have seen the incredible photographs that the Senator from Washington 
[Mrs. Murray] has shown us--not cartoons of trees, not drawings of 
trees, but really what is happening in the forests. I think anyone who 
sees it knows that a picture is worth a thousand words. People can 
stand up here and say: Gee, it is not true; it is not happening; 
beautiful trees are not being cut down. Well, we see the photographs. 
We see the truth.
  We can fix the problem. We can make sure that in fact trees that are 
not healthy can be cut down. That is not a problem. But not the healthy 
old-growth trees.
  I am pleased to stand with my friend, and I hope that she obtains the 
votes necessary to overturn a mistake that we made right here in this 
Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Who yields time? The junior Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, how much time remains in debate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The junior Senator from Washington has 9 
minutes and 50 seconds; 15 minutes and 31 seconds are left to the other 
side.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, let me just say at this point that I 
appreciate the remarks of my colleague from California, Senator Boxer, 
about how difficult this has been, to bring people together to 
compromise on a very difficult and serious issue. In fact, I have heard 
some of my colleagues on the other side say that this debate is about 
politics. I say, if this is just about politics, it would be simply an 
amendment to repeal the rider. This is not about politics. This is 
about policy. This is about putting in place a timber salvage rider 
that works, that keeps people working, that uses our timber at its 
highest economic value, but leaving people in the process. That is what 
my constituents are so angry about. They have been left out of the 
process by the rider that this Congress adopted last year, and they 
want back in.
  At this time I am very pleased to have printed in the Record a letter 
from the President, sent to me last night from Jerusalem, with his 
strong support of the amendment in front of us. His words should be 
read by all of my colleagues, but let me just read his second 
paragraph. It says:

       Judicial interpretation of the timber rider, as it has been 
     applied to old growth forests, has broadened the Act's 
     requirements to the point that it undermines our balanced 
     approach to ensuring continued economic growth and reliable 
     timber supply in concert with responsible management and 
     protection of our natural resources for future generations. 
     The timber rider must be repealed as soon as possible.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                              The White House,

                                        Jerusalem, March 13, 1996.
     Hon. Patty Murray,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Patty: I write to convey my strong support for your 
     amendment to repeal the timber rider attached to the 1995 
     Rescissions Act.
       Judicial interpretation of the timber rider as it has been 
     applied to old growth forests, has broadened the Act's 
     requirements to the point that it undermines our balanced 
     approach to ensuring continued economic growth and reliable 
     timber supply in concert with responsible management and 
     protection of our natural resources for future generations. 
     The timber rider must be repealed as soon as possible.
       Along with repeal, I must have the legal authority 
     necessary to honor the claims of contract holders in a manner 
     that is consistent with environmental stewardship and law, 
     placing a priority on replacement timber volume. Your 
     amendment will enable us to do this.
       With regard to salvage logging, I believe--as you do--that 
     salvage logging has an important role in the federal timber 
     program. Securing a steady supply of timber to Northwest 
     mills continues to be a priority for me. We also believe 
     salvage logging must be based on sound science and consistent 
     with our nation's environmental laws.
       Your amendment meets my overall goals and objectives. I 
     commend your efforts to restore the kind of balanced and 
     reasonable approach that we established under the Northwest 
     Forest Plan. I strongly encourage your colleagues to support 
     your amendment.
           Sincerely,
                                                     Bill Clinton.

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, let me again thank Senator Hatfield for 
his understanding in the offsets of this bill, with our amendment that 
strikes the portion of section 13 that is found on page 27. We have 
made an adjustment.
  If this amendment is agreed to, and I hope it is, we will continue to 
work with Senator Hatfield and others in conference to assure that this 
amendment is properly taken care of.
  I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, a brief history. One year ago, right now, 
2 years after President Clinton had proposed his very, very modest 
timber plan for the Pacific Northwest, less than half of what the 
President had stated was in his plan for a harvest was actually being 
carried out, frustrated by endless litigation. This proposal was 
passed, two-thirds of which simply enabled the President to carry out 
his own promises, to keep his own commitments. One portion of it 
authorized the harvesting of certain contracts that had long since been 
executed by the Federal Government, and, Mr. President, which represent 
this much of the

[[Page S2020]]

national forests in the Pacific Northwest--this being the entire 
forest, this being what is already cut off. You, Mr. President, cannot 
see the number of acres we are talking about. I do not think you can 
see it when I put this magnifying glass on it. That was the true 
compromise.
  What did the President say about it? The President said that 
compromise contained language that preserved the ability to implement 
the current forest plans and their standards to protect fisheries and 
the like.
  Then the President changed his mind, and the senior Senator from 
Oregon offered him a further compromise, which is included in this 
proposal. Now we have an amendment which would cancel not only 
everything that was done last year, but would cancel more than 
everything that was done last year--canceling contracts that were never 
so much as controversial, establishing a new definition of salvage, 
much more restrictive than that of Clinton's own Forest Service, and a 
definition of salvage which will result, not in a compromise, not in 
authorizing salvage timber, but, in effect, prohibiting any salvage 
whatsoever. Even helicopter logging will be prohibited in roadless 
areas. There are so many restricted areas and so little money that 
there will be no salvage timber, not just in the Pacific Northwest, but 
in your State, in States all up and down the east coast, in the 
intermountain West--there will be nothing left.
  How is this to be paid for? Because now we have to pay for these 
things. How is it to be paid for? It is to the credit of the junior 
Senator from my State that she does not just say, ``put it on the cuff, 
add it to the deficit.'' She takes $130 million out of the 
appropriation for the Forest Service.
  Earlier today this was only $110 million. We checked with some people 
in the Forest Service who, understandably enough, do not want to be 
identified. That $110 million cut will cause the RIF of 1,400 employees 
of the Forest Service, all across the United States. So I say to the 
Senator from Vermont, the Senator from Alabama, the Senator from North 
Dakota, your forests will suffer, too. One thousand RIF's in the field 
of reforestation, stand improvement, recreation maintenance, watershed 
improvement, supposedly the very goals of this amendment, will be 
undercut by the RIF's of the people who would carry them out, and 400 
or 500 more in the field of forest research.

  So, we will devastate our national forest planning, we will devastate 
the very goals of a healthy forest that we are talking about, by 
passing this amendment. An amendment to do what? An amendment to do 
what? An amendment to cancel that many acres of timber harvest 
contracts. Can you see it? You cannot. You cannot see it. It represents 
a one-time harvest of one-tenth of the number of board feet that 
regenerate automatically in these national forests every year; one-
tenth of 1 year's growth.
  I am simply saying the United States of America, when it signs a 
contract, ought to keep its word, it ought to carry that contract out. 
And when the President makes a commitment--this President, this 
environmentalist President--we ought to empower him to carry out that 
commitment.
  The amendment will make a mockery of the President's commitments. It 
will invalidate valid contracts. It will result in the loss of 
thousands of jobs in our forest, private sector jobs, and probably 
1,500 jobs in the Forest Service itself, helping our forests to grow 
and to regenerate.
  Mr. President, how many minutes does the Senator from Idaho need?
  Mr. KEMPTHORNE. Seven minutes?
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I yield 7 minutes to the Senator from 
Idaho.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho [Mr. Kempthorne] is 
recognized for 7 minutes.
  Mr. KEMPTHORNE. Mr. President, today, the issue deals strictly with 
the management of our national forests and the health of those national 
forests. The amendment before us would eliminate the one tool we now 
have.
  I think, as an Idahoan, I speak with some experience as to what this 
is all about, because 2 years ago we had devastating forest fires that 
devastated 589,000 acres of land. That is 919 square miles.
  That is a number. How big is that? That is approximately three-
quarters of the entire land in the State of Rhode Island. This is a 
huge amount of land. Yet the proposal is that we would only go in and 
salvage approximately 10 percent of the dead timber that is in that 
tremendous, huge area. This amendment would leave that dead and dying 
timber to simply rot, to rot. We want to go in and salvage 10 percent 
of that.
  Also, this timber that is not removed simply adds additional fuel to 
future devastating fires. All the fire scientists tell us that is what 
we can expect now, more and more of these devastating fires of hundreds 
of thousands of acres at a time.
  Is there benefit to the environment to get in there and do something 
about it? A study of the Boise National Forest demonstrated the 
benefits of getting in on the ground and helping forests recover after 
a fire. Several areas where no recovery work was performed after the 
1992 Boise foothills fire experienced huge landslides, or blow-outs, as 
they are called. Entire hillsides washed into streams, destroying fish 
habitat, including habitat for the bull trout, which is being 
considered for listing as an endangered species.
  The Boise National Forest study compares the results of varying types 
of intervention. The report found that salvage operations can be 
designed so that they are environmentally benign and, in fact, 
beneficial. It also found that salvage areas were in better shape than 
areas that had not been salvaged.
  For example, soils which were baked into impermeable crusts by the 
fire were broken to allow water to penetrate. Stream banks were 
stabilized and water was filtered through straw bales to catch sediment 
that would otherwise choke resident fish and destroy spawning beds.
  Dr. Leon Neuenschwander, professor of fire ecology at the University 
of Idaho, described the foothills fire as ``the most environmentally 
conscious salvage-logging operation'' that he has ever seen.
  If this amendment is adopted, Idahoans, Idaho's forests, Idaho's 
wildlife are going to pay the price, straightforward. It means the end 
of any hope of salvaging just a fraction of this timber that has been 
destroyed by fire, and it also means that that fuel load remains.
  It means a loss of revenue that could have been used for 
environmental restoration in some very sensitive watersheds. I am the 
chairman of the subcommittee that is dealing with the Endangered 
Species Act. I am an advocate that we not follow this amendment because 
we have species that need to be protected.
  By allowing us to go forward with this sort of management, we can 
protect them, we can help them. But also, Mr. President, so many of our 
rural communities derive income from those timber receipts for their 
schools so that we can educate the kids of the State through this 
harvest, and it means leaving sensitive watersheds at risk of reburn 
since there will be no thinning of standing dead timber.
  There was a picture shown at some point during this debate of a 
massive slide and blamed it all on what is taking place with logging 
operations.
  James Caswell, who is a forest supervisor in the Clearwater National 
Forest in Orofino, ID, wrote a particular statement that I think is of 
great interest. He says:

       To keep things in perspective, remember flooding and 
     landslide activity are a natural phenomenon in this part of 
     the country. In the Clearwater Forest alone, major events 
     occurred in 1919, 1934, 1948, 1964, 1968, and 1974.

  He said:

       Photos taken in 1934 show extensive landslide activity in 
     pristine areas, long before logging or road building took 
     place.

  It is a natural phenomenon that does occur.
  It has been pointed out, too, that many of the labor unions support 
this amendment. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the letters from Douglas J. McCarron, who is the president of the 
United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, who says:

       I am writing to urge your opposition to efforts to repeal 
     the timber harvesting provisions included in the 1995 Omnibus 
     Rescissions Bill.

  Also, letters from the United Paperworkers International Union, as 
well as the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace 
Workers.

[[Page S2021]]

  There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

         United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America,
                                    Washington, DC, March 5, 1996.
     Hon. Frank Murkowski,
     Hart Senate Office Building,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Murkowski: On behalf of the 550,000 members of 
     the United Brothers of Carpenters and Joiners of America 
     (UBC), I am writing to urge your opposition to efforts to 
     repeal timber harvesting provisions included in the 1995 
     Omnibus Rescission Bill. These provisions help protect the 
     health of our national forests. They also provide a supply of 
     timber to help protect the livelihoods of tens of thousands 
     of forest products-related workers nationwide, including many 
     men and women who are members of our union.
       The bill was developed in part as a response to the growing 
     national forest health emergency. The buildup of dead, dying 
     and diseased trees on federal lands has reached unsafe 
     levels, standing as kindling for wildfire and threatening to 
     infect healthy trees. The law allows for the removal of the 
     damaged trees which can be milled if removed in a timely 
     manner.
       The bill was also designed to expedite timber sales 
     prepared under President Clinton's Pacific Northwest Forest 
     Plan and other timber sales sold by the U.S. Forest Service 
     and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) during the last live 
     years but held up by red tape. These sales amount to less 
     than fifteen percent of the volume historically produced from 
     the Pacific Northwest and Northern California each year. They 
     also constitute only slightly more than half of what was 
     promised under the President's plan but to date has not been 
     produced.
       Our union has long believed that we can balance 
     environmental interests with economic realities. That is why 
     we are supporting language offered by Chairman Mark Hatfield 
     (R-OR). This legislation will modify the timber harvesting 
     provisions to provide greater flexibility for the timber sale 
     purchaser and the Forest Service or BLM to alter or 
     substitute sales as the sales conflict with environmental 
     concerns.
       We urge you to support the Hatfield amendment and oppose 
     the full repeal of the timber harvest provisions.
           Sincerely,
                                              Douglas J. McCarron,
     General President.
                                                                    ____

                                               United Paperworkers


                                          International Union,

                                     Nashville, TN, March 1, 1996.
     Hon. Frank Murkowski,
     Hart Senate Office Building,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Murkowski: On behalf of the 250,000 men and 
     women of the United Paperworkers International Union, I am 
     writing to urge you to oppose any efforts to repeal the 
     timber harvest provisions of the 1995 Omnibus Rescissions 
     Bill which was signed into law by President Clinton last 
     summer. These provisions allow for emergency timber salvage 
     harvests and expedite the release of existing ``green'' 
     sales.
       Timber salvage is critically important to our members and 
     our national forests. The salvage law allows dead, dying, and 
     diseased timber to be removed from the forests in order to 
     decrease the threat of wildfires and insect infestation. If 
     removed in a timely manner, this timber can be milled, thus 
     protecting forest products-related jobs. The timber 
     harvesting provision also calls for the release of ``green'' 
     sales prepared under President Clinton's Northwest Forest 
     Plan and other ``green'' sales that had been sold by the U.S. 
     Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management over the 
     last five years but have been held up by red tape. the amount 
     of ``green'' sales to be released amount to less than half of 
     the sales promised to be provided under the President's 
     Forest Plan but have yet to be delivered.
       Repeal of the timber harvest provisions will only 
     exacerbate the job loss occurring in timber-dependent 
     communities throughout the nation. Since 1990, over 22,000 
     timber-dependent workers have lost their jobs in the Pacific 
     Northwest and Northern California alone due to efforts to 
     restrict timber harvesting on federal lands.
       As always, we stand ready to work with Congress to develop 
     legislation that balances environmental interests with the 
     economic and social needs of timber-dependent workers and 
     communities. That is why we urge your support of the 
     legislation proposed by Senators Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) and 
     Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) regarding implementation of the timber 
     sale provisions. This amendment provides flexibility to the 
     U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the 
     timber purchaser to modify or substitute sales as needed to 
     address environmental concerns. We hope we can count on your 
     support of this important legislation.
           Sincerely,
                                                      Wayne Glenn,
     Office of the President.
                                                                    ____

                                      International Association of


                             Machinists and Aerospace Workers,

                                     Gladstone, OR, March 4, 1996.
     Hon. Frank Murkowski,
     Hart Senate Office Building,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Murkowski: On behalf of the 20,000 members of 
     the International Association of Machinists--Woodworkers 
     Division, I urge you to oppose any effort to repeal the 
     timber rider attached to the 1995 Omnibus Rescissions Bill, 
     which was signed into law last summer.
       The timber rider is critical to the men and women of our 
     union. The salvage provision of the rider protects forest 
     health by allowing for the removal of deteriorating timber 
     from the forest floor. U.S. Forest Service figures show that 
     4 billion board feet of dead timber is accumulating each year 
     on federal lands. This accumulation increases the likelihood 
     that millions of acres of forest land will be devastated by 
     catastrophic wildfires. The salvage provision not only 
     improves the health of our federal forests. If removed in a 
     timely manner, this timber can be milled, protecting jobs and 
     communities.
       The timber rider also allows for the implementation of 
     existing sales that were promised under President Clinton's 
     Forest Plan and other sales that have been previously 
     approved but have not been released due to bureaucratic red 
     tape. These sales, which amount to less than 15% of what has 
     been historically produced from federal forest lands in the 
     Pacific Northwest and Northern California each year, will 
     provide economic relief to thousands of forest products 
     workers nationwide.
       The members of our union are willing to work with the 
     Clinton administration and Congress to solve the timber 
     supply and forest health crises. With that in mind, we 
     believe that the recent legislation introduced by Senator 
     Mark Hatfield (R-OR) attempts to balance the needs of the 
     people with the future of our federal forests. If passed, 
     this legislation would provide an adequate level of 
     flexibility to the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land 
     Management, and timber sale purchases to modify and/ or 
     substitute timber sales prepared under the timber rider.
       Congress is in the position to provide balance to the 
     forest management debate. We hope that we can count on your 
     support for the Hatfield legislation.
           Sincerely,

                                               Wilson Hubbell,

                                         Administrative Assistant,
                                             Woodworkers Division.

  Mr. KEMPTHORNE. Mr. President, Gifford Pinchot, who is the father of 
the Forest Service and he, in fact, was the adviser to the creator of 
our national park and forest system, President Teddy Roosevelt, was 
adamant that our Federal forests not be ``preserves'' but ``reserves,'' 
managed for the best good of the public. He specifically viewed timber 
harvest as a central part of forest management. I urge the Senate not 
to move away from the very essence of that ideal by Gifford Pinchot.
  I commend the senior Senator from Washington for his efforts on this, 
and I say that on behalf of so many citizens throughout the Northwest 
who have seen the devastation of these fires.
  Also, let us allow the forest managers to be the forest managers 
there on the ground. We cannot manage it from this Chamber. We need to 
allow them to be the managers, as was intended, as they have the 
ability to do.
  With that, Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I oppose the amendment offered by my 
good friend from the State of Washington, Senator Murray. Let me say at 
the outset that I respect the motives and the determination of the 
author of this amendment. I look forward to what I have come to expect 
from the Senator from Washington--a well-informed and civil debate on 
the merits of current law and proposed changes to it.
  I have many questions about the Murray amendment--how it would be 
implemented and what is meant by many of its provisions. I would have 
preferred to have a hearing record or some consideration by the 
authorizing committees before making a decision about such a 
comprehensive forestry program as Senator Murray has put forward. As a 
member of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, I am aware 
that Senator Craig's forest health bill, which has been the subject of 
bipartisan negotiations with the White House for over a year, and which 
has been the subject of hearings before the committee, is ready to be 
placed on the Energy Committee's markup schedule. I would be 
interested, as this debate progresses, to know how the Murray amendment 
compares to Senator Craig's legislation.
  Regardless of my feelings about the underlying statute this amendment 
would repeal, I would be very reluctant as the manager of this bill to 
agree to such a sweeping national forest policy re-write as the one the 
Senator from Washington has laid before us today, particularly one 
drafted so quickly. I would be especially reluctant to accept such a 
comprehensive proposal without

[[Page S2022]]

the full concurrence of the authorizers. Let me remind my colleagues 
that law that would be repealed by the Murray amendment was prepared 
with the full cooperation of both House and Senate authorizers. The 
lack of involvement of the authorizers alone would compel me to oppose 
this amendment. Because of my personal involvement in this issue, 
however, I will make more detailed objections to this amendment than 
those which I would normally offer in my role as the manager of this 
bill.
  Mr. President, this is a tremendously important debate. Seven short 
months ago, this body included the so-called salvage rider in the 1995 
Rescissions Act. In the intervening months, those who have opposed this 
measure from the beginning have engaged in a vigorous campaign of 
protest, hysteria, misinformation, and civil disobedience in an effort 
to intimidate Congress and the Clinton Administration into reversing 
their support of the measure. The very small minority of Americans who 
advocate a no-cut, non-use policy on Federal lands lost this battle in 
Congress last year and now are using their anger to mislead the public 
that the last of our old-growth forests are about to be cut down 
forever, never to be replaced. This is simply not true.
  I represent a State that is often sharply divided on natural resource 
issues. These divides generally reflect the difference between the 
urban and the rural way of life. During the decades I have devoted to 
public service, I have sought to bridge the chasm that has formed 
between the urban and rural citizens of my State and bring some order 
and balance to natural resource conflicts by addressing both sides of 
the debate.
  Up until recently, the forest products industry has been the largest 
manufacturing sector in Oregon. In the past, my State alone has 
supplied our Nation with 20 percent of its softwood lumber needs. Just 
5 years ago, 77,000 workers were employed directly by the forest 
products industry. Since that time, 21,800 of those 77,000 jobs have 
been lost and 212 mills have closed. Most often these mills are located 
in towns whose economies are based almost solely on the mills and the 
related businesses which deal directly with them.
  Many of these mills, and the towns which grew up around them, located 
in the heart of Federal forests at the urging of the Federal 
Government. Prior to World War II, our Nation's Government told the 
forest products industry to overcut its own private lands to provide 
materials for the war effort, and in exchange we would open up the 
Federal forest lands to sustained yield management after the war.

  Because of these commitments which were made over the years, I have 
always felt that Congress is committed to providing these communities 
with policies which ensure a predictable and stable supply of Federal 
timber to these mills. Nevertheless, meeting these commitments to mills 
and timber towns and protecting our environment is not the either/or 
choice that is presented to us by the single interest groups.
  I have always recognized the need to balance a strong resource based 
economy with appropriate environmental protections in my State. I have 
personally authored legislation increasing Oregon's wilderness system 
from 500,000 acres to 2.1 million acres--more than any other elected 
official in Oregon history. I have also authored legislation increasing 
Oregon's wild and scenic rivers system from 4 to 42--the largest in the 
Nation. The next highest States are Alaska with 26 and California with 
10. I have also authored legislation preserving such ecologically 
significant areas as the Columbia River Gorge, Hells Canyon, Newberry 
Crater, Cascade Head, Yaquina Head, and the Oregon Dunes.
  In addition, in 1989, I coauthored a bill with then-Senator Adams 
which, for the first time, recognized that old growth forests need to 
be protected from further fragmentation and spotted owls need to be 
protected consistent with the Endangered Species Act. This provision 
was the so-called section 318 timber compromise, which was attached to 
the fiscal year 1990 Interior Appropriations Act.
  My commitment to Oregon's environment and to its natural resources 
runs very deep. I am proud to have played a role in preserving these 
areas for future generations, and I will work this year, my last year 
in the Senate, to protect several other areas of my State. While I have 
worked diligently to protect Oregon's environment, it was always within 
the context of the larger picture--that 84 communities in my State were 
dependent on a stable supply of wood from Federal lands and that our 
forests could be managed, according to the best science of the day, on 
a sustainable basis.
  Now, in listening to the rhetoric from the environmental community on 
the salvage provision, their true, underlying goal has finally been 
disrobed and can be debated. That debate is, can we manage our Federal 
lands at all? If you listen to the rhetoric you will hear clamoring for 
an end to the cutting of any green trees. Only dead and dying trees 
should be cut. Do not be deceived. These same extremist groups have 
admitted that their platform is the elimination of any and all 
harvesting of trees on Federal land. If my State is first to be bullied 
into this shortsighted program, other States will surely follow.
  The sad fact of this debate is that the elimination of harvesting of 
trees on Federal lands is happening without one affirmative statement 
from Congress that this is the course of action we believe is best for 
the Nation. Indeed, these decisions are being made by overzealous 
judges who feel that their job is not only to interpret the law, but to 
steer it in a certain direction not necessarily intended by Congress. 
These decisions are being made outside of the legislative process via 
public relations campaigns and staged media events in a hyperbolic, 
uninformed, and intentionally misleading manner.
  The Murray amendment lends credence to this approach and gives those 
who would lock up our forests forever the upper hand legislatively. All 
this without one hearing, one markup, or any time for internal debate 
and discussions with the Clinton administration.
  The modest measures contained in the law sought to be repealed by the 
Murray amendment are largely discretionary, will expire in December 
1996 and underwent Appropriations Committee hearings, markups, floor 
debate and months of negotiations with the Clinton administration. If 
last year's modest, stopgap provision cannot be sustained in law, we 
will have lost any semblance of balance in our national forest policies 
and Congress will have once again abdicated its responsibility to play 
a role in setting the policies governing management of our national 
forests.

  This Senator advocated strongly for the enactment of the statute 
sought to be repealed by the Murray amendment, and I will energetically 
defend it today, as modified by the chairman's mark of the Omnibus 
Appropriations Act. Let me take a moment to outline the law and clarify 
the impetus behind its enactment.
  The salvage provision included in the fiscal year 1995 rescissions 
bill has three separate and distinct provisions. The first provides the 
administration with temporary expedited salvage sale authority. The 
second provision grants legal protections to the administration for 
implementation of the President's Northwest forest plan. Finally, the 
statute releases certain sales prepared and offered by the Federal 
Government from 1990 forward that have been blocked due to consultation 
procedures under the Endangered Species Act.
  Before I proceed with a more detailed outline of this law, let me 
highlight for my colleagues a seldom stated fact about this 
controversial law: Except for the provision directing the release of a 
relatively small number of sales that have been blocked by ESA 
consultation, the remainder of this law is discretionary. More 
specifically, the provisions of the law related to salvage and those 
related to the President's forest plan are toothless. The President is 
not required to offer a single sale or cut a single tree.
  Immediately after signing the Rescissions Act, the President sent a 
memo to his agency heads saying:

       Public Law 104-19 gives us the discretion to apply current 
     environmental standards, and we will do so. I am directing 
     you to * * * move forward expeditiously to implement these 
     timber related provisions in an environmentally sound manner, 
     in accordance with * * * existing environmental laws.

  A parade of administration officials have come before the Energy and 
Natural Resources Committee to confirm

[[Page S2023]]

this commitment by the President, which is fully consistent with the 
legislative intent of the statute, to implement the salvage program and 
his Northwest forest plan in complete conformity with existing 
environmental laws. These discretionary provisions are the very 
provisions the Murray amendment seeks to repeal and replace with a 
permanent, prescriptive, narrowly focused timber salvage program.
  So to repeat, the law simply provides the President with forest 
policy tools that can be used to expedite salvage timber sales and 
sales under his Northwest forest plan. Whether the President chooses to 
use these tools is entirely up to him.
  I would now like to discuss in further detail, each of the provisions 
of the salvage rider from the fiscal year 1995 Rescissions Act and, 
shortly thereafter, my concerns with the Murray amendment as proposed.
  The first and most significant provision in the salvage law provides 
the administration with temporary authority for an expedited timber 
salvage program. This provision will expire on December 31, 1996. An 
expedited salvage process is needed to harvest dead trees because they 
pose a significant fire risk, create additional forest health concerns 
and the trees deteriorate rapidly, losing over half their value in the 
first 2 years.
  In Oregon, and in Federal forests nationwide, we are in the midst of 
a forest health crisis. Three years ago, 50 to 70 percent of the 
forests in eastern Oregon's Blue Mountains area were considered dead or 
dying. According to the Blue Mountains Natural Resources Institute 
[BMNRI] in La Grande, nothing has changed in regard to fuel buildup and 
fire risk. In fact, the BMNRI states:
       The Blue Mountains is one of many areas in the interior 
     West where accumulation of dead and dying trees continues to 
     increase, thus confronting managers and the public with an 
     unprecedented degree of catastrophic fire hazard.

  The 1994 fire season was one of the worst on record. Thirty-three 
lives were lost and the Government spent nearly $1 billion fighting 
fires. Four million acres and four billion board feet of timber burned. 
The salvage law came about as a means of giving our Federal land 
management agencies the flexibility to act swiftly to address this 
precarious situation for Oregon's forest ecosystems, firefighters, and 
rural communities. Otherwise, we may face fire seasons in the future 
that are as bad or worse than 1994.

  According to the Forest Service, nationwide we have about 18 billion 
board feet of standing dead and dying trees. The salvage provisions of 
the Rescissions Act give Federal land management agencies flexibility 
to address the forest health problems they believe must be addressed. 
Incidentally, the agencies determined that they were capable of 
harvesting 2 billion board feet of salvage timber nationwide for each 
of the 2 years the salvage provision was to be in place. For each sale, 
they must at least prepare an environmental assessment under the 
National Environmental Policy Act and a biological evaluation under the 
Endangered Species Act. In addition, agencies are free to follow their 
existing standards and guidelines for implementing Federal 
environmental law for each timber sale.
  Without this provision, actually conducting any forest health or 
salvage operations would be easier said than done. Simply put, public 
involvement, judicial review, and administrative appeal statutes 
granted by Congress in existing environmental laws have been used by a 
small minority to block any management of public lands, even for these 
valuable and necessary salvage operations. These groups would rather 
let our dead and dying forests burn by catastrophic fire, endangering 
human life and long-term forest health, than harvest them to promote 
stability in natural forest ecosystems and communities dependent on a 
supply of timber from Federal lands.
  The second provision of the salvage law grants legal protections for 
the administration to implement President Clinton's Pacific Northwest 
forest plan. This protection is accomplished by eliminating 
administrative appeals and expediting judicial appeals. This is 
designed to give the President the freedom to implement his plan, which 
has been upheld in Federal court as in compliance with all 
environmental laws.
  All sales under this section have been prepared under the standards 
and guidelines of the President's forest plan. These provisions are so 
protective, the Northwest is producing about 10 percent of its historic 
volume levels under them. Again, the provisions here are discretionary. 
The President is not compelled to harvest one stick of timber if he 
chooses not to.
  The third provision releases certain sales offered or awarded since 
1990 in the geographic area covered by section 318 of the fiscal year 
1990 Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. By its own 
estimates, the Forest Service faces at least $150 million in contract 
liability for failure to move forward with these sales which it 
prepared and offered. Congress moved forward with them, in large part, 
in an effort to address this liability question.
  These delayed sales represent approximately 650 million board feet of 
timber affecting less than 10,000 acres of Federal forest land in 
Oregon and Washington. To the average homeowner, this may sound like a 
tremendous amount of timber over a very large area. However, in the 
context of Federal land management in the Pacific Northwest, 10,000 
acres is a minuscule amount. To illustrate, the President's Northwest 
forest plan covers 24.4 million acres, 19.5 million acres of which is 
withdrawn entirely from commercial timber harvest. The sales released 
under this provision represent less than an infinitesimal one twenty-
four-hundredth of the land within the jurisdiction of the President's 
plan.
  Let me also put the 650 million board feet of volume in perspective. 
Again, this may sound like a great deal of timber. However, throughout 
the 1980's, the Pacific Northwest averaged an annual harvest level of 
around 3.85 billion--not million--board feet. Our annual harvest levels 
are now about 10 percent of these 1980's levels, largely due to the 
significant protections of the President's forest plan. Under his plan, 
the President promised the people of the Pacific Northwest a first-year 
harvest of 2.2 billion board and an annual harvest level of 1.1 billion 
board feet each year thereafter. However, since that promise was made, 
a total of about 500 million board feet has been sold under the plan.

  These sales have been held up for a variety of reasons, primarily for 
consultations for the threatened marbled murrelet. Habitat for this sea 
bird has been designated as any forest land within 35 miles of the 
Oregon and California coasts, and 50 miles from the coast in the State 
of Washington. This amounts to about 4.4 million acres, two-thirds of 
which is Federal. These birds are very difficult to survey because they 
spend an estimated 90 percent of their lives at sea. While total 
habitat of the bird is about 2.5 million acres in the Northwest, only 
10 percent of that acreage has been surveyed. Based on this scant 
evidence, scientists estimate that the Northwest is home to between 
18,600 and 32,000 murrelets. Over 300,000 of these birds are believed 
to inhabit Alaska.
  Under the salvage provision, timber sales must go forward unless a 
threatened or an endangered species--murrelet--is known to be nesting 
within the acreage of the sale unit. In that case only, the 
administration is authorized and directed to provide replacement volume 
of like kind and value within the contract area of the existing timber 
sale. Under this language, the administration's ability to provide 
replacement timber is restricted more than I believe Congress intended. 
Specifically, replacement volume can only be offered when there is a 
murrelet problem, and finding like kind of timber within the contract 
area is proving to be very difficult.
  I met with Clinton administration officials last December to discuss 
these and other concerns with the salvage rider.
  Consistent with their specific suggestions to alter the language to 
reflect their concerns, Senator Gorton and I drafted and included 
language in the omnibus appropriations bill which gives the Forest 
Service and the Bureau of Land Management greater flexibility to modify 
or buy back sales on three specific counts.
  First, under our amendment the administration may offer replacement 
volume for any 318 area sale on which it feels there is an 
environmental problem, not just those where a murrelet is

[[Page S2024]]

known to be nesting. The amendment would then give the agencies 45 days 
to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement with the purchaser regarding 
what that replacement volume should look like. Replacement timber can 
be of any kind, value, volume and location, as long as there is mutual 
agreement between the land management agencies and the sale purchaser.
  Second, our amendment gives the administration the authority not only 
to offer replacement volume to a timber sale purchaser but also to 
offer to buy out a sale. The administration has repeatedly requested 
this authority and has even indicated that it is able to secure $50 
million from a neutral funding source to cover the costs.
  Finally, our amendment removes the requirement that these sales be 
operated by September 30, 1996. We have lifted this deadline so timber 
sale operators do not have to rush to cut these trees hastily before 
any additional environmental considerations can be taken into account.
  In summary, Mr. President, our amendment does everything the 
administration has requested aside from giving them total authority to 
cancel contracts unilaterally with no compensation to timber sale 
purchasers. I remind my colleagues that, by the Forest Service's own 
estimates, it is financially liable to the tune of about $150 million 
for canceling these contracts.
  The Murray amendment, by comparison, does not address the issues 
outlined by the administration except to relieve them from any and all 
responsibility to harvest these sales. This course of action is 
absolutely contrary to the commitments the administration made during 6 
months of detailed negotiations with Congress on the fiscal year 1995 
rescissions bill, which included the salvage provision.
  Aside from my objection to the underlying principle that the Murray 
amendment allows the Clinton Administration to fully back out of the 
commitments it made during the deliberations on the salvage provision, 
the amendment raises a number of additional concerns.

  First, the Murray amendment replaces the salvage portion of the 
rider, which expires at the end of 1996, with a comprehensive, long-
term salvage timber harvest program. All this without one hearing in 
the authorizing committee, no hearings in the Appropriations Committee 
and no internal or external communications or debate.
  Under the Murray amendment, any sales which have been released as 
part of the salvage rider would be open to immediate administrative and 
judicial challenge and would be stopped instantly, even if timber is 
already fallen and bucked and stacked on the ground. The Government has 
sold about 1.8 billion board feet of salvage and billions more are in 
the pipeline. In addition, sales cleared under the President's 
Northwest forest plan would be reopened to a new round of 
administrative and judicial appeals.
  The Murray amendment's salvage program is very detailed and 
prescriptive. Remember, the salvage program we enacted as part of the 
rescissions bill gives complete discretion to the land management 
agencies to lay out sales in a manner consistent with existing 
environmental laws and standards and guidelines, as President Clinton 
committed to doing. The Murray amendment will allow salvage only in 
roaded areas. It precludes even helicopter logging in roadless areas, 
often where we have our most severe forest health problems. No salvage 
logging will be allowed in ``any area withdrawn by Federal Law for any 
conservation purpose.'' This is so restrictive that the language in the 
Forest Service's 1897 Organic Act, which allows the President to 
establish forest reserves, would appear to apply this restriction to 
the entire national forest system.
  The Murray amendment will also grant the President's Council on 
Environmental Quality 1 year to develop salvage compliance regulations. 
Thus, not only will sales stop in their tracks, it will take at least a 
year and probably much more to even begin offering sales under the new 
law. In the mean time, logs will lay on the ground and rot. The 
Government's liabilities to the purchasers who have operated many of 
these sales almost to completion will increase greatly, and the backlog 
of dead timber from the 1994 fires and the risks associated with 
keeping these trees on the ground will have gone unaddressed.
  To oversee this new salvage program, the Murray amendment creates a 
new interagency, multi-level bureaucracy for ESA compliance, including 
two interagency scientific teams and two layers of dispute resolution 
teams. Little guidance is given to these teams and the amendment uses 
so-called sufficiency language, to which the Senator from Washington 
strenuously objects, to restrict public input and exempt these new 
bureaucracies from the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
  On that note, the amendment has its own share of sufficiency 
language. As one who has used sufficiency language on several occasions 
because of emergency situations, I have no problem with the concept of 
using this language. Critics of current law have strongly criticized 
the use of sufficiency. The sponsor of the current amendment was on 
record as opposed to sufficiency language even prior to her arrival in 
the Senate. Overall, I have tried to be sensitive to her concerns. In 
fact, I worked closely with her and the Clinton Administration this 
last fall to develop a solution to the salmon recovery funding problem 
in the Columbia River Basin which did not use sufficiency language at 
all. The Murray salvage amendment, however, is filled with sufficiency 
language which overturns court rulings and exempts Federal agencies 
from all sorts of laws.
  The Murray amendment attempts to terminate all existing contracts on 
sales released by the salvage rider in the geographic area of covered 
by section 318 of the fiscal year 1990 Interior Appropriations Act. In 
doing so, however, the amendment terminates all remaining 318 sales, 
including over 300 million board feet of noncontroversial sales that 
were not released or affected in any way by the Rescissions Act. This 
opens the Government to additional millions in new and needless 
liability and removes much-needed timber from the pipeline of sales 
available for use by timber dependent communities in Oregon and 
Washington.

  I know the sponsor of the pending amendment will concede that she has 
had a very difficult time finding the necessary offsets to pay for what 
CBO has told me is a $250 million amendment. We certainly cannot be 
accepting lightly any proposal that will expose the government to such 
huge sums of liability.
  The Murray Amendment provides replacement volume authority, but 
replacement sales must be completed within one year, which is a near 
impossibility, unless another time line is agreed to. Buy-out authority 
is also provided, but funding appears to be subject to appropriations 
or through loan forgiveness or future bidding credits. If negotiations 
toward mutual agreements with timber sale purchasers are unsuccessful, 
the administration is provided with unilateral cancellation authority 
on these sales. Thus there is no reason for the administration to deal 
in good faith with these purchasers. This is the very reason we enacted 
this provision in the first place. The Administration had been sitting 
on these sales for 5 years.
  Finally, the Murray Amendment directs the Secretary of Agriculture to 
use road construction funds to prepare timber sales. Most of the road 
construction account, however, is already devoted to implementation of 
the President's forest plan, including timber sale preparation. Under 
this provision, we would literally reduce the work we are able to 
accomplish under the President's forest plan, as modest as it has been 
these past 2 years, in place of preparing alternative volume sales. 
This is expressly opposite of congressional intent in passing the 
original salvage provision on the Rescissions Act and specifying that 
the volume of the 318 areas sales was not to count against current 
allowable sales quantities under the President's forest plan.
  I strongly urge my colleagues to vote against the Murray amendment. 
It overreaches the authority of the Appropriations committee and 
authorizes a comprehensive, long term timber salvage program. It leaves 
already harvested trees on the ground to rot. It creates significant 
and unnecessary new areas of contract liability to the Federal 
Government.
  The language which Senator Gorton and I have included in the pending 
legislation addresses the concerns raised

[[Page S2025]]

by the Clinton administration while still helping meet the original 
purposes of the act when it was signed into law by President Clinton 
after 6 months of congressional debate and negotiations.
  I supported the salvage rider originally, and have drafted changes to 
it now which I urge my colleagues to support. I believe it allows us to 
show that we can be reasonable in what we do in the forests and harvest 
trees for many uses--forest health, community stabilization, ecosystem 
restoration and jobs for our workers.
  I urge my colleagues to oppose the Murray amendment.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, the timber and salvage issue has been 
subjected to confusing direction from the Clinton administration. After 
first vetoing the bill, the President began to criticize the bill.
  This constantly changing position of this administration on this bill 
hardly contributes to a solution on what has become a needed resolution 
both for environmental concerns as well as economic. The repeal of this 
amendment would stop ongoing salvage sales, creating numerous new court 
challenges and lawsuits. During regulatory reform this problem was 
noted to be a significant concern of our friends across the aisle. Now 
however, it is a acceptable requirement.
  Second, as Senator Craig has pointed out, the emergency salvage law 
is necessary for jobs and forest health. As the amount of dead and 
dying trees increases, so dies the threat of wildfires. The lack of 
access to this timber results in lost jobs.
  The Clinton forest plan is not working. The amount of timber being 
produced is far below what the President promised and jobs continue to 
be lost. The Forest Service has produced very little salvage volume. 
The only volume that is really being produced under this provision are 
in the area covered by section 318, timber that was previously sold. 
Yet the President wants to hold up the sale of this timber as well.
  If this law is repealed the liability of the Federal Government 
increases, jobs will be lost, the environment threatened and a 
bureaucratic nightmare is created. We can move forward with managed 
timber sales and still protect endangered species and jobs. What we 
have to do is apply good management. Repealing this law is not the 
first step that needs to be taken. I urge my colleagues to defeat the 
Murray amendment.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to the 
Murray amendment. This proposal would create chaos in the National 
forests. It would repeal a measure we passed just 7 months ago, which 
the Forest Service and BLM have, at our urging, been moving to 
implement. Then it provides these agencies with new, conflicting 
direction.
  Moreover, the Murray amendment provides the agencies with long-term 
direction on forest health restoration that: First, was introduced less 
than one week ago; second, has never been reviewed by the authorizing 
committees, or been subject to a hearing; and third, is fundamentally 
and fatally flawed. By contrast, my committee has been working on long-
term forest health legislation introduced by Senator Craig and Senator 
Heflin for over a year. This effort has included extended discussions 
with minority staff and members of the Energy and Agriculture 
Committees and the land management agencies. While these discussions 
have not produced complete consensus, they have produced a bill that is 
well drafted, addresses many members' concerns, and will be marked-up 
and reported later this month.
  The Murray amendment in essence asks us to put this aside and, 
instead, enact on the floor today a multiyear piece of legislation--
with significant environmental and economic implications--that most of 
us have never even seen. Well let me share a few high points.
  Senator Murray would subject all of the salvage timber sales sold in 
the past year to new administrative appeals and expanded judicial 
review. This amounts to 1.8 billion board feet of sales that will be 
stopped in their tracks. Loggers and mill workers will be sent home. 
The value of the dead and decaying timber will decline as the appeals 
and lawsuits are heard. In a hearing before our committee last week, 
Forest Service officials expressed concern over this problem. The 
original terms of the timber sale contracts will be violated by the 
Government, and contract damage claims will ensue as timber companies 
are forbidden to harvest under the terms and, more importantly, 
timeframes of the contracts.
  In response to the extraordinary 1994 fire season, we chose 7 months 
ago to allow, under some conditions, ``logging without lawyers.'' 
Senator Murray apparently finds an unacceptable restriction on legal 
employment opportunities. She wants to put lawyers back to work. Maybe 
that's alright. I don't dislike lawyers--much. But there is a clear 
choice here. Creating all these new legal jobs will unemploy loggers 
and millworkers.
  Let me give you another example. The Murray amendment prohibits 
forest health and salvage activities in roadless areas. Why? Don't 
these areas deserve treatment if they are sick? Shouldn't fire-damaged 
watersheds in roadless areas be stabilized? Maybe people have faith 
that roadless areas will recover without help. Perhaps this provision 
was drafted in a Christian Science reading room.
  Here's another--the Murray amendment eliminates the expediting 
procedures for salvage sales that were developed by the Bush 
administration and refined by the Clinton administration. Why are we 
going to substitute whatever wisdom we can muster here in an hour today 
for provisions that represent the result of 7 years of bipartisan 
analysis?
  On the other hand, if that doesn't trouble you, I shouldn't bother 
mentioning that the Murray amendment offers a completed new definition 
of what constitutes a salvage timber sale. Apparently the definition 
provided by the Forest Service scientists and used both in Public Law 
104-19 and Senator Craig's bill, is somehow inadequate. If so, we will 
never find out why in the hour we have devoted to this issue.
  But let me close with my favorite. Section 305 of the Murray 
amendment--for those of us who have had the time to be so precise--
directs the Council on Environmental Quality to develop expedited NEPA 
compliance procedures for salvage sales. They are given a year to 
develop these expedited procedures. This chart shows how fast fire-
killed timber deteriorates. So what the Murray amendment does is: put 
everything on hold; reinstate lawsuits and appeals; and maybe in a year 
or so we will have new, expedited procedures for salvage sales from the 
CEQ.
  The Murray amendment appears to address forest health concerns and 
the needs of forest communities. But understand that no one, least of 
all the American people, are fooled. This is a vote to appease national 
environmental groups. They have a lot riding on it.
  Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, as we end this debate, I want to respond 
to one point again. I heard my colleagues go back to the offset that is 
in this amendment and threatening our colleagues with loss of their 
Forest Service funds or loss of jobs. Let me remind all of my 
colleagues, this money comes from the general administration fund. It 
can come from general belt tightening, and it will come from travel. 
But we also have the commitment from the chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee to work within the confines of the conference committee to 
come up with a reasonable offset. Again, because of the way that the 
amendments have come forward on this floor, we had to put in the offset 
the way it is, but it will be worked out in conference.
  Let me go back to why this issue is so critical at this time. Last 
year, this Congress passed a rider on the rescissions bill that went 
too far. It allowed trees, such as shown right here, a tree that is 8 
foot in diameter, to be cut down regardless of environmental laws and 
without public input. This tree is more than 250 years old. This tree 
will not be replaced in the lifetime of my grandchildren, my great-
grandchildren, or my great-great-grandchildren.
  Mr. President, these are the trees that, without adoption of my 
amendment, will continue to come down in forests across the Pacific 
Northwest. That is not what the intent of this Congress was, I hope, 
last summer, but it is the result and it needs to be stopped.

[[Page S2026]]

  This debate is also about logging that occurs without regard to 
environmental impact. Without the adoption of my amendment, these types 
of logging disasters will occur where slides come down, block our 
rivers and streams and do tremendous damage to our salmon and our trout 
and our wildlife that inhabit these areas, much less to flooding that 
occurs in the Northwest because of harvesting such as this.
  Mr. President, do not just take my word for this. We have received 
editorials from across the West, and I ask unanimous consent to have 
them printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the editorials were ordered to be printed 
in the Record, as follows:

        [From the Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer, Mar. 6, 1996]

              Senator Murray's Good ``Timber Rider'' Plan

       Sen. Patty Murray has introduced sensible legislation to 
     undo the damage contained in the controversial ``timber 
     salvage rider.''
       Congress ought to adopt it forthwith.
       The Seattle Democrat's bill would cancel the harvest of 
     healthy old-growth trees in environmentally sensitive areas 
     and give companies that had bought the timber the right to 
     log elsewhere in the national forests or buy back their 
     logging rights from the Forest Service.
       The controversy was set in motion by congressional passage 
     of a measure masquerading as a means to quickly harvest sick 
     or dying trees.
       Sponsored by Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, the salvage 
     rider expanded the definition of salvage and re-opened to 
     logging healthy areas that had been put off limits to loggers 
     after the sales were made because of endangered species 
     habitat restrictions.
       But little interest was shown by the timber industry in 
     felling the sick trees that supposedly are threatening 
     healthy stands. They have until September, when the rider 
     expires, to rid the woods of this menace.
       An unfortunate feature of Gorton's legislation was that it 
     allowed ``salvage'' harvesting without regard to 
     environmental law, so the sales could not be appealed in 
     court.
       A critical feature of Murray's legislation is that it 
     restores existing environmental laws to the harvest. That 
     feature must be preserved.
       There is no persuasive argument to be made for suspending 
     environmental laws in national forests. Gorton's own bill to 
     cope with the furor caused by his rider also envisions buy-
     backs and exchanges that would allow logging on less 
     environmentally sensitive lands.
       But Gorton would force the Forest Service, already reeling 
     under budget cuts, to eat the $100 million it may take to buy 
     back the trees. That doesn't make real-world sense.
       President Clinton initially--and rightly--resisted the 
     salvage rider but relented and signed it when Republican 
     lawmakers attached it to a budget bill he wanted. On a recent 
     visit to Seattle, Clinton admitted the rider was a 
     ``mistake.''
       It was a huge mistake, as all the guilty parties now seem 
     to realize. The sooner they make it right and put it behind 
     them, the better off they'll be.
                                                                    ____


           [From the Portland (OR) Oregonian, Mar. 12, 1996]

  Fix the Timber Rider--Senator Murray's Proposal Could Force Needed 
                Compromise on Old-Growth Sale Provision

       Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash., is offering the Senate a 
     chance it ought to grab to reconsider the increasingly 
     notorious timber rider that Congress passed last year.
       The rider, proposed by Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., was 
     aimed at expediting salvage sales of burned and diseased 
     trees on federal lands by freeing those sales from the normal 
     appeal procedures under environmental laws. Environmental 
     groups opposed it. Its most controversial provision, which 
     Murray would largely repeal, ordered the administration to 
     proceed with suspended sales of old-growth timber in Western 
     Oregon and Washington that don't meet current forest and 
     stream protection standards.
       Murray is proposing an amendment that would cancel the old-
     growth sale mandate but require the administration to either 
     make other timber available to purchasers or buy back the 
     standing timber they bought but can't log.
       Additionally, the Murray proposal would allow appeals of 
     proposed timber sales, including salvage ones, but it would 
     shorten the appeal period. On salvage sales, that's the 
     solution Congress should have adopted at the beginning.
       Regarding the Western Oregon and Washington old-growth 
     sales, Murray's proposal would provide more flexibility for 
     the U.S. Forest Service than a modification proposed by Sen. 
     Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., and Gorton to the original rider. They 
     would allow forest managers to substitute other timber for 
     the purchased tracts or to buy back the sale, but only if the 
     purchaser consented. A House-passed version allows the timber 
     exchange but does not include a buyback provision.
       As we noted a while back, the Hatfield proposal is a 
     considerable improvement over the confines of the original 
     rider. Murray's amendment is even more desirable, rolling the 
     original rider back even further. It isn't perfect and its 
     passage wouldn't resolve the controversy. But it could force 
     a compromise that the administration and responsible members 
     of both the timber industry and the environmental camp would 
     grudgingly accept.
                                                                    ____


           [From the Great Falls (MT) Tribune, Mar. 10, 1996]

                 Baucus Backs a Good Logging Compromise

       Senator Max Baucus has drawn some criticism for 
     cosponsoring a new salvage logging bill, but it makes sense. 
     And if both loggers and environmentalists are mad about it, 
     the legislation appears to be pretty well balanced.
       The legislation was originally proposed by Sen. Patty 
     Murray, D-Wash., to repeal the controversial logging law.
       Her bill would permit emergency timber harvests when needed 
     to reduce fire threats but would do so within the confines of 
     existing environmental laws.
       Her bill would immediately suspend all of the old-growth 
     sales and reinstate environmental laws in regard to the 
     salvage sales, reopening them to citizen appeals for 30 days.
       It limits the expedited salvage logging to areas already 
     with roads and places a priority on areas which have the best 
     chance of restoring forest health and reducing wildfire 
     risks.
       Murray also would tighten up the definition of salvage 
     timber in an effort to close loopholes critics say subject 
     live, healthy stands to the salvage cutting.
       In too many compromises, each side focuses on what has been 
     lost, rather than what has been gained.
       That's too bad because this legislation makes sense.
                                                                    ____


       [From the Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 27, 1996]

                        Timber Rider ``Mistake''

       It's good news, as far as it goes, that President Clinton 
     says the timber salvage rider legislation he signed was 
     ``just a mistake'' and should be repealed.
       The rider expires at the end of this year. The timber 
     companies therefore are hurrying to make lumber of healthy 
     old-growth trees in endangered habitat zones, not merely 
     diseased or fire-prone ones the law supposedly was meant to 
     address.
       So by the time political outrage and the tortuous machinery 
     of Congress can be brought to bear on this matter, the old-
     growth trees that are the center of the dispute may well have 
     vanished.
       In that case, all we're likely to be left with thanks to 
     this monumental blunder is renewed warfare in the Northwest 
     woods and more delightful vistas of sawed-off stumps.
                                                                    ____


              [From the Seattle (WA) Times, Feb. 28, 1996]

            Timber Salvage Bill Was Clear-Cut Bait 'n Switch

       The Northwest timber wars have been joined again, with 
     chain saws whining in the ancient forests of Washington and 
     Oregon while environmentalists resort to civil disobedience 
     and street demonstrations in an attempt to stop them.
       All this due to a little congressional bill called the 
     ``Emergency Salvage Timber Sale Program,'' passed by Congress 
     last year.
       President Clinton, who eventually signed that bill, now 
     says he believed that it would apply only to diseased or 
     fire-prone forests--not to what's left of old-growth forests. 
     Timber interests, including Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, say 
     that's hogwash; he knew, or should have known, what he was 
     signing.
       The record favors the president. Nearly a year ago, last 
     March 3, Gorton faxed to The Times a six-page press release 
     laying out eight arguments for this timber bill. His document 
     refers repeatedly to ``salvage logging.'' There is no mention 
     of old-growth timber.
       ``We're not talking about clear-cuts in the Olympics,'' 
     Gorton argued in his release. ``These operations will pull 
     dead, dying, burnt, diseased, blown-down and bug-infested 
     timber out of the forest, and reforest the salvaged areas. 
     It's an important part of restoring these forests to 
     health.''
       Gorton's arguments made sense. That's why he won support 
     from the White House and others who were willing to relax 
     environmental laws to allow salvage logging, generate much-
     needed jobs and reduce the fire danger in Northwest forests.
       Only later was the bill expanded to include long-delayed 
     sales of old-growth timber. A year later, Gorton's plan has 
     generated little or no salvage logging. Instead, loggers are 
     attempting to clear-cut an ancient stand of Douglas firs in 
     the Olympics, where fire is not an issue. Gorton's backers, 
     including this newspaper, feel lured into a bait-and-switch 
     game.
       The amount of timber at issue is modest--certainly not 
     enough to undermine the biological health of Northwest 
     forests. And Gorton makes a reasonable argument that the old-
     growth timber is being cut under 6-year-old contracts that 
     should be honored.
       The point is this: Gorton won initial, bipartisan support 
     by peddling his salvage rider as one thing. And the Northwest 
     is being asked to live with quite another. This puts 
     President Clinton on solid ground to reconsider his agreement 
     to a good deal gone bad.
                                                                    ____


[[Page S2027]]

         [From the Salem (OR) Statesman Journal, Mar. 6, 1996]

                      Limit Salvage to Dead Timber


               Environment must rule the harvest decision

       Sen. Mark Hatfield has tried to bring accord out of the 
     discord about the timber salvage bill, but his compromise 
     proposal offers little hope of satisfying either side.
       It has two major weaknesses. It extends the time during 
     which logging is exempt from environmental laws--which 
     environmentalists would protest. And it allows the federal 
     government to buy out the timber-cutting contracts, provided 
     the timber companies that hold the contracts agree and the 
     government comes up with the money. The chance that the 
     companies would agree to be bought out and that the 
     government would put up the money to do so is slim.
       The cleanest solution is to revise the measure.
       Allow the cutting of dead and dying trees. That was the 
     purpose of the bill in the first place. Many 
     environmentalists disagree with the salvage, but there are 
     good arguments to go ahead. We see some of them every day in 
     Oregon when we drive by forests turned brown by disease or 
     fire.
       Then remove form the measure the rest of the timberlands. 
     Let these tracts stand on their own merits as either suitable 
     for harvesting or as essential to the environment. Most of 
     the timber already has undergone environmental assessment. 
     Supposedly, the federal government is satisfied that the 
     sales are environmentally sound.
       If the assessment of the risk to the environment has 
     changed in the years since the sales were first considered, 
     then they can be canceled or the conditions revised. For 
     timber that already has been sold, the government would 
     return the money.
       Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., offered a reasonable compromise 
     this week. She would encourage salvage logging but without 
     suspending environmental assessment is done quickly, this is 
     a reasonable alternative.
       What has angered most citizens about the salvage bill was 
     not the cutting of green timber itself--although there is 
     considerable opposition--but the suspension of environmental 
     laws and the right of appeal to the courts. The public must 
     continue to have the right to argue the management of public 
     timber and to appeal to the courts.
       Anything less will not satisfy the public regardless of how 
     carefully a timber management plan is devised.
                                                                    ____


              [From the Bellingham Herald, Mar. 12, 1996]

              Our View: OK Murray's Compromise Timber Plan

       Forestry: Senator's proposal is fair to both 
     environmentalists and timber interests.
       Timber workers and communities deserve a measure of help to 
     get through the painful transition they face. But the helping 
     hand shouldn't exact too great a cost on the environment.
       Legislation introduced by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., 
     strikes the proper balance.
       Murray's bill would amend a law enacted last summer 
     purportedly to let salvage timber--dead and dying trees--be 
     logged through September 1996 from tens of thousands of acres 
     of federal old-growth forests in the West and South. What the 
     law actually does is allow logging of any old-growth timber 
     in the areas that have been opened up.
       A poll last fall indicated that 60 percent of Americans 
     support environmental regulations, including those that 
     protect endangered species and restrict logging in the 10 
     percent of old-growth forests still left standing.
       The salvage timber law sponsored by U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, 
     R-Wash., was enacted to provide temporary economic relief to 
     timber workers and communities reeling from economic 
     hardships. A 1990 court ruling has all but shut down logging 
     in old-growth forests on federal lands.
       Murray's bill would halt logging of healthy old-growth 
     trees but permit salvage logging on a permanent basis. It 
     also would speed up the process by which the timber sales are 
     approved.
       Too risky, environmentalists complain. Gorton's entire law 
     must be repealed to avoid further environmental damage.
       Too risky, environmentalists complain. Gorton's entire law 
     must be kept intact to avoid exacerbating an already dismal 
     economic picture.
       Murray attempted to amend Gorton's bill and implement the 
     compromise last summer. That effort failed by one vote.
       The compromise would correct the imbalance created by 
     Gorton's law. It would be fair to both sides. Lawmakers 
     should pass it this year.

             [From the Reno Gazette-Journal, Mar. 13, 1996]

               The Assault on Our Forests Must Be Stopped

       (1995 timber salvage law amendments are needed to stop the 
     willy-nilly cutting of trees.)
       The 1995 timber salvage law was a bad law--a very bad law 
     indeed. It pretended to help the nation's forests by making 
     it easier for the logging industry to take away dead and 
     dying trees, but in reality it endangered the forests by 
     permitting loggers to chop down huge numbers of perfectly 
     healthy trees. In addition, this act eviscerated the 
     protection of wildlife and removed the mandate of clean 
     water--which also freed the axes of the timber men to chop, 
     chop, chop willy-nilly.
       This law, proposed by Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., slipped 
     through Congress and past President Clinton's veto pen on the 
     pretext that there was an emergency of unparalleled 
     proportions: i.e., all those dead and dying trees were a fire 
     hazard of such great potential that any measure was justified 
     in order to reduce the hazard. But while there certainly was 
     a need to get cracking on the problem in places such as the 
     Lake Tahoe basin, where homes and other structures could be 
     wiped out by a wildfire, there was no need to destroy 
     environmental protections at the same time--unless, of 
     course, the real aim was to conduct a sneak raid on 
     environmentalism itself. And that does indeed seem to have 
     been the subterranean motive.
       The law worked just as intended: Loggers cut swaths of 
     green timber and placed the remaining old growth forests of 
     the Pacific Northwest in greater danger than ever. It was 
     profit at any cost and at all costs.
       Now there is a chance to end the assault. An amendment by 
     Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., would halt all timber sales in 
     these ancient forests and would put other salvage sales under 
     stiffer environmental rules. It would give the federal 
     government a year to provide alternate timber but would also 
     permit the government to buy back previous timber sales. Also 
     to the good, it would permit appeals under environmental 
     laws. Finally, it would restrict salvage operations to dead 
     and dying trees, and would permit the cutting of healthy 
     trees only to the extent necessary to protect loggers and to 
     provide reasonable access.
       At the same time, our own Sen. Harry Reid has proposed an 
     amendment to eliminate the prohibition of Endangered Species 
     listings. These two amendments would do much to provide the 
     forests with the protection that they need, and both should 
     be passed by the U.S. Senate.
       Unfortunately, these amendments not only must compete 
     against the original legislation, which retains its ardent 
     supporters, but they must also contend with a much weaker 
     amendment by Gorton and Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., which 
     would protect some old-growth forests from the axe, but only 
     if replacement timber can be found elsewhere. That is not an 
     acceptable substitute for the real protection that the 
     Murray-Reid amendments would give. These are the amendments 
     that should--indeed must--be adopted.

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I have an editorial from the Seattle 
Post-Intelligencer: ``Senator Murray's good `timber rider' plan.''
  From the Portland Oregonian: ``Fix the timber rider. Senator Murray's 
proposal could force needed compromise on old-growth sale provision.''
  From the Great Falls Tribune, from the Seattle PI, from the Seattle 
Times, which talks about the amendment that was adopted last year and 
calls it a ``cut bait 'n' switch.''
  From the Statesman Journal in Salem, OR: ``Limit salvage to dead 
timber.''
  From the Bellingham Herald: ``OK Murray's compromise timber plan.''
  And from the Reno Gazette-Journal: ``The assault on our forests must 
be stopped.''
  Mr. President, I have a long heritage in the Pacific Northwest. I was 
born and raised there. My father was born and raised there, and, in 
fact, my mother was born and raised in Butte, MT. In fact, my husband's 
grandfather was born in Seattle back at the end of the last century.
  We know the people in this region. We know why they are angry today. 
They are angry because the rider that passed last year through this 
Congress left them--people, my brothers, my sisters, my friends, the 
people I have run into in the grocery store and at townhall meetings 
across my State--it has left those people out of the decisionmaking 
process when it comes to our Federal force.
  People in our region want to be involved. They want to have a say, 
and they do care. They care deeply. Because of the rider that was 
passed last year, Federal agencies are out in the woods running timber 
sales today with little or no accountability, and that makes my 
constituents angry.
  Under the rider that passed last year, our ordinary citizens have no 
ability to influence Government decisions. That makes them angry.
  Under the rider that was passed last year, our timber communities 
have once again become the center of a political storm. They deserve 
better than that. My rider directly makes sure that those people in our 
timber communities do not have a policy that is in place for just a few 
short months, with timber, like I have shown you before, being cut 
down.
  Mr. President, my policy assures that these timber workers will be at 
work

[[Page S2028]]

logging dead and dying trees--true salvage, not green trees. It will 
assure that those jobs are there for the long run.
  Most important, my amendment puts people back into the process. 
People have a right to a say about the forests that we all own. People 
have a right to know that what they own is cared for and cared for 
well. That is what the environmental laws are all about that have 
passed in this Congress over the last four decades. That is what was 
taken away in the rider that was passed last summer. That is what is 
corrected in our amendment before us today.
  Mr. President, I cannot urge my colleagues strongly enough to please 
vote for the amendment in front of you, the Murray amendment, with the 
support of Senators Wyden and Baucus and Leahy, and many others, 
Senator Sam Nunn. The reason is, we have to get our timber areas out of 
war. We need to reduce anger, and most importantly, we need to put 
common sense, common sense and rationality, back into our timber policy 
across this country.
  That is what my amendment does. That is what your vote for this 
amendment will do. Help me send a message back to my constituents that 
this Congress does have the ability to listen when people are angry, 
this Congress does have the ability to put in place commonsense, 
practical solutions to problems that are out there, and that this 
Congress will not make a mistake a second time.
  I thank my colleagues, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the Murray 
amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to 
be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, is there any time remaining? No one has 
offered to use it. Could the Chair indicate what the time situation is?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 2 minutes, 57 seconds on the 
Senator's side, and 22 seconds on the other side.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I yield back our time.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I yield back my time as well.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time having been yielded back, the Senate 
will proceed to vote on agreeing to amendment No. 3493, as modified, 
offered by the Senator from Washington. The yeas and nays have been 
ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, on this vote I have a pair with the 
Senator from Kansas [Mr. Dole]. If he were present and voting, he would 
vote ``no.'' If I were permitted to vote, I would vote ``yea.'' 
Therefore, I withhold my vote.
  Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Utah [Mr. Bennett] and the 
Senator from Kansas [Mr. Dole] are necessarily absent.
  Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New York [Mr. Moynihan] is 
absent on official business.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 42, nays 54, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 33 Leg.]

                                YEAS--42

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Chafee
     Conrad
     Daschle
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Glenn
     Graham
     Harkin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Murray
     Nunn
     Pell
     Pryor
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Simon
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                                NAYS--54

     Abraham
     Ashcroft
     Bond
     Breaux
     Brown
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     DeWine
     Domenici
     Faircloth
     Frist
     Gorton
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Helms
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kyl
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Pressler
     Reid
     Roth
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner

                   PRESENT AND GIVING A LIVE PAIR, AS

                         PREVIOUSLY RECORDED--1

       
     Jeffords, for
       

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Bennett
     Dole
     Moynihan
  So the amendment (No. 3493), as modified, was rejected.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. GORTON. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I know some Members are concerned about what 
the procedure is going to be for the remainder of the day and into the 
night.
  As the majority leader said yesterday, and after consultation with 
the Democratic leader today, our intent is to finish this bill. There 
are still an awful lot of amendments pending. We would appreciate 
Members coming to the floor and being prepared to go forward with their 
amendments. If they have a serious amendment, we need to know about it. 
If they are not going to offer it, we need to know about that.
  I want to be very clear that our intent is to complete the amendments 
and finish this bill tonight. So when the Sun starts setting in the 
West, I hope Members will not express great concern about what the 
schedule is going to be. Our intent is to go forward. We do not want to 
leave any misconception about how we are going to act on this 
legislation.
  So come on to the floor and let us get these amendments going and 
complete the bill tonight.
  I yield the floor.


                           Interstate 95 Fire

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, as many of my colleagues may be aware, a 
monstrous fire yesterday in Philadelphia has caused enormous damage to 
a long 2-mile stretch of Interstate 95. The Philadelphia Inquirer 
reports today that the eight-alarm blaze burned the bottom of I-95 as 
if it were a pot over an open flame, snapping support wires, charring 
concrete, and sending a column of sooty smoke south along the Delaware 
River. Early roadway damage estimates range from $2 to $5 million.
  I would like to discuss with the distinguished chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee the availability of emergency funding to 
restore this important roadway, which is so critical to the economy of 
my State and the eastern seaboard and to the quality of life of 
millions of Pennsylvanians.
  I understand that title II of this bill provides $300 million for the 
emergency fund of the Federal Highway Administration to cover expenses 
arising from the January, 1996 flooding in the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, 
and Northwest States and other disasters. Would my colleague agree that 
the substantial highway damage that occurred on Interstate 95 should be 
considered a disaster for the purposes of this legislation?
  Mr. HATFIELD. I recognize the concerns raised by the Senator from 
Pennsylvania. In providing the $300 million in appropriations for the 
emergency fund, it was the committee's intent to provide sufficient 
funding to cover a range of unforeseen disaster, such as the damage 
that has occurred on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia. When critical 
highways are impacted to such a degree that they must be closed and 
repaired, it is important that Congress ensures the availability of 
funds to restore the flow of commerce and individuals who are dependent 
on them. I would be glad to work with the Senator from Pennsylvania to 
ensure that the conference report on this legislation reflects the 
Congress' intention that the Interstate 95 fire should be considered as 
a disaster by the Federal Highway Administration.
  Mr. SPECTER. I thank the distinguished chairman and look forward to 
working with him in conference on this issue.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, are we in a quorum?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. No. We are not.

[[Page S2029]]

                Amendment No. 3494 to Amendment No. 3466

   (Purpose: To provide for payment for attorney's fees and expenses 
     relating to certain actions brought under the Legal Services 
                            Corporation Act)

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Idaho [Mr. Craig] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 3494.
       In the matter under the heading ``Payment to the legal 
     services corporation'' under the heading ``Legal Services 
     Corporation'' in title V of the Departments of Commerce, 
     Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies 
     Appropriations Act, 1996, strike ``$291,000,000'' and all 
     that follows through ``$1,500,000'' and insert the following: 
     ``$290,750,000 is for basic field programs and required 
     independent audits carried out in accordance with section 
     509; $250,000 is for a payment to an opposing party for 
     attorney's fees and expenses relating to civil actions named 
     In the Matter of Baby Boy Doe, and Doe v. Roe and Indian 
     tribe, with docket numbers 19512 and 21723 (Idaho February 
     23, 1996); $1,500,000''.

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I bring to the Senate this afternoon what 
in Idaho has been a phenomenally serious and frustrating matter in 
relation to a young adopted child and his adoptive parents. I say that 
because 6 years ago the Swenson family of Nampa, ID, adopted a 2-month-
old child. They went through all of the legal and appropriate channels 
to do so. They found out several months into the adoption of that 
child, when the legal processes were underway, that the native American 
tribe from which this child had come--and the child was half white, 
half native American--wanted the child returned even though the natural 
parents did not. As a result of that, a legal fight began. And Legal 
Aid Services of Idaho became involved in defending, supposedly, the 
child--even though the child was then less than 2 years old, and the 
child thought he was a member of the Swenson family--a loving, caring 
family.
  I and my staff visited with the Legal Services Corporation, 
suggesting they not become involved--that it was not the intent of 
Congress for Legal Services to use their money for these purposes, that 
there were truly poor and needy people who needed Legal Services to 
defend them, and that they ought to go elsewhere to find their clients.
  Another reason I argued that was because the Indian tribe--in this 
instance the Oglala Sioux--had their own attorney and their own money. 
They were planning to defend themselves and to argue that this child 
ought to be returned to their tribe. Believe it or not, this legal 
fight went on for 6 years. That legal fight was just settled a few 
months ago in the Idaho Supreme Court. Legal Aid Services of Idaho took 
this fight all the way to the Supreme Court, expending thousands and 
thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money.
  Here is the headline in the local press of February 23, ``Casey's 
Adoption Final Today.'' The Supreme Court of Idaho finally said to the 
Swenson family, ``You are entitled to your son,'' the son now being 6 
years old.
  The story seemed to have a marvelous positive ending, but the tragedy 
is that the Swenson family spent $250,000 protecting their adopted son. 
They sold their farm. Here are pictures of the farm being auctioned off 
less than a month ago to pay the legal fees because of the attack by 
Legal Services.
  Of course, we know Legal Services Corporation and their grantees are 
funded by tax dollars. They should be protecting the poor. That is 
Congress' intent. The ranking minority member of the appropriations 
subcommittee has fought for years to assure that kind of direction. I 
argued with Legal Services that that is where their money ought to be 
spent. But, oh, no, they had to take on this family. They bankrupted 
the family in an attempt to gain custody of this child. The family won. 
The happy ending is here. But the family is bankrupt.
  My amendment today is simple. It takes the necessary moneys from 
Legal Services Corporation and gives them to that family. We think that 
is fair and appropriate. And I have worked with the chairman, and the 
chairman of the subcommittee, and the ranking member of the 
subcommittee to deal with this because I think this sends a clear 
message to Legal Services Corporation and its grantees: Do what the law 
intends you to do. Defend the poor where it is necessary against a more 
powerful society. But do not enter into these areas where clearly those 
who might need defending have the resources and support they need.
  In this instance, that was all very, very clear throughout this 
fight. It was simply a fight that Legal Services attorneys would not 
stay out of, for political reasons.
  I yield the remainder of my time.
  Mr. HOLLINGS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. The distinguished Senator from Idaho is right on 
target. I have been a champion and remain a champion of Legal Services. 
I have learned over my 20-some, almost 30 years now that from time to 
time there are excesses. In the early days, we were paying for 
everybody to come up here and break up the Congress. And Senator Javits 
and I, we put the provisions in there that cases should relate to 
domestic, to landlord-tenant cases, employment cases, and everything 
else.
  This, of course, is a domestic case, but it is a case wherein a very 
responsible entity, namely the Indian tribe, had their own counsel and 
everything else of that kind. We are not going to use Legal Services 
moneys to sue the Governor of New Jersey. We are not going to use Legal 
Services to sue where the others have attorneys. This particular 
corporation, started by Associate Justice Lewis Powell when he was head 
of the American Bar Association, is one of the finest that there is, 
very much needed, and we need increases. The Senator from New Mexico 
and I cosponsored the amendment to increase the amount for Legal 
Services. We are not going to get the support of the Members of 
Congress when these excesses are allowed to go unnoticed.
  I am tickled that the distinguished Senator from Idaho has raised the 
question. If we can get some discipline over there and against these 
excesses, I think it will help Legal Services overall. So I agree to 
the amendment.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, the amendment has been cleared on this 
side, and I urge its adoption.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 3494) was agreed to.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which 
the amendment was adopted.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee and the ranking member of the subcommittee. The ranking 
member has been gallant in his effort to maintain the Legal Services 
System that responds to the poor and the needy, and I truly appreciate 
his willingness to look at this issue and to accept it and for the 
chairman to accept it also. I do believe it sends a message, but it 
also does something very significant in our society: It rights a wrong.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Exactly.
  Mr. CRAIG. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Senator.
  Mr. HATFIELD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. HATFIELD. I would like to add to information on the previous 
amendment that the subcommittee chairman, Senator Gregg, I am informed, 
approved of the amendment as well.
  Mr. President, we are now at a time when the so-called big issues, 
not all of them, but a goodly number of them, have been disposed of. We 
invite Senators who have other amendments to be considered, first of 
all, to consider whether they want to offer the amendments.
  We had 116 amendments that had been designated as of last night. I 
was hoping that we could reduce that considerably, and I am pleased to 
say that on our side, the acting majority leader, Senator Lott, has 
been doing yeomen work to get them reduced in number, and Senator 
Daschle, the Democratic leader, had indicated to me earlier this 
morning that, likewise on the Democratic side of the aisle, there has 
been an effort to try to reduce these numbers of amendments.

[[Page S2030]]

  Mr. President, the House of Representatives is expecting to pass a 1-
week extension of the existing CR perhaps this afternoon. They will 
send that over to the Senate once they have adopted it. The Senate, in 
this process now, would be then privileged to have a vote on that CR or 
to continue work on the current vehicle, the omnibus appropriations 
bill. I am very hopeful that we can keep on this bill to clean it up 
and finish it because we have to go to the House for a conference 
following our action. One week is not a very long time in the 
consideration of this vehicle and that which we are substituting for 
the House-passed omnibus package.

  I am very hopeful that we can finish this and launch our conference 
with the House and by Friday midnight pass the 1-week extension that 
the House will probably pass today.
  I think that is an orderly progression of our responsibility because 
I am fearful that if we extend this CR for 1 week, there is no pressure 
to finish this bill, and that will put us into next week on this 
vehicle and shortening the time, we have to understand, necessary to 
allow for a conference with the House.
  I hoped we could escape any additional CR, but that is not the way 
the Senate has worked its will. I wish to indicate again that if 
Senators are serious about the amendments they have listed, I hope they 
will appear in the Chamber and provide the body an opportunity to 
discuss and to dispose one way or another of the amendments.
  Senator Hatch has indicated that he will be here at 1 o'clock in 
order to offer an amendment. I see the Senator from North Dakota in the 
Chamber, looking as though he is preparing to ask for recognition, and 
hopefully he is preparing to offer an amendment, because, very frankly, 
I do need a soft shoe or catchy tunes. We have about a 20-minute 
interval facing us that I do not want to waste until the Senator from 
Utah arrives on his schedule for submission of an amendment.
  Am I reading the actions of the Senator from North Dakota correctly?
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will advise the Senator from Oregon I 
should like to seek the floor for 2 minutes on an unrelated item. I 
think there is one amendment referenced for me which may occur but 
would require no floor time. So I will not ask for additional time from 
the Senator from Oregon.
  I appreciate the difficulty is to try to get this bill done, and I 
understand the urgency with which he requests Senators to come and 
offer their amendments. I share the interest in seeing that this bill 
gets completed. If there are no other Senators seeking recognition when 
the Senator from Oregon relinquishes the floor, I would ask for 2 
minutes on an unrelated subject.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I hope it is in the form of a unanimous-
consent, and then I would say that I would object to that unanimous 
consent request from the Senator from North Dakota unless it includes a 
soft shoe or a catchy tune for the rest of the time we are waiting for 
the Senator from Utah.
  Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. I would say to my friend from Oregon, the soft shoes and 
loud tunes, was it, are better reserved for other Members of the 
Senate. In fact, we have seen one example of that in the Senate. It was 
played and replayed on the nightly news, and I thought it had less to 
do with talent than it had to do with the mere shock of seeing it occur 
on the Senate floor.

  Let me ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 minutes as if in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Chair hears none, and 
it is so ordered.

                          ____________________