[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 75 (Thursday, June 11, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6131-S6133]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         STATE OF RURAL OREGON

  Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, this coming weekend the President 
of the United States will travel to my home State of Oregon to deliver 
the commencement speech at Portland State University. As Oregon's 
junior Senator, I welcome President Clinton. I look forward to seeing 
his remarks and want him to know he is welcome in my State.
  While in Portland, he will find a vital, vibrant community, like much 
of the Nation, which has enjoyed very

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good economic times. Because of this, the President might leave 
Portland thinking his administration's policies, even those regarding 
natural resources and the environment, have been good for Oregon. And 
if he does that, if he has that impression, he will be sadly mistaken.
  During the last recess, I traveled through the rest of Oregon. I 
returned from Washington last weekend having spent 5 days in eastern 
Oregon. I went to the communities of Condon, Boardman, Hermiston, 
Pendleton, LaGrande, Baker City, Ontario, Nyssa, Burns, John Day, 
Enterprise, Milton-Freewater, and Ione.
  This region is the home to honest, hard-working people. It is a 
region that is also home to some of the most breathtaking scenery on 
the Earth. It is a region of forests and rivers, mountains and valleys. 
It is a region where people earn their living from the land. But it is 
a region in dire economic straits. It is a region which is fighting for 
its survival.
  Many States have what I term country-city divides, conflicts between 
rural and urban areas. I happen to be the first Senator elected in 
Oregon who has lived in rural Oregon in nearly 70 years. I take the 
issues with respect to all of my State very seriously. I take the 
issues that affect rural Oregon very personally.
  I would like to report to my colleagues on the State of rural Oregon, 
the rest of Oregon, today, and to invite the President not just to go 
to Portland but to come with me to John Day, to come with me to Nyssa, 
to come with me to Burns, OR, and to see for himself an area of my 
State that has been terribly damaged by many of his administration's 
policies.
  These are Oregonians who have made their living off the land for 
generations. They are now being forced out of business by policies of 
this administration. These policies are often driven by emotionally 
generated, questionable science to institute severe restrictions on 
agriculture, forestry, grazing, and mining on both public and private 
lands.
  Mr. President, there are people in the administration now who talk 
with straight faces, without blinking, about tearing out the Columbia 
River dams. These are assets built by the Federal Government in the 
Second World War. They were built to serve a multiple of purposes. They 
were built to provide public safety from spring flooding; they were 
built to provide irrigation for agriculture; they were provided to move 
crops from country to city, the city of Portland, the Port of Portland, 
where 40 percent of the wheat in the West goes right through and down 
that river.
  They were built also to produce electricity. Heaven forbid, people 
need electricity. They were built specifically to provide the 
production of metals for weaponry in the Second World War. But now we 
are being told that all of these values must be subordinate to the 
single value of supposedly protecting the environment. They want to 
blow up these dams.
  I am afraid I probably motivated some of my environmental opponents 
when I told them that when they blow the dams I will be on top of them, 
because I feel very strongly that the multiple of public values that 
are to be served by these are still worthy values. And there are many 
things we can do to make them more environmentally friendly, and we are 
doing that as we speak.
  Well, that is an aside. But the people that I know in rural Oregon 
are good stewards of their land. After all, they need their land for 
their livelihoods, and they desperately would like to pass it on to 
their next generation, to their children. Moreover, these people make 
their living by producing food and wood fiber that all Americans need 
and use in our everyday lives.

  I sometimes begin to think that we are so removed from rural 
communities in our modern society that we think we do not need farmers 
because there is a Safeway down the street, we do not need foresters 
because there is a lumber yard down the street, and we forget this 
connection.
  As we forget this connection, we begin to enact laws that shut down 
all of our basic American industries of mining, grazing, farming, 
forestry, fishing, drilling--all of these things that we have done that 
have produced this American standard of living.
  I fear as we shut these things down, we will then lament the day when 
our economy takes a very serious downturn. And it is difficult to 
reverse, because even in this room, Mr. President, everything around us 
is the product of the Earth in one way or the other. It came out of the 
Earth, and we bring these materials into commerce to produce products. 
Well, we all use them.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time requested by the distinguished 
Senator has expired.
  Mr. SMITH of Oregon. I ask unanimous consent to have an additional 5 
minutes, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SMITH of Oregon. For all the talk of a postindustrial service 
economy, Mr. President, people's most basic needs are still food and 
shelter.
  Let me offer some facts and figures to help put things in 
perspective. Eleven of Oregon's thirty-six counties had double-digit 
unemployment in March, including Grant County with a rate of nearly 20 
percent, Lake County at 15 percent, Wallowa County at 14.4 percent. It 
is about to get much worse.
  For example, Mr. President, people do not like the way a clearcut 
looks, but nature has a way of clearcutting, too. It is called a forest 
fire. We have them very commonly in my part of the world, and yet even 
the salvage of burnt timber is not being allowed to be harvested in my 
State now. That makes no sense.
  And 122 mills have shut down in Oregon since 1990. Timber receipts to 
Grant County for roads and schools declined from a high of $12.4 
million in 1992--$12.4 million--to $1.9 million in 1997. What are we 
saying about schools? What are we saying about roads?
  The amount of timber harvested from our public lands has been reduced 
by approximately 80 percent. Under the President's Northwest Forest 
Plan, only 3 million of the 24 million acres--or 12 percent of the 
available acreage--is open for sustainable timber production. All this 
despite the fact that tree growth rates exceed harvest rates by 85 to 
90 percent.
  The Clinton administration would have us believe that they need to 
take over the management of Oregon's natural resources because we are 
incapable of doing so. Nothing could be further from the truth. In 
fact, Oregon has some of the toughest land use laws in the Nation. 
Despite the utilization of forest lands for agriculture, urbanization, 
and infrastructure, 91 percent of the forest land base that existed in 
Oregon in 1630--in the year 1630--91 percent of that land still exists 
as forests and for growing trees.
  Mr. President, the final visit of my week in eastern Oregon was to 
the Ione High School commencement, where I had the privilege of 
delivering the graduation address. Ione is a small community, and its 
class of 1998 is also small. There were nine graduates. Yet nearly 500 
people packed the high school gymnasium on a Friday evening to lend 
their support as a community to these outstanding young people.
  As I looked at the graduates, I could not help but wonder what future 
there was for those who wished to live and work and raise a family in 
eastern Oregon. Will there be jobs for them? Will there be good schools 
for their children? Will this administration sentence them to a future 
with no option but to move to a city, to an urban area, in order just 
to make a living?
  I returned from that trip, Mr. President, with a commitment to 
redouble my efforts on behalf of the good people of rural Oregon and to 
do everything within my power to ensure that their communities and 
their way of life will survive.
  Finally, the next indignity to be visited upon rural Oregon involves 
the implementation of the Glenn amendment which now may invoke 
unilateral sanctions that unjustly impact our farmers. I think the 
distinguished Senator who has just left the Chair has a bill, I think 
Senator Murray has a bill, and I have a bill to address this very 
issue. Now, I know Senator Glenn and I know he is a good and decent 
man, and I know his bill was designed to deter nuclear proliferation. I 
am all for it. It didn't work.
  Now we are about to witness the incredible spectacle of wrestling 
ourselves to the ground. The government is about to impose sanctions 
that will ultimately not hurt Pakistan because

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the truth of the matter is our competitors love this. The people that 
will be hurt are the people of rural Oregon, Washington, Idaho and 
others, who will lose 40 percent of their markets to U.S. sanctions on 
U.S. farmers that have had no ability to deter nuclear 
nonproliferation.
  I hope my colleagues will look at a bill which I am proud to 
cosponsor. It is a bill by Senator Lugar that has a ``stop, look, and 
listen'' provision to this whole episode of unilateral sanctions, which 
in effect makes war on our own people. I think we need to stop and look 
at this very, very seriously.
  Mr. President, I indicated how devastated wheat farmers will be in 
the rural parts of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington by the sanctions now 
about to be imposed by the Clinton administration by the Arms Export 
Control Act. Food aid under this act is supposed to be exempted. It is 
important that credits and credit guarantees for export of wheat also 
be exempted.
  For that reason, I am introducing legislation this morning to exempt 
credit guarantees from any sanctions to be imposed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gregg). The Senator from Massachusetts is 
recognized for 15 minutes.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Kerry, Mr. Cleland and Mr. Abraham pertaining to 
the introduction of S. 2157 are located in today's Record under 
``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. CLELAND. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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