[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 118 (Monday, September 13, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10754-S10769]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
                                  2000

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of H.R. 2466, which the clerk will report by 
title.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 2466) making appropriations for the Department 
     of the Interior and related agencies for the fiscal year 
     ending September 30, 2000, and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Gorton amendment No. 1359, of a technical nature.
       Hutchison amendment No. 1603, to prohibit the use of funds 
     for the purpose of issuing a notice of rulemaking with 
     respect to the valuation of crude oil for royalty purposes 
     until September 30, 2000.

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending 
amendments be laid aside.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator's request is granted.


                           Amendment No. 1588

  (Purpose: To make certain modifications to the Forest System budget)

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1588, which I 
believe is currently at the desk, and ask for its immediate 
consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Bryan], for himself, Mr. 
     Fitzgerald, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Reid and Mr. Wyden, proposes an 
     amendment numbered 1588.

  Mr. BRYAN. I ask unanimous consent reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       On page 63, beginning on line 1, strike ``$1,239,051,000'' 
     and all that follows through line 6 and insert 
     ``$1,216,351,000 (which shall include 50 percent of all 
     moneys received during prior fiscal years as fees collected 
     under the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965 in 
     accordance with section 4(i) of that Act (16 U.S.C. 460l-
     6a(i))), to remain available until expended, of which 
     $33,697,000 shall be available for wildlife habitat 
     management, $22,132,000 shall be available for inland fish 
     habitat management, $24,314,000 shall be available for 
     anadromous fish habitat management, $29,548,000 shall be 
     available for threatened, endangered, and sensitive species 
     habitat management, and $196,885,000 shall be available for 
     timber sales management.''.
       On page 64, line 17, strike ``$362,095,000'' and insert 
     ``$371,795,000''.
       On page 64, line 22, strike ``205:'' and insert ``205, of 
     which $86,909,000 shall be available for road construction 
     (of which not more than $37,400,000 shall be available for 
     engineering support for the timber program) and $122,484,000 
     shall be available for road maintenance:''.

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, today I am offering an amendment with my 
colleague from Illinois and my colleague from Oregon that is a win-win 
for the American taxpayer and the environment.
  Our amendment reduces the subsidy for the below-cost timber program 
administered by the Forest Service and for the construction of logging 
roads in our national forests.
  In addition, our amendment reallocates needed monies to those Forest 
Service programs underfunded by the committee, such as road 
maintenance, wildlife and fish habitat management, and threatened and 
endangered species habitat management.
  Each year, the American taxpayers spend millions of dollars to 
subsidize the construction of roads needed for logging on national 
forest lands.
  The appropriations bill before us today contains over $37 million for 
the Forest Service to assist in the construction and reconstruction of 
timber roads in our national forests. This assistance is in the form of 
contract administration, construction oversight, and engineering, 
planning, and design work performed by the Forest Service for the 
logging companies which are merely left with the task of building the 
roads to extract the timber.
  Our amendment would reduce this subsidy by a modest amount, $1.6 
million, which is the amount the program was increased above the 
administration's budget request.
  Similarly, this bill contains $228.9 million for the administration 
of the timber sale program, which is more than $32 million above the 
administration's budget request.
  These expenditures for a money losing timber program are an enormous 
drain on the Treasury.
  In their most recent Forest Management Program Annual Report, dated 
July 1998, the Forest Service acknowledges losing $88.6 million from 
their timber program in fiscal year 1997.
  This was the second consecutive year that the Forest Service reported 
a loss.
  In addition to the reported loss, the $88.6 million figure excludes a 
full accounting of all costs associated with logging.
  In past fiscal years, independent analyses estimate the loss from 
below-cost timber sales are far greater than those reported by the 
Forest Service.
  The General Accounting Office estimated that the timber program cost

[[Page S10755]]

taxpayers at least $1.5 billion from 1992 to 1997.
  Our amendment would reduce funding for timber sale management by 
$32.015 million to the level requested by the administration.
  In spite of the fact that our National Forests supply a mere 4 
percent of our nation's annual timber harvest, this bill continues to 
reflect the dominance of the timber program at the expense of other 
programs designed to improve forest health and enhance the public's 
enjoyment of our national forests.
  More than 380,000 miles of roads criss-cross the national forests. 
This is a more extensive road network than the National Interstate 
Highway System.
  The Forest Service estimates that over 80% of these roads are not 
maintained to public safety and environmental standards.
  As a matter of public policy, I would argue that it makes more sense 
to maintain the roads we already have than to spend money building new 
roads we don't need.
  Many scientists have found that road building threatens wildlife 
because it causes erosion of soils, fragments intact forest ecosystems, 
encourages the spread of noxious weeds and invasive species, and 
reduces habitat for many animals needing refuge from man.
  It has been found that when roads wash out they dump rocks and soil 
on lower slopes and into streambeds, and even when they remain intact, 
roads act as channels for water and contribute further to the erosion 
of lands and streams.
  Scientists say that the overall effect is that the streams and rivers 
fill with silt and the shallower waters mean degraded fish habitat and 
more flooding.
  In my home state of Nevada, the road network throughout the Lake 
Tahoe basin has been identified as a major contributor to the 
degradation of water quality and decline in clarity of Lake Tahoe.
  An important component of the Forest Service's road maintenance 
program involves the decommissioning of old logging roads.
  This program has been essential to efforts in the Lake Tahoe basin to 
improve erosion control and the overall water quality of the lake.
  The bill before us today cuts the administration's request for road 
maintenance by $11.3 million.
  The Forest Service has indicated that their annual road maintenance 
needs total $431 million per year, and that their backlog for deferred 
maintenance totals $3.85 billion.
  The bill before us today provides less than a quarter of the funding 
the Forest Service requires to address their annual road maintenance 
needs.
  Addressing this need would have considerable environmental benefits, 
such as reducing erosion from roads and storm proofing existing 
culverts.
  It is important to remember that the timber industry's responsibility 
for maintaining logging roads ends with the end of the timber sale, 
leaving all future maintenance costs to the taxpayer.
  Our amendment adds $5.3 million for important road maintenance 
projects throughout our national forests.
  The National Forests include nearly 200,000 miles of fishable streams 
and more than 2 million acres of lakes, ponds and reservoirs that 
support hundreds of inland fish species with important recreational, 
commercial, and ecological values.
  The inland fisheries habitat management program allows the Forest 
Service to protect and restore inland streams and lakes, along with the 
fish and aquatic life they support.
  The bill before us today cuts the administration's request for this 
program by $7 million.
  Our amendment proposes to restore $3.115 million in funding for this 
program.
  This additional funding would allow the Forest Service to enhance or 
restore several hundred miles of stream and over 400 additional acres 
of ponds, lakes, and reservoirs.
  The National Forests also provide critical spawning and rearing 
habitat for Pacific, Great Lakes, and Atlantic stocks of anadromous 
fish, such as salmon, sturgeons, and lampreys.
  These stocks contribute significantly to the quality of life, 
recreational and commercial fishing, and the economy of local 
communities.
  The Interior bill cuts the administration's funding request for 
anadromous fisheries habitat management by $6.4 million.
  Our amendment proposes to restore $1.6 million for this program.
  This funding will enable the Forest Service to complete critical work 
on over 100 additional miles of anadromous streams and 1,000 acres of 
additional acres of anadromous lakes and reservoirs, complementing the 
efforts of our state, federal, and tribal partners.
  The wildlife habitat management program of the Forest Service for 
fiscal year 2000 will focus on prescribed burns to improve wildlife 
habitat.
  It will help to develop and protect wetlands and water sources in 
arid habitats for waterfowl, quail, and wild turkey, in addition to 
restoring riparian habitat that benefits big game.
  The subcommittee cut $5 million from the wildlife program.
  Our amendment would restore $1.6 million in funding for this program.
  This funding would provide for an additional 8,000 acres of important 
habitat improvement, which would benefit both game and nongame species, 
and result in enhanced opportunities for wildlife-related recreation.
  The activities of the threatened, endangered, and sensitive species 
program serve to achieve recovery goals for threatened and endangered 
animals and plants.
  The Forest Service has indicated that this program continues to be 
essential to the mission of their agency.
  The committee cut the endangered species program by $5 million.
  Our amendment would restore $2 million for this program, which would 
allow the Forest Service to pursue conservation strategies to prevent 
the need for listing, thereby avoiding the loss of management 
flexibility and increased operating costs once listing occurs.
   Mr. President, the $20 million our amendment adds to wildlife, 
fisheries, and rare plant habitat management programs would enable the 
Forest Service to increase Challenge Cost-Share partnerships with 
organizations throughout the country, enabling the agency to leverage 
funding, better serve the public, and improve vital habitats for fish 
and wildlife.
  This funding is an investment for the nation's 63 million wildlife 
watchers, 14 million hunters, and 35 million anglers who spend 
approximately 127.6 million activity days hunting, fishing, and 
observing fish and wildlife annually on national forests.
  This result in local community expenditures of billions of dollars 
and over 230,000 full-time equivalent jobs.
  One out of every three anglers fish national forest waters 
nationally, and two out of three anglers in the West fish national 
forest waters.
  That is why our amendment is supported by groups like Trout 
Unlimited, the American Sportfishing Association, and Wildlife Forever.
   Mr. President, I would urge my colleagues to join a strong coalition 
of environmental, hunting, fishing, and taxpayer organizations in 
support of the Bryan-Fitzgerald-Wyden amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. CRAIG. 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. BRYAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                Amendment No. 1623 To Amendment No. 1588

      (Purpose: To make available funds for the survey and manage 
     requirements of the Northwest Forest Plan Record of Decision)

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

       The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Bryan], for himself, Mr. 
     Wyden, and Mr. Fitzgerald, proposes an amendment numbered 
     1623 to amendment No. 1588.

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       Beginning on page 1, line 3, strike ``$1,216,351,000'' and 
     all that follows through ``management'' on page 2, line 4, 
     and insert

[[Page S10756]]

     ``$1,225,351,000 (which shall include 50 percent of all 
     moneys received during prior fiscal years as fees collected 
     under the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965 in 
     accordance with section 4(i) of that Act (16 U.S.C. 460l-
     6a(i))), to remain available until expended, of which 
     $33,697,000 shall be available for wildlife habitat 
     management, $22,132,000 shall be available for inland fish 
     habitat management, $24,314,000 shall be available for 
     anadromous fish habitat management, $28,548,000 shall be 
     available for threatened, endangered, and sensitive species 
     habitat management, $196,885,000 shall be available for 
     timber sales management, and $10,000,000 shall be available 
     for survey and manage requirements of the Northwest Forest 
     Plan Record of Decision, for which the draft supplemental 
     environmental impact statement is to be completed by November 
     15, 1999, and the final environmental impact statement is to 
     be published by February 14, 2000''.
       On page 2, line 6, strike ``$371,795,000'' and insert 
     ``$365,795,000''.
       On page 2, line 11, strike ``$122,484,000'' and insert 
     ``$116,484,000''.

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I note that my colleague, one of the prime 
sponsors of the amendment, has joined us on the floor. I yield the 
floor at this point.
  Mr. WYDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I express my appreciation to the Senator 
from Nevada for all his effort in working with me and other colleagues 
from the Pacific Northwest on this issue. Folks in your part of the 
United States want to be sensitive to environmental values and economic 
needs in our communities. As a result of recent court decisions and 
other problems, instead of that win-win, we have essentially had a 
lose-lose, where we are not doing what is needed to protect 
environmental values; nor are we doing what is needed to protect 
communities--particularly rural communities--that have very legitimate 
economic concerns as a result of having resource-dependent economies.
  The Senator from Nevada has been working with us. I will begin my 
remarks by saying what we are trying to do in the Bryan-Fitzgerald-
Wyden amendment is incorporate some of the thinking that has been 
behind what the chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Gorton, has 
talked about on the floor and some of what Senator Robb tried to do 
last week with respect to environmental values. I think if you look at 
the Bryan-Fitzgerald-Wyden amendment, you will see, to some degree, 
efforts to try to reconcile some of the important points that Senator 
Gorton has made and the important points Senator Robb has made that are 
brought together in our amendment so we can take advantage of an 
opportunity to both improve the environment and move timber more 
quickly from the forests to the mills.
  When President Clinton took office in 1993, he came to the Pacific 
Northwest with a promise to help resolve the battle over owls and old 
growth. The administration put in place the Northwest Forest Plan which 
promised protection for my State's ancient forests, and also 
sustainable forestry for a State that has long been dependent in rural 
communities on forestry for family wage jobs.
  Over the past few months, the plan, which has already been failing to 
deliver what it promised, threatened to come completely undone when a 
Federal judge ruled that the Forest Service had failed to conduct 
biological surveys--an obligation known as survey and management--as 
required under the court-approved Northwest Forest Plan.
  Later this week, in the Forestry Subcommittee, chaired by my friend 
and colleague, Senator Craig, we are going to talk about who exactly is 
to blame for that fiasco. But today, we in the Pacific Northwest are 
left with dozens of suspended timber sales as a result of the Forest 
Service's failure to follow through on environmental protection 
obligations.
  The Bryan-Fitzgerald-Wyden amendment would earmark resources for this 
costly environmental work and place a stringent timetable on the 
completion of the surveys' environmental impact statement. Thus, by 
making sure these environmental surveys get done, and done quickly, we 
will help both the environment and timber workers do well.
  Building on the philosophy that we heard from Senator Gorton, that 
the program has not worked very well, and what we heard from Senator 
Robb about the importance of environmental values, what Senator Bryan, 
Senator Fitzgerald, and I are trying to do is incorporate some of the 
thinking behind both of those approaches so we can try to put this 
survey and management program on track but also bring to it some of the 
accountability that Senators Gorton and Craig are absolutely right in 
saying has been lacking in the past.

  I have shared, as I say, many of the concerns of the manager of the 
bill. But I don't think we can simply waive survey and management 
requirements altogether because what will happen is that will lead to a 
full employment program for lawyers if it were adopted and, even if in 
the short term, very serious problems because the bill would be vetoed 
by the President if section 329 survived conference in its present 
form.
  In August of this year, right after the first Northwest Forest Plan 
timber sales were enjoined, Senator Murray and I sent a letter to Under 
Secretary Lyons asking that the Forest Service and BLM meet with our 
offices to discuss how and why the survey and management requirements 
were stopping the Northwest Forest Timber Program and what could be 
done about it.
  Initially, in the August meeting between agency staff and the 
congressional staff, held both in D.C. and in my hometown of Portland, 
the Forest Service stated that $10 million more funding for personnel 
and addressing the scientific issues was necessary in order to get the 
survey and management program back on track. So let's be clear; the 
survey and management program is an unparalleled undertaking. It is 
going to provide new scientific protocols and data that can be useful 
in forests across the country. But it has to be done in a way that 
addresses the legitimate issues with respect to accountability that our 
colleague from Washington State, Senator Gorton, and Senator Craig of 
Idaho have addressed on this floor.
  So the Bryan-Fitzgerald-Wyden amendment directs $10 million for 
survey and management requirements to help the Forest Service conduct 
surveys on judicially stalled timber sales for species with known 
survey protocols. It will help the Service create protocols for the 
species currently lacking such data. This money starts us toward 
completion of the environmental scientific work that is necessary to 
move timber sales toward harvest.
  During the August meetings, the Forest Service was initially 
optimistic about the time it would take them to complete the 
environmental impact statements which they believe will answer the 
questions with respect to the success of the Northwest Forest Plan. At 
first, the Forest Service told me in a draft response to the letter 
Senator Murray and I sent them that the environmental impact statement, 
draft statement, would be completed this fall, and that the final would 
be ready early next year. Now the Forest Service is telling us that the 
draft will be available for public comment by December and perhaps the 
final environmental impact statement will be ready in May or June of 
next year. They have not given us any indication, other than overlap of 
this work with the holidays, why the timing of the work had to change.
  The Forest Service has been working on this project since 1997 and 
knew since 1994 that the survey and management requirement was coming 
down the pike. I certainly wasn't one who succeeded in getting his 
homework always done on time, but the Forest Service's timetable 
reflects extraordinarily poor planning, by any calculus.
  It is time for some accountability. We are going to have a chance to 
discuss those accountability issues later this week. I note the 
chairman of the Forestry Subcommittee has arrived. He knows I share 
many of his concerns about the lack of accountability with respect to 
the Forest Service on survey and management, and in other key areas.
  The Forest Service needs administrative deadlines to move this 
process along. They need to make this environmental impact statement a 
priority and get it done. The Bryan-Fitzgerald-Wyden amendment states 
the survey and management draft environmental impact statement should 
be completed

[[Page S10757]]

by November 15 of this year, and the final version of that impact 
statement should be published by February 14, 2000.
  Those deadlines also allow for the public a comment period required 
by law, plus some additional time for open and public discussion.
  This administration for years has been promising Congress they will 
get to work on the Northwest Forest Plan. The time for those empty 
promises is over. This administration needs some direction, and they 
need the extra money to achieve it.
  Finally, let me reiterate what I think the Bryan-Fitzgerald-Wyden 
amendment does. I say this to colleagues on both sides of the aisle. It 
incorporates much of the important analysis done by Senator Gorton and 
Senator Craig with respect to why the survey and management program has 
not worked and why the administration has dragged its feet on it while 
at the same time trying to incorporate the environmental concerns 
Senator Robb has legitimately addressed to ensure this program gets 
carried out.
  Under the Bryan-Fitzgerald-Wyden amendment, we would add the money 
necessary to carry it out. But we would finally have some real 
accountability and some real deadlines to make sure these important 
obligations, both in terms of environmental protection and in terms of 
meeting economic needs of rural communities, are addressed.
  I hope my colleagues on both sides will support it. If we adopt this 
amendment, I believe the end result will be healthier forests and a 
healthier timber economy.
  I, again, thank my colleague from Nevada for all of his assistance. I 
know my colleagues from Idaho and Washington as members of our Senate 
delegation from the Northwest have strong views on this as well. The 
Senator from Idaho knows how much I enjoy working with him. We are 
getting ready to go forward with our accounting payment legislation 
which gives us a chance to break some gridlock in that area. I am 
hopeful as we go forward on this important Interior bill we can also 
break the gridlock with respect to survey management and have 
additional funds that are needed but also additional accountability. 
That is why I am hopeful my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will 
support the Bryan-Fitzgerald-Wyden amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, as we debate the Interior appropriations 
bill--and now the amendment and the substitute amendment offered by 
Senators Bryan and Wyden--I guess I can say at the outset that the only 
thing I arrive at in trying to consider a $34 million cut in a very 
essential program to the U.S. Forest Service, especially when the 
advocacy of the cut comes from the two Senators from large public land 
Western States such as Nevada and Oregon, is ``frustration'' over the 
lack of understanding by a Senator from Nevada who is responsible for 
representing his State which is predominately a public lands State 
where grazing on public lands and mining the natural resources from 
those public lands are two of the primary economies of that State, that 
he would not be supportive of programs within the U.S. Forest Service 
that deal with public land resources in an appropriate and responsible 
way.
  I say that before I get to the specific issues of the amendment 
because I find it fascinating that in a publication called ``Public 
Lands Forests, What We Get, What We Pay For''--an interesting 
publication from the Political Economy Research Center which deals with 
the subject that the Senator from Nevada knows a great deal about, and 
in fact knows a great deal more about than I do as the chairman of the 
Forestry Subcommittee. That the Tahoe Basin, a beautiful and unique 
area in his State that is being dramatically impacted at this moment by 
a lack of forest management in a responsible way as we begin to see a 
relatively affluent urban interface grow around Lake Tahoe and into a 
forest that is dramatically different than what it was 40, 50, or 100 
years ago.
  Let me quote from this article. I am trying to set a tone for my 
frustration over why the Senator from Nevada is doing what he is doing 
and the Senator from Oregon would join with him. Let me quote from this 
publication, and the title to the article is called ``One Spark From 
Disaster.''
  I quote:

       As the road dropped out of the Sierras into the Lake Tahoe 
     basin below, the scenery made an abrupt change from healthy, 
     green forests to dead and dying stands of timber. The 
     congressmen on their way to the June 1997 Presidential Summit 
     on the problems facing the lake and surrounding basin were 
     taken aback by what they saw. Later, during a session on 
     forest health, U.S. Senator Richard Bryan of Nevada 
     exclaimed, ``This fores looks like hell!'' It appeared as if 
     someone had drawn an imaginary line across the landscape and 
     then nurtured the trees on one side, while destroying those 
     on the other.

  What the Senator was experiencing was what many are now experiencing 
on a Forest Service landscape across our Nation where we have 
constantly put out fires over the last 75 to 100 years and have not 
gone in and done selective logging or fuel reduction on our forest 
floors. We have literally created jungles--jungles that some would like 
to portray as beautiful, sweeping landscaped timbered vistas when it is 
quite obvious they are jungles that in the right environment--and the 
Tahoe Basin gets that environment every so often--could explode into 
total disaster of the landscape by the kinds of fires California has 
experienced this year and as have other parts of the country. Those of 
us more to the North in the Pacific Northwest have been fortunate 
enough this year in that our relatively unmanaged forests--and 
mismanaged in some instances--have been wet enough that we haven't had 
the fire threat.
  The article goes on to say:

       Ironically, forest management practices on surrounding 
     federal lands have put at risk the very qualities they were 
     supposed to preserve: the integrity of the forest and the 
     clarity of the lake below--

  Talking about the beautiful Lake Tahoe--

       Environmental regulations have delayed some management 
     actions and restricted timber harvests for forest treatments.

  It has resulted, of course, in the situation that I described around 
the Tahoe Basin.
  Of course, the reason the Senators from Nevada are appropriately 
concerned about the Tahoe Basin is not timber production per se because 
I don't think you would view the Tahoe Basin as being an area where you 
would expect timber production, but it is the recent interfacing of 
resort homes--summer homes, many of them going in the millions of 
dollars--that use Lake Tahoe and find Lake Tahoe to be a marvelous 
place to live and, of course, coupled with the thousands of tourists 
who come there on an annual basis to see this tremendously beautiful 
high mountain alpine lake.
  Why, then, would a Senator from Nevada want to cut a program where 
the money is utilized to do the necessary surveys and the preparations 
for the kind of fuel unloading or fuel decreases that Tahoe Basin would 
need because most of our timber sales are no longer green sales, they 
are sales of dead and dying timber. They are sales that are a product 
of forest health and not an ongoing aggressive timber program of the 
kind that brought the environmental outcry of a decade or two ago.
  I must say the Senator from Oregon has a bit of a different 
circumstance. He and I joined ranks on the floor last week on a very 
critical issue. As you know, when this administration came to town a 
few years ago, they were faced with the situation of a timber industry 
imploding in the State of Oregon, imploding as a result of a spotted 
owl decision that took a tremendous amount of the timbered landscape of 
that State--both Forest Service and BLM timber--off the table, or at 
least had locked it all up in the courts.
  This President, with the right intention--with the right intention--
went out to try to solve the problem and basically said: Let me reduce 
your cut by 80 percent and for the other 20 percent remaining, or 
something near that, we will focus all of our intent there, all of our 
energy, and do the finest environmental assessment possible, and that 
you will be able to log.
  We know the court decisions have gone well beyond the intent of the 
Endangered Species Act--reasonable and right surveys--and basically 
even stopped all of that logging.
  I can understand why the Senator would want to try to divert money to 
solve his problem. But he also probably

[[Page S10758]]

fails to recognize that, in that diversion, he is affecting timber 
sales or timber management programs everywhere else in the country 
because while he is supporting taking 34 million dollars out of that 
sales and preparation base and putting some of it over into surveys, he 
is denying the States of Arkansas, Idaho, and others the very resources 
they need to keep their people working and to keep an industry that is 
now staggering to stay alive on its feet.

  That is what brings Members to this point. Yes, we come to the floor 
now after having dramatically reduced these programs in the name of the 
environment--and in many instances appropriate reductions--and say we 
have to notch them down even more.
  For the next few moments I will talk about the adverse effects on 
rural communities and jobs that the Bryan-Wyden substitute will have. 
That substitute takes money away from the program that supports good 
family jobs. I am talking about good-paying jobs. The two Senators plan 
to redirect funds out of the timber program into wildlife surveys and 
road maintenance, which I think will be counterproductive because we 
are already putting millions of dollars into that program.
  For me to oppose their amendment does not mean we oppose the surveys. 
We know we have ramped up the amount of money that goes into those 
surveys and, of course, in ramping up the surveys, added costs to every 
timber sale. Then the Senator from Nevada can come to the floor and 
talk about these timber sales being too expensive and we ought to 
eliminate them. The reason they are expensive is that the court and 
some in the environmental community are demanding the money be 
transferred over to do the surveys.
  It is a Catch-22. We shove these costs off on to the price of a 
timber sale. We escalate it to the point it is not a cost-effective 
timber sale. Therefore, we give some Senators a basis to come to the 
floor and argue we ought to eliminate them because we can't make money 
at them when, in fact, the politics have pushed the cost of the surveys 
well beyond what would be reasonable, appropriate, and responsible, for 
the purpose of cutting those trees. That is the ultimate Catch-22 in 
forest management today that has nearly laid the State of Oregon low 
and has dramatically impacted the State of Idaho.
  Regarding the timber funding and the Forest Service that prepares the 
administrative forest activities, the committee already has an 
appropriate amount for wildlife and for road funding. Redirecting 
funds, as I have said, will harm the timber program. It will not be 
consequence free. It will cost jobs in Arkansas, in Idaho. It could 
cost jobs in other forested States across the Nation where there 
remains a struggling timber program.
  The President traveled this summer to several sections of the country 
suffering from poverty. I applaud him for dramatizing where poverty 
still exists in a country today that is nearly at full employment. It 
is almost ironic that in nearly the same breath it could be said that 
we are at full employment yet we have in certain areas high degrees of 
poverty. Most of that poverty exists in rural areas today. Most of that 
poverty exists in rural areas where those communities of working men 
and women are tied directly to the public lands and tied to the 
resources of those public lands.
  Nearly one-third of the counties adjacent to national forests suffer 
poverty levels that are at least one and a half times higher than the 
national average. Let me refer to a fascinating chart that comes from 
the U.S. Forest Service's TSPIRS employment figures.

  I refer to the solid bars on this chart showing employment from the 
harvesting and processing of national forest timber between 1989 and 
1997--just over a few years--has dropped from 140,000 working men and 
women to 55,500. Let me repeat that. That is more dramatic than any 
other employment sector in our country, except in the making of buggies 
and buggy whips, and no young person on this floor even knows what I am 
talking about because that industry died a long time ago. In a decade 
we have lost from a 140,000 high down to 55,000 jobs for working men 
and women. The Senator from Nevada wants to take that down even further 
by the action he proposes today.
  I am not quite sure I understand why, but let me show the very real 
impact. I am tremendously familiar with this because not only in my 
lifetime but in my tenure in the Congress, from when I started serving 
in 1981 until today, what I speak of has happened. I have watched it 
happen. I have been to the locations. I went to Grangeville, ID. I 
watched grown men sit on stacks of lumber and cry, literally, tears 
rolling down their cheeks because there were no more trees to cut under 
the Federal forest plan and they had lost their job. The mill was going 
to be unbolted, placed in shipping containers, and sent to Brazil to 
cut the rain forests because the environmentalists decided that the Nez 
Perce Forest in Idaho was no longer producing trees--although it was 
growing 10 times more trees than it was cutting.
  What happened? Here are the very dramatic figures from a tremendously 
narrow period of time. The State of Washington, 1989 to today, 55 mills 
closed and the loss of 3,285 jobs; Oregon, 111 mills closed and the 
loss of 11,600 jobs; Montana, 13 mills closed and 1,083 jobs lost; 
Idaho, 17 mills and 707 jobs lost.
  Let me talk about Midvale, ID, my hometown. If I am a little 
sensitive today, I should be. I used to go to that mill and buy lumber. 
It employed 45 men. The attitude on the floor is: What is the big deal? 
It is only 45 jobs. But it was 45 jobs and 45 homes in a community of 
300 people--not 30,000, not 50,000, not 100,000, but a community of 300 
people. To lose 45 jobs is to lose a lot. That mill has closed. Why? 
Because on the Payette National Forest, argumentatively, at least by 
national forest standards, there were no more trees to cut.
  That is why I can responsibly and legitimately turn to the Senator 
from Nevada today and say: Senator, your bill destroys jobs. Your bill 
destroys high-paying jobs, $35,000, $45,000, $55,000-a-year jobs for 
men and women, important jobs in rural communities, in Idaho, Oregon, 
Washington, California, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alaska.
  In talking of mill closures--and I referred to the dramatic numbers--
let me also quote the Western Council of Industry Workers, the United 
Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. It is their people, 
in many instances, who are losing these jobs. They say:

       Legislative efforts to reduce funding for forest management 
     programs seriously jeopardize the livelihoods of our members 
     and tens of thousands of forest products workers nationwide. 
     Job loss within our industry has been severe, as the timber 
     sales program has been reduced by 70 percent since the early 
     90s.

  A 70-percent reduction in the timber program, a reduction in jobs 
from 140,000 to 55,000, and the Senator from Nevada wants to cut it 
even deeper. It is pretty hard to understand why, especially when you 
look at the new environmental standards of today and what the Forest 
Service is demanding of a timber sale as it relates to the survey and 
the kind of mitigation plan that comes because of the Clean Water Act 
and the Clean Air Act and, of course, the National Environmental Policy 
Act and the Endangered Species Act and all of those kinds of rules and 
regulations and processes and procedures that by law are required. I am 
not sure I understand why.

  I do know several years ago the National Sierra Club developed as one 
of their policies, zero cut on public lands. I know that is what they 
believe. I know that is what they advocate. I know they are champions 
of this kind of amendment because if you cannot stop logging 
altogether, you stop it a little bit at a time until it is all gone, 
even if the health of the forests are at the point of explosion from 
wildfires like those being experienced in California today, and even if 
the Tahoe Basin runs at a high risk, with the risk not just to the 
trees but the loss of hundreds of multimillion-dollar homes where the 
wealthy come to play and reside in the urban/rural interface. That is 
the issue at hand.
  I will go on to quote from those men and women who work in the 
industry. They say:

       More than 80,000 men and women have lost their jobs as that 
     timber program has reduced by more than 70 percent since 
     1990.

  We know that is real. The Senator from Oregon knows it is real. The 
Senator from Idaho knows it is real. I have

[[Page S10759]]

attended the mill closures. My guess is, so has the Senator from 
Oregon.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record these letters 
from the Western Council of Industrial Workers and the United 
Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, opposing reductions 
in the timber program.

  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

         Western Council of Industrial Workers, United Brotherhood 
           of Carpenters and Joiners of America,
                                      Portland, OR, July 19, 1999.
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator: On behalf of the 20,000 men and women of the 
     Western Council of Industrial Workers (WCIW), I urge you to 
     oppose any effort to reduce funding for the U.S. Forest 
     Service timber sale and related programs when the FY 2000 
     Interior Appropriations bill comes to the Senate floor for 
     consideration.
       Legislative efforts to reduce funding for forest management 
     programs seriously jeopardize the livelihoods of our members 
     and tens of thousands of forest products workers nationwide. 
     Job loss within our industry has been severe as the timber 
     sale program has been reduced by almost 70 percent since the 
     early 1990s. More than 80,000 men and women have lost their 
     jobs due to this decline and further cutbacks in these 
     important programs will only add to the unemployment.
       Additionally, adequate funding for forest management 
     programs is critical to protect the health of our forests. 
     According to the Forest Service, approximately 40 million 
     acres of our national forests are at high risk of 
     catastrophic forest fire. Active management is the single 
     most effective tool for reducing the risk of wild fires and 
     protecting nearby communities, as well as maintaining forest 
     health and limiting the spread of insects and disease.
       The WCIW urges you to support land management policy that 
     provides an adequate balance for all concerns--environmental 
     and economic. Please support the current funding levels in 
     the FY 2000 Interior Appropriations bill and oppose any 
     effort to cut funding for these important active management 
     programs.
       Thank you for your consideration.
           Sincerely,
                                                       Mike Pieti,
     Executive Secretary-Treasurer.
                                  ____

                                             United Brotherhood of


                            Carpenters and Joiners of America,

                                    Washington, DC, July 21, 1999.
       Dear Senator: On behalf of the United Brotherhood of 
     Carpenters and Joiners of America, I urge your support for 
     the federal timber sale program as the Senate debates the 
     Fiscal Year 2000 Interior Appropriations bill. Additionally, 
     I urge you to oppose any harmful amendment that seeks to 
     reduce timber sale funding.
       The livelihoods of U.S. forest products workers--including 
     tens of thousands of our lumber, sawmill, pulp and paper 
     workers--rely on Forest Service programs that promote active 
     management. Timber harvests on federal lands have fallen by 
     almost 70 percent over the last decade, resulting in mill 
     closures and job loss. Further reductions in funding for the 
     federal timber sale program will only exacerbate the economic 
     devastation to working families and rural communities. Also 
     reductions in timber supply continue to contribute to the 
     rising U.S. trade deficit in the forest products sector, as 
     wood and paper imports reach record levels.
       In addition, the health and vitality of our nation's 
     forests are being crippled by crisis. Twenty-six million 
     acres are in jeopardy from insect and disease, while forty 
     million acres are at risk to catastrophic wildfire. Our union 
     supports responsible efforts to protect our forests, 
     including thinning and harvesting to maintain forest health, 
     limit the spread of insect infestation and reduce the risk of 
     forest fires.
       We must continue our nation's global leadership in 
     environmental stewardship without sacrificing the livelihoods 
     of thousands of working families. The UBCJA urges you to help 
     protect forests, jobs and communities by supporting the 
     current funding levels for the federal timber sale program in 
     the FY 2000 Interior Appropriations bill and by opposing any 
     effort to reduce funding for this essential program.
       Thank you for your consideration.
           Sincerely,
                                              Douglas J. McCarron,
                                                General President.

  Mr. CRAIG. Unemployment in rural timber-dependent communities is in 
double-digit figures despite rosy employment figures in the rest of 
America. The Senator from Oregon and I visited similar communities--he 
in his State, I in my State--over the August recess. I can go from my 
community of Boise where there is near zero unemployment--it is a 
growth community, it is a high-tech community, it is doing very well--
and I can drive 100 miles to a community that has 14 to 16-percent 
unemployment. Why? That community is right here. That community is 
right here. That is because they were dependent upon the public lands 
and our Government and the politics of the public lands said: Stay off 
the land. Don't cut a tree. The mills closed or the mill is closing or 
the mill is at risk. Those people are unemployed.
  They cannot identify with a job in the high-tech industry. Why? Each 
of them would have to move 100 miles and uproot their family and they 
would have to be retrained and educated. A 45-year-old man does not 
want to do that. He cannot understand, if we are growing five times 
more trees than we are cutting, why we cannot at least create a balance 
in a program that will afford him or his son, who is graduating from 
high school and does not want to go on to college, a job in the forest 
products industry.
  While the national average unemployment rate hovers at around 4 
percent, more than 30 forest-dependent counties have three times that 
rate. Over a dozen forest-dependent counties have an unemployment rate 
of 16 percent. I believe the Bryan amendment will bring even further 
economic harm to the people of those rural areas.
  When I first got here in 1981, there was a mantra about the debate on 
the forest products industry and about forest management: Take away a 
few jobs and we will replace them. We will replace them with tourism 
and recreation. It was America wanting to go to the public lands to 
enjoy the environment of the public lands.
  To some extent that has happened but only to a minor degree compared 
to what was projected during the decade of the early 1980s. But 
remember, while some of it happened, the kind of jobs that were created 
were fundamentally different jobs from those $30,000, $40,000, $50,000-
a-year jobs that I am talking about in the forest products industry. A 
maid or waitress or a gas station attendant or a tour guide does not 
make that kind of money. They work at slightly above minimum wage. They 
have no health benefits. They have no retirement program. Their work is 
seasonal. They are oftentimes out of work 4 or 5 months out of the 
year. And, yes, they are on welfare. And, yes, they qualify for food 
stamps.
  I must say these once were the proud men and women of the forest 
products industry that we politically destroyed. We politically 
destroyed it. We are here today for politics. We are politically trying 
to destroy what remains of a responsible way of managing our forests 
today, not because it is the right thing to do from a management point 
of view but because it is the right thing to do politically. I know of 
no other reason. I cannot understand why the Senator from Nevada, who 
comes from the great public land State that he does, would want to turn 
his back on one segment of the economy of a public land State such as 
Idaho or Nevada.
  He and I stand arm in arm together on mining issues. I was in Elko, 
NV, last week in a community that 15 years ago was 5,000 people; today, 
25,000 people, not because of the high-tech industry but because of 
gold, gold in the Carlin Trend; mining, high-priced jobs being paid to 
thousands of men and women in the mining industry. So when we battle on 
that issue, the Senator from Nevada and I stand arm in arm. But when we 
try to work on a reasonable and responsible forest management plan that 
allows some tree cutting, I am tremendously frustrated the Senator from 
Nevada and I cannot stand arm in arm on that issue also.

  It is an issue of jobs. It is an issue of right and responsible ways 
of managing our forests. It is political. I am saddened that it is.
  The substitute amendment transfers $10 million of the reduction that 
I have talked about, $34 million in timber funds to pay for surveys on 
rare species. I do not think that is responsive to the problem of the 
unreasonable wildlife survey requirements in the President's Northwest 
Forest Plan, which we discussed in this body last week.
  First of all, the Forest Service timber sale budget is what pays for 
the surveys. Thus, rather than a $10 million increase for this purpose, 
the net effect of this proposal is a $24 million decrease. So we give 
them not even a half a loaf. We give them a quarter of a loaf.
  Second, the Clinton administration has agreed that many of these 
surveys should not be done; indeed, many cannot be done. That is 
precisely why the administration is writing an EIS in an

[[Page S10760]]

attempt to change these requirements. Unfortunately, timber sales are 
enjoined until the EIS is completed.
  I happen to agree with the editorial statement this past Sunday in 
the Portland Oregonian, the largest and most respected newspaper in 
Oregon. The Oregonian correctly notes that:
  The surveys of rare species of animals and plants required in the 
Northwest Forest Plan are ``technically impossible'' and [they use the 
right word] ``preposterous. . . .''
  The Senate didn't use the word ``preposterous,'' but last week the 
Senate said no to the judges; they are not going to let the judges in 
the Eleventh Circuit and the Ninth Circuit write policy. That is our 
job. That is what we are elected to do. They are appointed to interpret 
the Constitution and not to write timber policy. The Oregonian calls it 
``preposterous.'' The Oregonian further describes the requirements as:

       . . . a poison pill--a way to block all logging and prevent 
     the plan from working as it was designed.

  Yet we want to put more money into that. It makes no sense to spend 
$10 million for a prescription for a poison pill or for preposterous 
survey procedures. This Congress should not spend 10 cents in what I 
believe is a most inappropriate fashion.
  That is the foundation of the debate as I see it. I believe that is a 
reasonable interpretation of why we are on the floor today. I know of 
no other. At a time when we have reduced the overall timber program in 
this country by 7 percent, we have reduced employment by almost 50 
percent, and we have dramatically transformed the rural landscape to 
communities of unemployed people and empty homes. That is the policy of 
this Government at this time. And somehow we want to perpetuate that or 
increase it? I think not.

  The only explanation possible that I believe is reasonable and right 
is the politics of it. We are on the floor today because the National 
Sierra Club and others said we ought not be cutting trees on public 
lands at all, zero, end of statement, not to improve health, not for 
fire prevention, not to create vibrant and youthful stands just do not 
cut them at all; let Mother Nature be our manager.
  That is not good business. We know that is not good business, 
especially when man, for the last 40 or 50 years, has put out all the 
fires and not allowed Mother Nature to manage. Now when she has an 
opportunity to manage where there are 50 trees instead of 5--that would 
have been true 100 years ago--we create monstrous wildfires that not 
only destroy the stands but scald the land and make it sterile and 
nonproductive for decades to come. That is where man has to step back 
in as a good steward, a right and responsible steward, for all of the 
environmental reasons, the water quality reasons, and the wildlife 
habitat reasons for which we manage a forest.
  I yield such time as is required to the Senator from Arkansas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas is recognized.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Idaho for 
clearly laying out the issues in this debate, and I associate my 
remarks with his.
  I rise to strongly speak against the Bryan-Wyden amendment for a 
variety of reasons but, most importantly, because it simply does not 
support healthy and sustainable national forests. Many Senators, I 
suspect, will speak today claiming this reduction to the Timber 
Management Program makes sound fiscal and environmental sense.
  From my perspective as an Arkansan, as a Senator from Arkansas, I can 
tell you that is far from the truth and that there are 35,440 workers 
in my home State who make up the forest products industry who strongly 
oppose this amendment. If our forests are not healthy and if we 
continue to ignore the problems facing these public lands, we run the 
risk of jeopardizing these jobs and the future health and 
sustainability of our Nation's forests.
  During the August recess, I met with the Forest Service on the 
Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas. Sometimes our distinguished 
Senators from the West forget that there are national forests all 
across the South, and in the State of Arkansas, I say to my good 
friend, the Senator from Oregon, we have two large national forests, 
the Ouachita National Forest and the Ozark National Forest.
  In a meeting with the National Forest Service on the Ouachita 
National Forest last month, I discovered, because of decreasing budgets 
in the timber sales account, they are doing only one-third of the 
vegetation management required by the forest plan. So forgive me if I 
find it ironic that this second-degree amendment, the substitute 
amendment, would shift $10 million from the Timber Management Program 
to the surveys in the Northwest when, in the State of Arkansas, in our 
national forests, they are only doing one-third of the vegetation 
management required by the forest plan.

  Because of the severe erosion of funding that the Senator from Idaho 
has alluded to, the forest is unable to achieve the desired future 
conditions required for a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. 
Extremists, litigation, appeals, or lack of public support did not 
bring about this crisis. It is the result of a misguided effort by the 
administration to reduce timber harvests without taking into 
consideration the real impacts on the conditions of the forests and the 
communities associated with these national forests.
  The Timber Management Program is funded at a level equal to the 
fiscal year 1999 funding level. There was level funding before this 
amendment. Before these additional cuts, there was level funding, no 
increase, and yet the demands on the program have increased 
dramatically.
  The program objective for the timber sales program is ``a sustainable 
yield of forest products that contributes to meeting the Nation's 
demands and restoring, improving, or maintaining the forest ecosystem 
health.'' Yet the amendment before us reduces the funding level when 
more than 40 million acres of our national forests are at high risk of 
catastrophic fire due to an accumulation of dead and dying trees and an 
additional 26 million acres are at risk of insect and disease 
infestation.
  We have a crisis now; we risk a catastrophe. We have level funding in 
the appropriations bill before us, and the amendment suggests we should 
cut even further in a program that has not the resources to do the job 
it has been charged with doing as it stands.
  The addition of Senator Wyden as a cosponsor of the amendment, the 
second-degree amendment, only exacerbates the problem that the 
underlying amendment creates in shifting an additional $10 million out 
of timber management and moving it to the Northwest. This impacts every 
national forest, every timber management program in the Nation. It 
dilutes what can be done in those areas where they are already 
suffering, where they are already short to move additional resources 
because of the situation faced in the Northwest. I think that is wrong. 
It is not economically or environmentally advisable.
  The debate today will speak about doing right by the environment. How 
can you justify reducing a level-funded program that is dealing with 
millions of acres of land that are too crowded for new and healthy 
trees to grow?
  We will also hear talk today about how the Timber Management Program 
is antienvironmental or environmentally destructive. That is not what I 
have seen in the management that is being done in the Ouachita, the 
Ozark, St. Francis National Forests in Arkansas. Our national forests 
are adding 23 billion board feet each year. While 3 billion board feet 
are being harvested each year, 6 billion board feet die each year from 
insects, disease, fire, and other causes, and the amendment before us 
will only make that situation worse.
  The majority of the timber sales in the program are done for other 
ecosystem objectives--improving habitat for wildlife, reducing fuels 
that may increase fire risk, especially in the urban interface areas, 
combating insect and disease infestations, and improving true growth 
for future timber.
  We cannot ignore the contributions that the Timber Management Program 
makes each year, even if it might sound politically advantageous. The 
byproduct of a healthy, sustainable timber program is equally as 
important as healthy rural communities. The timber sales program 
generates regional income of $2 billion--over $2 billion; in fact, $2.3 
billion--in Federal income tax receipts. Seventy percent of

[[Page S10761]]

the timber from national forests is sold to small businesses that could 
be forced to close their doors if we support further reductions to the 
program.

  A $1 million reduction in the timber sales program on the Ouachita, 
Ozark, or St. Francis National Forests simply means 10,000 acres of 
forest designated for treatment by the forest plan will go untreated. 
That is what it will mean: a $1 million reduction, 10,000 acres that 
will go unmanaged, untreated. Perhaps that is the goal. Perhaps that is 
the backdoor objective of such an amendment. The byproducts--round wood 
and saw logs --will be unavailable. Communities will lose 500 years of 
work and over $15 million from the local economy.
  By any reasonable standard, the U.S. forest practices are the best in 
the world, ensuring forests are regenerated and that water quality and 
wildlife habitat are protected or enhanced. Decreasing this program is 
wrongheaded. It will only set us back environmentally. It will surely 
negatively impact us economically.
  I suggest we do the right thing and support no less than level 
funding for this important program and oppose the Bryan-Wyden 
amendment.
  I thank the chairman. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I yield the chairman of the full 
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Senator Murkowski, such time 
as he may consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska is recognized.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair.
  Madam President, let's start with some facts because what is 
appropriate is to recognize just what the current policy of the 
administration is towards the U.S. forests managed by the Forest 
Service.
  Clearly, as we look at where we are today, as this chart shows in the 
dark purple, the U.S. Forest Service volume sold, vis-a-vis the annual 
mortality--the annual mortality are those trees that are dead or 
dying--that in the years 1990, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, the 
annual mortality, compared with the volume sold--and that is evident by 
the green spheres that come up through the chart--the mortality has 
exceeded the commercial volume sold.
  The suggestion is, what has happened to forest health?
  You have to manage for forest health based on professionals, 
professionals who are trained and have committed their lives to best 
forest management practices.
  What we have in the debate that is occurring on this floor is a 
debate over emotions, the emotions over whether timber, trees, a 
renewable resource, should be harvested or not.
  We have heard the Senator from Idaho expound a little bit on the 
attitude prevailing in the U.S. environmental groups, and particularly 
the Sierra Club, which, much to their credit, has come out 
wholeheartedly and said: We want to terminate harvesting in the 
national forests, all of the national forests.
  They make no bones about it. That is just a fact.
  The justification for Senator Bryan's amendment, which would timber 
program in the committee bill by $34 million, leads to the 
environmental agenda, the agenda of the Sierra Club that wants to 
terminate harvesting in national forests.
  The amendment isn't what it appears to be. While I am sympathetic to 
my friend from Oregon and his efforts to redirect $10 million to 
wildlife surveys in the Northwest, I again think we ought to go back 
and recognize where the objection is. The objection comes from national 
environmental groups who are opposed to logging in the national 
forests. The policies of the Clinton administration relative to logging 
in the national forests are evident, but the justification to support 
that is very lacking if we look at the facts.
  The facts are that there is currently almost 250 billion cubic feet--
more than 1 trillion board feet--of volume of standing timber in the 
national forests. That is a significant amount--250 billion cubic feet 
of volume. The annual growth--that is the growth that occurs every 
year--is about 23 billion board feet.
  Do you know what we are cutting, Madam President? We are cutting 
somewhere between 2.5 and 3 billion board feet. What is the 
justification in the sense of forest management practices and the 
forest health when clearly the forests are not in danger of being 
overcut? The regrowth at 23 billion board feet each year, compared with 
the cut of 2.5 to 3 billion board feet, clearly shows we are growing 
timber faster, much faster than we are cutting it--in fact, about 7 to 
8 times faster than we are cutting it. As evidenced by this chart, the 
mortality now is exceeding what we are cutting in commercial timber.
  Good forest management practices would indicate something be done 
about the dead and dying trees that are infested with the spruce bark 
beetle and so forth, and that a program be initiated so healthy trees 
grow back in again. But, again, these decisions are not being made by 
those responsible for forest health, professional forest managers. They 
are being made by environmental groups, and they are being made on the 
basis of emotional arguments.
  You should recognize the reality that timber is a renewable resource 
that can be properly managed, as evidenced by the existing volume that 
we have in this country, 250 billion cubic feet in the national 
forests--and I will repeat it again--with 23 billion board feet annual 
growth, and the realization we are only cutting 3 billion board feet a 
year.
  We certainly need some changes. The changes need to move off the 
emotional arguments and get into what is good for the forests, what is 
good for the health of the forests. You clear out the diseased trees. 
You encourage programs that eliminate fire hazards.

  I have worked with Senator Bryan and his colleague from Nevada on 
mining legislation which is important to his State and important to 
Western States, important to my State of Alaska. I am disappointed that 
he has seen fit to again take this issue on to reduce by $34 million 
the Committee's recommended timber program. I recognize that is not a 
big issue in his State. But I think it basically addresses a policy 
within this administration that has prevailed for some time, and that 
is to oppose resource development on public lands, whether it be 
grazing, whether it be oil and gas leasing, whether it be mining, and 
certainly in the case of timber.
  I would like to communicate a little experience that we had in Alaska 
relative to studies and the resource management associated with the 
wildlife of the forest and to suggest to the Senator from Oregon that 
these challenges on the adequacy of wildlife studies seem endless. You 
no sooner get a professional opinion on the adequacy or inadequacy of a 
certain species within the forest, and if it is unfavorable to those 
who want to terminate logging in the forest, they simply go to a judge, 
get an injunction, and suggest that the study was inadequate and lacked 
the thoroughness that it needed.
  Let me tell you a little story about what happened in Alaska.
  We had the U.S. Forest Service involved in what they called the TLMP, 
the Tongass Land Management Plan. They spent 10 years to develop a 
plan. They spent $13 million. Previously, we had been cutting about 420 
million board feet a year. The TLMP came down, after this 10-year study 
and $13 million, and cut it, the allowable cut, to 267 million board 
feet.
  What happened as a consequence of that? We lost our only two year-
round manufacturing plants in our State. The Sitka and Ketchikan 
pulpmills, the combined workforce, plus those in the woods, amounted to 
some 3,400 jobs, most of which were lost.
  What was the forest health issue regarding this reduction? All the 
timber in the Tongass, as most Members who have been up there know, is 
old growth timber. But what they do not realize is that 30 percent of 
that timber is dead or dying. It has no other use than wood fiber. So 
it is put in the pulp mills.
  Without the pulp mills, we have no utilization of that timber. Much 
of those logs are now ground up in chips or exported to Japan or out to 
pulp mills in the Pacific Northwest.
  Let me go back to the Tongass Land Management Plan where they cut the 
sales level from 420 million board feet to 267 million board feet. 
Within 9 months, the administration, after spending 10 years and $13 
million, decided that volume of 267 million board

[[Page S10762]]

feet was too high. So they cut it arbitrarily, without any public 
hearing, as a consequence of pressure from national environmental 
groups who used an emotional argument, and also the reality that maybe 
the easiest place to terminate harvesting in national forests is in 
Alaska. We have two Senators and one Congressman. Alaska is a long way 
away. Nobody can go up and look at it and recognize that we have cut 
less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the Tongass forest in Alaska over 
the last 40 years and that our regrowth is 10 times what we have 
cut. They want to terminate harvesting, and the Tongass national forest 
in Alaska is a good place to start. So they came back and cut the 
proposed allowable sales level from 267 to 178 million--no public 
hearings, no input, no further studies. They spent, again, 10 years and 
$13 million for the first study, and they weren't satisfied with it.

  So I say to my friend from Oregon, don't be misled by the question of 
the adequacy of wildlife studies in the Pacific Northwest. On the 
goshawk, we in Alaska are now under a challenge, on an issue we thought 
we had behind us because several years ago we had a challenge on a 
threatened and endangered species, the goshawk. The U.S. Fish and 
Wildlife Service spent several years working with the Forest Service to 
do an evaluation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service came to the 
conclusion that the goshawk was not threatened by the timber harvest 
program in the Tongass. We thought we had that issue behind us. We 
didn't.
  Environmental groups--from the Southwest, I might add--petitioned the 
judge on the adequacy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service evaluation 
of the goshawk study and the judge said, go back and do it again. If 
you can't depend on the best experts to come to a conclusion, then this 
is simply an open-ended effort by either bureaucrats, or environmental 
groups, or both to terminate harvesting in the national forests. That 
is what has happened as a consequence of the attitude of this 
administration towards timber harvesting.
  Again, we have 250 billion cubic feet of volume standing in the 
national forests of the United States. The annual growth is 23 billion 
board feet. We are harvesting between 2.5 and 3 billion board feet. We 
are regrowing seven to eight times our annual harvest. Yet we have 
those who would say the forest program is being subsidized. There is no 
realization of what timber sales and related roads offer in providing 
access for timber, availability to the public, jobs, payrolls and 
communities. The proposal by Senator Bryan would reduce the program 
about 13 percent below the current 1999 program level.
  I am pleased the Society of American Foresters opposes the amendment. 
I believe that letter has been introduced in the Record. If not, I ask 
unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                Society of American Foresters,

                                      Bethesda, MD, July 26, 1999.
     Hon. Ted Stevens,
     Chairman, Committee on Appropriations,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Chairman: It has come to our attention that 
     Senator Bryan may offer an amendment or amendments to the 
     Interior Appropriations bill designed to significantly reduce 
     the amount of funding available for the Forest Service Timber 
     Sale program or its Roads program. We believe this would be a 
     mistake.
       While we are sure that Senator Bryan is well intentioned in 
     his efforts, he may not understand the significant 
     contributions the timber sale program makes to improving our 
     national forests. The Fiscal Year 1998 Report of the Forest 
     Service states ``today, national forest timber sales are 
     designed to incorporate multiple objectives, including insect 
     and disease prevention and control, wildlife habitat 
     management, fuels treatment, and reconstruction or 
     construction of roads needed for long-term access.'' 
     Foresters in the private and public sector design timber 
     sales for purposes in addition to producing timber.
       There are many examples of timber harvests that benefit 
     other resources. For example, the July 1999, edition of the 
     Journal of Forestry has an article called ``Designing Spotted 
     Owl Habitat in a Managed Forest.'' The article describes how 
     to harvest trees and manipulate the forest for the benefit of 
     spotted owls. Natural resource management professionals can 
     produce forest products and healthy forests; they just need 
     tools like the Forest Service's Timber Sale program to 
     accomplish their goals. We can harvest trees from the forest 
     and still leave behind quality conditions for wildlife.
       We are also very concerned about a possible reduction in 
     funding for the Roads program. The Forest Service estimates 
     that they have a $10 billion backlog in road maintenance. Now 
     is not the time to reduce funding for these important forest 
     assets that can turn into environmental nightmares without 
     proper design and maintenance.
       Thank you for your consideration and your support of 
     professional forestry.
           Sincerely,
                                               William H. Banzhaf,
                                         Executive Vice President.

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I urge the Congress to support the 
significant contribution that the timber program, even though it is in 
decline, has been making to improve the national forests.
  Again, recognize that the program is smaller than a few years ago. 
The Bryan amendment would continue this harmful slide, because the 
ultimate objective is to terminate harvesting in the national forests. 
The redirecting of timber funds to wildlife activities in support of 
timber still has the same negative effect. That negative effect has 
been highlighted by my friend from Idaho, as he discussed the effects 
of a reduction in the timber program.
  What we are talking about on this chart is that there is more timber 
dying than is being cut. That is the harsh reality of where we are. 
What kind of forest management practice is that? It is a 
preservationist practice.
  What is the role of the Forest Service? Habitat management? Stewards 
of the forest? They are not aggressive in thinning programs, which are 
needed for the growth of new trees. What the Forest Service has become 
is a custodial management agency. They don't know where they are going. 
They are torn between past leaders that used to make decisions on the 
basis of what is best for forest health, and the new generation that is 
directed to a large degree by national environmental groups that want 
to terminate harvesting in the national forests.
  It is OK if you are from a State that has large private holdings. 
Washington State has a number of large private land companies. It is OK 
if you have large State-owned forests. But if you are in my State of 
Alaska, where the Federal Government, the U.S. Forest Service--the 
entire Tongass National Forest is owned and managed by the Federal 
Government--you have a different set of circumstances. Our communities 
are in the forest. Our State capital, Juneau, towns like Ketchikan, 
Wrangell, Petersburg, Haines, Skagway, Sitka, all are in the forest. 
People live in the forest. They were under the assumption they would be 
able to work with the Federal Government, when we became a State in 
1959, to maintain, on a renewable basis, an industry base. They 
recognize that in our case our forest, as an old-growth forest, is in 
the process of dying. Thirty percent of that timber is dying.
  I had an opportunity to fly over some of the Northeastern States over 
the recess, Maine and other areas. I noted that they have a healthy 
timber industry, managed, if you will, to a large degree through the 
private holdings of landowners and corporations and the State. They 
have jobs. They have pulp mills. They have a renewability. Yet we are 
strangled by policies that are dictated by environmental groups, that 
are dictated by Members from States who have no interest in the 
national forest from the standpoint of those of us who are dependent on 
it in the West and particularly in my State in Alaska.
  Finally, I ask that my colleagues reflect that this amendment would 
really reduce the tools the Forest Service has available for 
stewardship activities, tools that improve forest health and improve 
wildlife habitat and improve other forest ecosystems as well. Don't be 
misled by the objective of those who have a different agenda with 
regard to the national forests. Let us recognize that forests live and 
die. With proper management, they can yield a bounty of prosperity, a 
bounty of renewability. But we have to have the recognition that those 
decisions with regard to the forest are not going to be made by the 
politicians in this body. They are going to be made by those 
professionals who are prepared to put their reputation behind their 
recommendations or, for that matter, the other way around, and do what 
is best for the forest. The Bryan amendment certainly does not do this, 
by cutting funding for timber sales and roads, and hence, decreasing 
the timber program.

[[Page S10763]]

  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BRYAN. Madam President, during the course of the debate, the 
Senator from Idaho propounded to the Senator from Nevada a query as to 
how I could be supportive of this amendment and then made reference to 
the fact of Lake Tahoe, with all the problems we have in Tahoe. My own 
previous statements on Tahoe indicated the extent of the devastation 
that has been caused with dying trees and timber.
  To suggest that somehow increasing the commercial harvesting of 
timber would in any way ameliorate the problems we face at Tahoe would 
be a totally spurious argument. The problems at Tahoe are compounded 
because we had a 7-year drought, the most protracted in recorded 
memory, and as a result, the forest became very vulnerable to 
infestation from beetles that ultimately killed vast amounts of trees 
in the Tahoe Basin. So adding to the commercial harvest would in no way 
help.

  Secondly, with respect to Tahoe, we are reaping a whirlwind of 
practices that involve the extensive cutting of road network to the 
Tahoe Basin. The clarity of the lake is declining rapidly. This is a 
lake that Mark Twain rhapsodized about. John C. Fremont, on Valentine's 
Day in 1844, was the first European to see Lake Tahoe, and perhaps that 
date has some significance because those of us who live in Nevada have 
had a love affair with Lake Tahoe ever since.
  The problem in Tahoe is exacerbated because of this road network that 
was built throughout the basin during a period of intense harvesting in 
the last century. The timber at Tahoe was used for the great mining 
activities of Virginia City. But it is instructive and helpful because 
the primary contributing factor to the erosion that is causing the 
deterioration of waters and clarity is the runoff from these old roads, 
and road maintenance is what we need so desperately.
  So I say that my friend from Idaho confuses the issue when he talks 
about the problems at Tahoe and the thrust of the Bryan-Wyden 
amendment, which is simply to take about $32 million from the 
commercial timber operations and reprogram those into some accounts 
that include road maintenance and fish and wildlife management.
  Let me make the point about road maintenance, if I may, again. The 
Bryan-Wyden amendment does not eliminate commercial timber sales in the 
national forests. My friend from Alaska referenced that we should allow 
professionals to make the determination as to how much harvesting 
should occur. That recommendation is included by the managers of the 
Forest Service, and they recommended a number of $196 million. That was 
in the President's recommendation.
  Now, what the appropriators did was, they stripped out $34 million 
from road maintenance and fish and wildlife accounts and added that 
back into the timber sales to bring that number up to about $228 
million. My friend from Arkansas was talking about the need for forest 
health and to do a lot of things. Those are totally different accounts. 
We are talking, on the one hand, of reducing to the level of the 
President's recommended appropriation the commercial timber sale 
account of $196 million and to add $32 million to that account. What 
the appropriators did was to reduce by $11 million the road maintenance 
account.
  It is the road maintenance account that helps to alleviate the 
erosion and the other adverse environmental consequences that attach to 
the neglect of that maintenance. The testimony is that the Forest 
Service would need $431 million a year for road maintenance alone, that 
there is a total backlog of $3.85 billion in road maintenance. By 
rejecting the Bryan-Wyden amendment, you make that backlog even longer 
because the appropriators have stripped $11 million from that account.
  Now, every mile of new construction adds to that backlog because 
under the law, once the harvesting operation has been completed, the 
timber harvester has no responsibility for the maintenance of that 
road. That, then, is left to the Forest Service and the American 
taxpayer. We already have 380,000 miles in the National forests. As I 
commented in my opening statement, that is more mileage than we have on 
the interstate system in America.
  The things my friend from Idaho was talking about, in terms of fire 
burns and removing dead timber, have nothing to do--absolutely 
nothing--with the commercial timber sale account. Those activities are 
included in other accounts, such as the Wild Land Fire Management Act. 
So I think we have a confusion here as we debate these issues.

  The Bryan-Wyden amendment would simply reduce to the level of the 
professional managers' recommendation in the Forest Service the 
commercial timber sale account of $196 million and would restore, 
essentially, to the environmental accounts and road maintenance 
accounts much of that money that was taken out. That is where the 
management practices need to be addressed. That is the focus. That is 
where the environmental problems are --road maintenance and fish and 
wildlife habitat.
  In effect, what the appropriators did is to strip those accounts and 
reduce them substantially to add to the timber sale account. There is 
no benefit to the environment at Lake Tahoe by increasing the 
commercial timber sale accounts. That simply does absolutely nothing 
for us at all. So I wanted to clarify the Record where my friend from 
Idaho has confused it. The Senator from Nevada is being absolutely 
consistent.
  I might just say, in terms of the broad public policy, the General 
Accounting Office concluded that, from 1992 to 1997, the commercial 
sales in the national forests have cost the American taxpayer $1.5 
billion. So there is another issue out here to be debated in terms of 
the public policy. The Bryan-Wyden amendment does not eliminate but 
simply reduces to the level of the Presidential recommendation in terms 
of the appropriation.
  If the Senator from Idaho were interested in seeing the problems more 
adequately addressed, he would favor reducing the amount of the 
commercial sales and restoring the $11 million that was stripped from 
that account. We need far more dollars in the road maintenance account, 
in which the backlog is over $3 billion.
  So every attempt to reduce the amount of the road maintenance account 
and add money to the new construction account makes the situation much 
worse. I argue that the more prudent and rational public policy is to 
deal with neglected road maintenance and provide additional money in 
that account rather than to add to the commercial sale account. I 
wanted to make that point for the record.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WYDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, this has been an important debate--
important for the Northwest and important as it relates to the 
direction of the Forest Service.
  I think my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would be 
surprised to know that I agree with a number of the things they have 
said about the Forest Service not knowing where they are headed. 
Frankly, I have made much stronger statements than that in the last few 
days. It is very clear in the Pacific Northwest that the Forest Service 
is just flailing around.
  The chairman of our subcommittee and I both read these Oregonian 
editorials talking about blame with respect to gridlock in the forests. 
In the Northwest, the Oregonian, our newspaper, editorialized that:

       Forest biologists searching for signs of the rare mosses 
     listed above ought to look under the backsides of the federal 
     officials managing the forest plan. That seems a relatively 
     undisturbed habitat.

  I think it is fair to say that those Forest Service officials knew 
for years they had to go forward with survey and management in a 
responsible fashion and haven't done so. So I think the comments that 
have been made by the chairman of the Forestry Subcommittee, Senator 
Craig, and the chairman of the full committee, with respect to the 
Forest Service not knowing where it is going, are ones that I largely 
share.
  But where we have a difference of opinion and where I think the 
Bryan-Fitzgerald-Wyden and the substitute help to bring together 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle is that the history of the last 
few years demonstrates very clearly that just spending more money on 
the timber sale program

[[Page S10764]]

doesn't help these rural communities either from an economic standpoint 
or from an environmental standpoint.
  The fact of the matter is, Madam President and colleagues, for the 
last several years this Congress has authorized a greater expenditure 
for the timber sale program than the President of the United States has 
called for.
  This Congress has appropriated more funds for the timber sale 
program, and the fact is the problems in many of these rural 
communities in the West, from an economic and environmental standpoint, 
are getting worse.
  So I think the notion that throwing more money at the timber sales 
program is going to address the needs of these rural communities is not 
borne out by the events of the last few years.
  What needs to be done--and what Senator Bryan and Senator Fitzgerald 
and I are trying to do--is to put in place a program with real 
accountability.
  My colleague from Idaho talked about the need for accountability of 
the Forest Service. The chairman of the full Senate Energy Committee 
has correctly said more emphasis needs to be placed on oversight. The 
fact of the matter is that under the Bryan-Fitzgerald-Wyden amendment, 
for the first time the Congress will put in place a program in the 
survey and management area which has essentially shut down the forests 
and that will have real accountability. Under our amendment, the survey 
and management draft environmental impact statement will have to be 
completed by November 15 of this year, and the final version of that 
impact statement would have to be published by February 14 of 2000.
  That is allowing for public comment. That is accountability. That is 
giving some direction to the Forest Service on the key issue that has 
in effect shut down the forests in our part of the country.
  So the choice is, do we do business as we have done in the past, 
which is to throw money, for example, at a particular program, the 
timber sale program, or do we try, as the Bryan-Fitzgerald-Wyden 
amendment does, to tie that amendment to dealing with the key concerns 
that have shut down our forests and put in place real accountability in 
the process?
  Beyond that, I think the only other major difference I have, as some 
of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, is that they have 
correctly said they don't want the courts to make forest policy. 
Section 329, as it stands in this bill, is a lawyer employment program. 
This is going to be a huge bonanza for lawyers as it stands in its 
present form.
  That is why I am hopeful that colleagues, regardless of how they feel 
about section 329 in its original farm, regardless of how they voted on 
the Robb legislation earlier, will see that the approach that Senator 
Bryan and Senator Fitzgerald and I are talking about tries to borrow 
from the philosophy of both of the approaches that have been debated on 
the floor of the U.S. Senate. I happen to agree with Senator Gorton and 
Senator Craig that the survey and management program has not worked. 
The Forest Service has dawdled. They have known what they were supposed 
to do for some time.
  We can read editorials to each other for many hours to compete for 
who is the toughest on the Forest Service. But the fact is they haven't 
known where they are going, and we are going to try to get them on 
track. But this amendment is the very first effort in the Senate to put 
them on track in a way that locks in the additional money they need 
with a specific timetable and a blueprint for ensuring accountability.
  I think for that reason it is absolutely essential that we pass it. I 
think it will give us an opportunity to go forward in the days ahead, 
which is what we are going to try to do in the oversight hearing that 
Chairman Craig is holding on Thursday.
  I am very hopeful that those Members of this body who understand how 
wrong it is for the courts to make forestry policy and how important it 
is to have a balanced approach that will tie additional funding with 
accountability--and a recognition that there is more to this than 
appropriating additional funds for the timber sale program--will 
support our bipartisan amendment.
  I gather we will not have a final vote on this amendment until 
tomorrow, and perhaps we will hear from some additional colleagues. But 
I am very hopeful, regardless of how a Member of this body voted on 
those Robb amendments or felt about the original section 329, the 
Gorton language, that they will see what Senator Bryan and Senator 
Fitzgerald and I are trying to do, which is pull together an approach 
that will give the Forest Service some direction, give them some 
accountability, and do it in a responsible fashion.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho is recognized.
  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Oregon. We have 
worked closely together for the last number of months to try to resolve 
a variety of timber issues and conflicts that have brought some of our 
rural communities to their knees.
  Those are communities that not only in many instances have lost jobs 
in the sawmills that I have talked about in my opening comments, but 
these are communities that also lost their moneys to run their schools.
  My colleague from Oregon has communities that only go to school 4 
days out of 5 days of a week because they have no more money to run 
their buses and to keep their schools open. I have communities in my 
State that are now debating over whether to put their money in the hot 
lunch program or athletics and ask all of their high school and grade 
school students to brown bag all the time.
  You say: What does this have to do with this debate? What does this 
have to do with cutting trees in the national forests? It has a great 
deal to do with these communities that are timber dependent because 25 
percent of the stumpage fee that comes from a Federal timber sale goes 
to the local communities for their schools, their county roads, and 
their bridges.
  That is historically what we believe is a fair treatment of those 
communities that oftentimes house the loggers and the mill employees 
and the executives of the timber companies and the Forest Service but 
have no private land base because all of the land around them is public 
land, and they should share in the revenue flowing from that public 
land. Those are what we call timber-dependent communities.
  The Senator and I worked to try to resolve that issue. We are very 
close to what I think is some tremendously positive and creative 
thinking that results from, hopefully, minds coming together out of 
conflict to bring resolution. I am fearful this amendment does not do 
that. I say that because while the Senator suggests that he prescribes 
deadlines by which EISs ought to be done, this administration and this 
Forest Service isn't talking anywhere near that. They are suggesting 
the deadline for a draft EIS ought to be in February and that the final 
ought to be in June for the EISs we are talking about for these sales. 
Whether you could expedite that, I am not sure.
  The one thing we want to be very careful about in light of the 
environment in which we are doing these kinds of EIS's and studies is 
that the work be done right. As the Senator from Oregon and I know, the 
judges and the environmental communities will be like vultures hovering 
over each one of those efforts to fine pick every bone to make sure the 
work is done well.
  Accelerating some of those studies could put at risk--I am not saying 
``will,'' but I think we need to be very cautious at this moment as we 
try to wrestle through this very difficult policy issue between whether 
the Eleventh Circuit is right or whether this Congress will finally get 
aggressive enough to lead in changing the law in a way that we will not 
have our judges administering forest policy through their own whim, be 
it law, or, in many instances, be it their politics as applied to the 
law that causes Eleventh Circuit or Ninth Circuit judges to do what 
they have done recently that the Senator from Oregon is so worried 
about, and that I, not only as the Senator from Idaho but as chairman 
of the Subcommittee on Forests and Public Land Management, literally go 
into the tank because the Congress of the United States has been 
unwilling to lead in this area and establish well-based policy that we 
can effectively defend and are willing to defend. That is part of

[[Page S10765]]

the problem we are dealing with, and I hope the work of the Senator 
from Oregon and me results in that.

  Let me make a final comment to the Senator from Nevada. It was not my 
intent to make an inaccurate statement. As chairman of the Forests and 
Public Land Management Subcommittee, I have spent the last several 
years and 45 hearings looking at every aspect of the forest management 
of our country to try to understand it. I have examined, not in person 
and not on the ground, but all the studies of the Tahoe Basin problem. 
I recognize the basin problem is a combination of things, particular to 
forest density, that has resulted in dead and dying timber and drought 
environments of the kind discussed. This has created the negative 
habitat today that changes the character of the lake's water quality 
because of the runoff. I also understand that this creates phenomenal 
bug problems with dead and dying trees because the ground cannot 
support the base.
  As the Senator from Nevada and I know in looking at computer models, 
before European man came to this continent, many of the acreages we are 
talking about were sparsely timbered and were much more pastoral. That 
was partly because of fire moving through the habitat, creating a 
mosaic of young and old alike. The Tahoe Basin changed when we became 
the stewards of the land and put out the fires.
  The Senator from Nevada and I both agree on the condition of the 
Tahoe Basin. The point I am trying to make: What the Senator is doing 
is, in fact, taking money away from the ability of the Tahoe Basin to 
manage itself because the Tahoe Basin money is not a single-line item 
issue.
  Let me explain. The Senator is amending an account that is divided 
into three categories. I am looking now at Forest Service management 
program reports. In the timber revenues and expenses, there are three 
categories. There is the timber commodity program component, there is 
the forest stewardship program component, and the personal-use program 
component. Those are the three that make up the account the Senator has 
amended.
  The last report we have is 1997. In that year, in the first account, 
the timber commodity program account, the Senator is absolutely right, 
the Tahoe Basin had not one dollar of revenue or expenses because it is 
not a timber-producing area. In the stewardship area in revenues 
produced by actions, about $377,000 and $1,383,000 spent on stewardship 
programs--the very kind the Senator wants to see that begins to change 
the culture, the environment, of the basin area. There was 
approximately $39 million in revenues from the personal-use program and 
about $181 million in expenses.
  I believe I am right. It was not my intent to mislead or to distort 
the Record. The Senator and I should clarify this. This is the document 
from the Forest Service. The account the Senator amends and takes $34 
million from is the account from which the stewardship programs from 
the Tahoe Basin are funded. There is not a line item specific to the 
Tahoe Basin that I know or that we can find in any research. If the 
Senator would clarify that--I think by accident he may well be cutting 
out the very moneys he has fought so hard to get to begin to ensure the 
forest health or the improved health of that basin area.
  In our stewardship analysis of the basins that are in trouble around 
the Intermountain West, and primarily the Great Basin environment of 
the West--because that is where fire is a critical tool--let me read 
again from the article ``One spark from a disaster.''

       On adjacent lands just above the national forests the trees 
     remain vigorous and healthy with a similar history of early 
     forest clearing followed by fire suppression. These stands 
     have escaped the bug infestation and the high mortality of 
     the lower basin area [which is Federal land]. These privately 
     owned timber lands were intensively managed to ensure vigor 
     and high productivity. Unlike the Federal forest lands, 
     private timberland managers responded to the bottom line and 
     protected their forest assets over time.

  My point is, what the Senator has appropriately advocated in getting 
into the basin, to change the way it is managed, to bring stewardship 
programs to do the thinning and to do the selective burn, absolutely 
has to be done to restore the vigor, to create an ecosystem that is 
less dependent on moisture, so it can handle itself through the kinds 
of droughts that we in the West experience--especially those in Great 
Basin States.
  If the Senator could clarify that for me, I would appreciate that. It 
is my knowledge at this moment that the account his amendment pulls 
money from is the very account from which the stewardship program for 
the Tahoe Basin finds its funding.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BRYAN. Madam President, I thank the floor manager for an 
opportunity to respond.
  When one looks at the totality of problems, they are tall: Runoff, 
the erosion control, and the declining clarity. These are the primary, 
but not the exclusive, problems in the basin.
  The roads that were cut through many decades ago are in the road 
maintenance account. As the Senator understands, there is a new 
construction account; there is a road maintenance account. The 
appropriators removed $11.3 million from the road maintenance account. 
From our perspective, that is the most serious account reduction that 
would impact what we are talking about. The road maintenance money 
account has a backlog: $3.85 billion has been discussed by the Forest 
Service, or $431 million. I think it is a matter of priorities. Our 
priority is to get back the road maintenance account money.
  Indeed, with respect to some of the prescribed burn and other forest 
practices the Senator talks about, I think we are in agreement that 
clearly there are things that need to be done to thin out some of the 
underbrush. Those are taken care of in other accounts such as wildlife 
fire management and a forest land vegetation program.
  There are a host of programs that are line item. The two I just 
mentioned, the wildlife fire management account and the forest land 
vegetation management program, are where some of the controlled burns 
and thinning occur. Those are the programs, from our point of view, 
that have a priority over the Senator's priority which would lead to an 
increased commercial operation.
  That is where the Senator from Nevada comes from.
  Mr. CRAIG. I thank the Senator for responding.
  It is important to understand that one third of that fund still goes 
to stewardship. That is not just commercial activity. That is thinning 
and cleaning.
  Also, it is important for the Senate and the Record to show we 
increase road maintenance by $10 million this year over last year. 
There was a recommendation of $20 million; we increased it by $10 
million. There has been an actual net increase of $11 million, and a 
fair amount goes to the Tahoe Basin.
  So the Forest Service is responding. We believe the committee and the 
appropriators were responsible, going in the right direction. What I 
think is important to say is that there were no cuts. We did not cut 
the program. We raised the program by $10 million. While some suggested 
it ought to go $20 million, it is a net increase over last year's 
funding level of $10 million.
  Mr. BRYAN. If I can respond briefly--I don't want to get into a 
semantic game--it is a reduction over what the President recommended, I 
think the Senator will agree. It is a reduction of $11.3 million over 
what the President proposed. It may very well be, as the Senator 
indicates, an increase over what was approved for the last program.
  Mr. CRAIG. The Senator knows recommendations are recommendations. I 
believe his first words were the program has been cut. The program has 
been increased by $10 million over last year while some, including the 
President, suggested it ought to be increased by more.
  Mr. BRYAN. I think I did use the term ``cut.'' What I meant to say, 
and what I stand by, is the appropriators, in effect, cut this money 
from the original appropriation of the President. That represents a 
difference in priorities, the $431 million annual backlog, with a total 
backlog of $3.85 billion. It would be the priority of the Senator from 
Nevada that the President's recommendation not be reduced as the 
appropriators did, and I appreciate the chance to clarify that point.

[[Page S10766]]

  Mr. CRAIG. I thank the Senator from Nevada. I believe, if I 
understand Forest Service accounts accurately, the likelihood of 
increased stewardship activities in the Tahoe Basin by this amendment 
could be reduced because of the very character of spreading the money, 
as I think the Senator from Arkansas so clearly spoke to.

  Let me yield such time to the Senator from Montana as he should 
consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana is recognized.
  Mr. BURNS. Madam President, this morning as I returned from Montana 
and I was listening to the local news, I heard a 30-second spot 
advising folks to call the White House to stand up, to stop this 
disappearance of the national forest lands. It was paid for by the 
Heritage Forest--some group. We have not been able to run it down yet. 
The message went on to say we have to stop this because our forests 
will be gone forever.
  We can talk about semantics. We can talk about budgets. We can talk 
about where we apply the money. Let's face it; the $11 million for road 
maintenance that we increased is mostly being used for road 
obliteration.
  It seems we fight these little fights every year because there are 
those who completely do not, and I say this in all disrespect, know one 
whit about what is a renewable resource and how we are to manage it. It 
seems to me this is the reason a person on his ranch or farm does not 
run that ranch or farm by a committee. If we did, we would not get a 
crop in; we would not grow anything, and we sure would not get a crop 
harvested. I would say the good Lord above does have a sense of humor. 
If you want to look at what a committee does, I always thought a horse 
was a camel put together by a committee. Everything is an afterthought.
  Let's dispel some of this myth that seems to be going across our 
land. In the Flathead National Forest alone, we are growing 120 million 
board feet of lumber a year. The Forest Service, in their plans, only 
planned to harvest 19 million. Let me tell you, due to laws and 
roadblocks and lawsuits, we will be lucky to cut 6 million board feet. 
This does not include our wilderness areas or recreational areas. These 
are in managed forest areas. This is about a third of what historically 
has been responsibly forested and harvested. However, due to litigation 
and other roadblocks, only 6 million will be harvested.
  We cannot survive with that scenario and neither can the forest. 
Understand that. Neither can the forest. It will burn. Trees are 
similar to any other renewable crop: they sprout, they grow, they get 
old, and like every one of us in this building, they will die. What 
happens to them? They hit the forest floor, there is a fuel buildup, 
there is infestation by the pine beetle, there is dry weather, there is 
lightning, and there is fire. I realize that doesn't mean much to those 
of us who sit in this 17-square miles of logic-free environment because 
we get our paycheck every 2 weeks. We are very comfortable. But out 
there, their paychecks stop right then. Their equipment is burned up. 
The cycle starts all over again. Is that an environmental benefit to 
this country? I don't think so.
  We have seen what happened in 1988 in Yellowstone National Park, the 
crown jewel of all parks, we are told. Fire swept across that park; and 
you should have seen the water that ran from that park for the next 3 
years because there was nothing to hold the soil that had been turned 
sterile by the heat of the fires.
  So according to the misinformation thrown around by the self-
proclaimed environmentalists, leaving the land to rot, they believe, is 
best for the environment; the forests are gone forever whenever they 
are harvested. I wonder if they think it was all a barren land up here 
until one Friday we got up and, lo and behold, there was a forest. Just 
like a bolt of lightning, it was there. When you get a haircut, is that 
head of hair gone forever? To some it might be. Who knows. But I don't 
think so. Currently, most of our national forests in Montana, and 
throughout the West, we face a 25-percent tree mortality in the next 15 
years. We will lose 25 percent of our forests just to mortality, 
getting old and dying.
  So I am saying land management, proper land management saves our 
forests. I can take you to one of the worst areas there is in the 
Forest Service--it happens to be up in northwest Montana--and even the 
foresters themselves will tell you that we are ashamed of the condition 
of this forest. But because of litigation, they are powerless to do 
anything about it. Fuel loads, beetle infestations, it is not a pretty 
sight.
  It is not a pretty sight.
  Healthy forests are usually the benefit of good management. 
Harvesting of timber is healthy, and it is all part of management. That 
is aside from the faces of the people who live in these forest 
communities. Two weeks ago, we shut down a mill in Darby, MT. We sold 
it at auction. Jobs are gone. A tax base is gone. The ability to build 
roads on private lands, to maintain services, and to build schools--all 
that revenue is gone.
  The opponents of timber production would have you believe we still 
clearcut entire forests when we do not do that anymore. They would have 
you believe we have industrial lawn mowers big enough to mow down the 
great redwoods as we clear swaths from seed to seed, and we do not do 
that anymore. In fact, there are more trees in this country than during 
the time of Lewis and Clark. It is hard to believe, isn't it? But it is 
true.
  When we put together this appropriation and this budget, there was 
balance. It brought balance of wildlife, balance of timber and new 
timber growth, balance of timber that we could harvest for the benefit 
of Americans, for those folks who build homes, and for those folks who 
work with timber.
  If one looks across the Nation right now, not many commodities are 
making money--gas, oil, no farm commodities. If you look at all the 
litigation, timber is not making any money either. Anything that comes 
from mining is not making any money. Why should we do it? Where would 
those industries move? What other land on this globe will be devastated 
because we are not allowed to manage our renewable resources?
  I can remember dirt under the fingernails and the ability to produce 
a crop every year was pretty honorable. Madam President, 1.5 million 
Americans provide all the food and fiber for the other 260 million. 
That is not bad. We do a pretty good job, and we do it under conditions 
that are getting more and more difficult all the time.
  Modern forestry, of course, with some rules and regulations passed by 
Congress, is being regulated more and more every day. Environmental 
laws require foresters to take a look at the impact of what they are 
doing. It employs independent timber firms that know the land. They are 
harvesting. All of this costs money, and yet they will say below-cost-
timber sales. If we lump all the rules and regulations, all the hoops 
we have to jump through for one timber sale on a forest, it probably 
could be called a below-cost-timber sale. Those are hoops we have to 
jump through. So we increased the budget. It costs more money to 
complete a timber sale.
  We do not clearcut areas with disregard. We spend more time making 
sure everything we do is done in a responsible manner. Dispel the 
misinformation, get away from the inflammatory words of growing a 
commodity and harvesting a commodity. In Montana, the people who 
harvest timber are the same ones who come back to hunt and fish. They 
do it every weekend. They recreate all that same forest.
  Contrary to the doomsayers, we want our land to be usable. We want 
healthy wildlife populations, we want clean water, and we want to make 
sure our native fish are healthy.
  Let's talk about this wildlife habitat. Most of the wildlife habitat 
is found on public land in the summertime. When they have to make it 
through the winter, do you know where the deer, the elk, the moose 
winter? On private lands, in my neighbor's hay meadow. Did you know we 
have to board up our haystacks in the West or the elk and the deer will 
eat all the hay and leave us none for our own livestock? They do not 
winter on public lands because there is no water and there is no feed. 
It is covered up. They have to winter on private lands. So are we so 
bad? I do not think so. We would not have it any other way because we 
are all hunters and fishermen and we enjoy the sights

[[Page S10767]]

of big game. We want to maintain the habitat. We enjoy seeing those 
elk. We enjoy this season of the year when they start bugling. Go out 
and listen. That is what makes my State worth living in.

  It costs more money and the timber sale budget offers us an 
opportunity to feed our Nation's need for raw materials while employing 
Montanans and making and protecting habitat. We are talking about 
balance. Someone is buying that lumber or we would not have the demand 
to harvest it.
  Harvesting a crop is not a sin. To the contrary, it keeps this 
country moving forward. It provides the timber to build our homes, and 
it provides the paper that often gets shuffled back and forth in this 
town. Quite simply, a timber sale budget is essential to America for 
food and fiber by proud producers. That is what it is all about. They 
do not like to be lied to. They do not even require much support. They 
ask very little. They ask to grow, to plant, nurture, and harvest. That 
is what it is all about.
  How did those people who work in natural resources and agriculture--
and this is agriculture in its highest form--who are responsible for 22 
or 23 percent of the Nation's GDP become bad folks? How did we get that 
way? Because we used the resources around us, and our definition of 
conservation is the wise use of a natural renewable resource. Think 
about that. Twenty-three percent of the GDP in this Nation is in the 
production and the feeding of this country. It is unbelievable how that 
can be overlooked.
  I ask my colleagues to contemplate the alternative. Let's say we quit 
harvesting trees in America, and that is what some extremist groups 
want us to do, or they want to make it so expensive we cannot compete 
on the open market. Do you realize that I have mills in Montana that 
are hauling logs 500 miles, out of where? Canada. So is your demand for 
lumber so high that you want to so-called devastate the Canadian land? 
I do not think so.
  Why do people like to visit States such as Montana? No. 1, we are 
kind of authentic. Because we have done a pretty good job of taking 
care of it. And it is true of our good neighbors to the west in Idaho. 
It makes us the friendliest and the nicest people you will ever meet. 
But our people are starting to get cranky because their livelihood is 
being taken away from them, their ability to take care of themselves, 
by the rest of the country in its desire for the food and fiber that it 
takes for us to subsist.
  So if you want to see our forests die in front of us, if you want to 
see our wildlife choked out of its habitat, and if you want to see our 
rural communities die, and to see foreign corporate timber production 
unfettered, fueled by our need for fiber, then vote for the Bryan 
amendment. That is what it is all about.
  But there is balance here. I urge my colleagues to vote to maintain 
that balance. We believe in the balance of our forest lands and good 
stewardship.
  If you want to talk about stewardship, we have a stewardship plan 
that is getting started on a trial basis in Montana that is being 
participated in by a lot of people, including very small harvesters. So 
if you say you want a stewardship program, you have one. It is a good 
one. It is a dandy. It will work. But we cannot make it work unless we 
have funds to balance the needs of our forests.
  I thank the Chair and my chairman and yield the floor.
  Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that a vote occur 
on or in relation to the pending amendment No. 1623 at 10 a.m., and the 
time between 9:30 and 10 a.m. on Tuesday be equally divided in the 
usual form.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CRAIG. I thank the Chair.
  I am happy to yield to the Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. THOMAS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
  Mr. THOMAS. I will take a very short while.
  I think the details, the information of this issue have been well 
discussed. But I rise in strong opposition to what is being proposed 
based simply on the health of forests.
  In Wyoming, of course, we have national forests, as they do in 
Pennsylvania and other places. These forests need to be managed. I just 
spent several days in August in Yelowstone National Park. We road for 2 
days, and all of it was in burnt forests. I have to tell you, that burn 
was not even effective because the ground fuel is still there. The 
trees are dead, but the ground fuel is there.
  So all I am saying is, you have to manage this resource. Something 
will happen to the trees. They will either die or they will be 
harvested or they will be diseased. So if we are to have healthy 
forests, certainly they need to be managed.
  The proponents of the amendment have said the timber program is 
wasteful. It was never intended to operate as a commercial tree farm. 
We have some numbers as to the resources that are provided for 
communities and the Federal Government. They are substantial.
  I am not inclined to take a great deal of time. The chief of the 
Forest Service has stated there are 40 million acres of national 
forests which are at risk, either through fire or infestation. This 
amendment would cripple the Forest Service's ability to use the timber 
harvest to promote health. The amendment will crush a program that 
provides significant economic contributions to both the Federal 
Government and the communities. This amendment is wrong. It is 
shortsighted. I question why the Congress would continue to ask the 
agency to manage this land and then take away their ability to do that.
  So I will end by urging Members not to vote for this amendment.
  I yield back the time.
  Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. If there is no objection, I would like to amend my 
immediate past unanimous consent request. It was from 9:30 to 10 a.m. 
tomorrow morning equally divided. I ask unanimous consent to amend that 
to be from 9:30 until 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, equally divided in the 
usual form.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CRAIG. I am happy to yield to the Senator from Pennsylvania on 
this most important amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania is recognized.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, it isn't often I rise to talk about 
these kinds of issues because, by and large, these issues generally 
affect the West, and we in Pennsylvania do not have much direct 
involvement. But in this case we are directly affected in Pennsylvania.
  We have a national forest in Pennsylvania, the Allegheny National 
Forest. What has been going on in the Allegheny National Forest over 
the past several years has been a very troubling thing to thousands of 
residents in my State; it has had a dramatic negative impact on the 
quality of life for the residents in northwestern and north central 
Pennsylvania, as the amount of timber harvests have continued to 
decline.
  What we have seen, as a result of that, is a real damaging of the 
economy. It is a very rural area. Most people think of Pennsylvania and 
think of big cities and factories, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But 
Pennsylvania has the largest rural population of any State in the 
country. I repeat that. Pennsylvania has the largest rural population 
of any State in the country.
  That rural population, by and large, survives on agriculture and off 
the natural resources, whether it is coal mining or whether it is 
quarrying or whether it is timber or whether it is what we consider 
traditional agriculture.
  The Allegheny National Forest is vitally important for several of our 
smallest counties. We have 67 counties in Pennsylvania. Our smallest 
county in population, oddly enough, is called Forest County. Forest 
County has about 4,000 or 5,000 people who live there. The biggest part 
of it is the national forest, the Allegheny National Forest. But there 
are other counties surrounding it that have bits and pieces of the 
national forest in their county: Warren County, McKean County, and Elk 
County.
  In Elk County, PA--aptly named--we have about 600 elk, big ones, that 
have

[[Page S10768]]

come back over the past years and are thriving in our forests, almost 
to the point of being domesticated in some respects and causing 
problems. But that is another issue for another day.
  But those four counties get a lot of revenue because big chunks of 
them are national forest areas. They get a lot of revenues from the 
timber sales that principally support their school districts.
  I spoke to students at the Forest County schools a couple of weeks 
ago. The No. 1 issue that the kids asked me about was, what are we 
going to do about timber sales? Because they potentially will have to 
close down one of their schools because of cuts in the Forest Service 
budget, as well as lawsuits because of the Indiana bat, which, I guess, 
stays up in the Allegheny National Forest for a couple days a year, so 
there are all sorts of lawsuits tying up the Allegheny National Forest 
in harvesting.
  The Allegheny National Forest is the single largest area for the 
harvesting of black cherry timber. You look at your black cherry veneer 
and you will see a lot of it comes from the largest black cherry stand 
in the country, which is the Allegheny National Forest.
  The Allegheny National Forest, by the way, is a profitable forest. 
They make a lot of money in their timber sales because of high value 
trades. So they are not losing any money to anybody. They are making a 
lot of money. In fact, the less we harvest, the worse off we are 
financially.
  It has been very deleterious to those counties. I will look at the 
timber receipts for the past several years. Even last year, which was 
not particularly a great year, we had $1.6 million for Warren County; 
$1.5 million for McKean County; $1.3 million--$1.3 million for a county 
of 4,000 people is a lot of money.
  All these other counties range in the area of 20-, 30,000 people; Elk 
County, 1.26. All of them, every one of those counties, will have their 
revenues cut by more than half this year, by more than half because of 
legal roadblocks and cutbacks in the amount of timber sales as a result 
of Federal legislation.
  The problems we confront are not just financial in terms of tax 
revenue. They are financial, but they are also financial with respect 
to our economy. Logging is a very important aspect of the way of life. 
Wood products: Because of our high-value black cherry and other 
species, we have a lot of high-value processing of that wood, which is 
resulting in very high unemployment. Many of these areas, in this very 
strong economy, are experiencing double-digit unemployment, and have 
consistently for the past couple of years.
  We also have another concern which, again, when you go up and talk to 
the folks who live around the forests, is almost frightening, the kind 
of misinformation that is out there about our forests and the 
management of the forests.
  I remember going to Gray Towers, which is outside of Milford, PA. 
Gray Towers was the home of Gifford Pinchot, who was the Governor of 
Pennsylvania and was a conservationist. Gifford Pinchot went on to be 
the first head of the U.S. Forest Service around the turn of the 
century. The Yale School of Forestry was actually colocated in Milford, 
PA, at Gray Towers, which was the mansion the Pinchot family lived in. 
Now it is a museum dedicated to forestry. I was up there looking at old 
pictures of Pennsylvania. It is remarkable. In picture after picture 
after picture, Pennsylvania was completely clearcut--clearcut.
  I stood on the front porch of Gray Towers and looked out and saw the 
expanse. You can see literally for miles. I looked at the picture on 
the portico of roughly 100 years ago. It literally was stumps of trees 
for as far as the eye could see. Of course, now it is green as far as 
the eye can see, full of trees.
  Pennsylvania is just remarkable. I fly over it all the time in small 
planes. It is just literally covered with trees, almost all of which, 
if not all of which--because I have been told it was completely 
clearcut--were not there 100 years ago. So the regeneration happens. In 
fact, the Allegheny National Forest is a valuable forest today because 
it was clearcut and because a shade-resistant strain of black cherry 
couldn't grow in those old forests. In fact, there are areas that are 
now dedicated to old growth in the Allegheny National Forest that have 
a lot less diversity.
  People are worried about the health of the forest, environmental 
diversity. You get to some of these old-growth forests. You take the 
combination of the old growth and the fact that you have less 
vegetation, which puts pressure on your deer and everything else--we 
have a lot of deer. They completely decimate old-growth forests, where 
it is a desert there because of these high trees. You don't have a lot 
of younger growth. Whatever does crop up, because there isn't much else 
around, the deer take it right out.
  So we went, in this area called the heart of the forest, when they 
dedicated it to old growth, from 37 varieties of plants down to 4. I 
don't know about you, but I am not too sure that is protecting the 
environment or the health of the environment.

  I am an easterner. I am not one of these guys who understands public 
lands and forests and all that stuff. I grew up around the city of 
Pittsburgh and didn't know too much about forests. But I remember 
hearing people say: We have to manage the forest. You say: Forests 
manage themselves pretty well. What do you mean? Well, yes, forests 
manage themselves pretty well, but they manage themselves not in a way 
that you and I would consider them. They manage it through, in a sense, 
a boom-and-bust cycle, growth and then destruction and then growth and 
then destruction. That is pretty much how forests grow if you leave 
them alone. That is OK, I guess. But it doesn't provide what is, I 
think, in the best interest of the animal life and the plant life and 
certainly the community for recreation. The economic resources that are 
derived from the forest are not maximized when you allow this kind of 
wild and unmanaged forest generation and regeneration to occur.
  I trust the Forest Service. I don't always agree with them, but I 
trust the Forest Service will work to maintain forests and wisely 
manage them, using sound science to provide the best environment for 
stable growth of the forest as well as for the indigenous animal 
species that are there to feed. It is very serious--it is the No. 1 
issue in about 5 or 6 counties in my State--that we allow the timber 
harvesting program to continue. It is the economic lifeblood of those 
counties.
  I felt compelled to give a little different perspective, as someone 
who doesn't talk to these issues very much--and maybe it is best I 
don't--but who has a real sensitivity as to what sounds good. As I have 
told people about what sounds good in suburban Philadelphia, saying 
leave these trees alone, we love the trees, don't hurt the trees, a 
little knowledge is dangerous sometimes and no knowledge is downright 
lethal. And in the case of dealing with forest management, a lot of 
folks don't have a darn bit of knowledge. And it is killing people. It 
is killing their economy. It is killing their school districts. It is 
killing the forests.
  That is not something we should allow to go unchallenged in Congress. 
Just because it makes a good TV commercial, just because it sounds as 
if you care more, you don't care more if you understand the facts 
involved in forest management.
  I am an enthusiastic opponent of this amendment. I must tell you, 
when I first got to Congress, I was not. But the more I have learned 
about forest management and the impact of timber sales on not only the 
health of the forest but the health of the economy related to the 
forest, it is an absolute must for me to stand here and oppose this 
amendment. I urge my colleagues to do likewise.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, in the few minutes remaining, I wish to 
add my voice to those in opposition to this amendment. We thank the 
Senator from Pennsylvania for his sensitivity to these issues.
  As he correctly said, this amendment could be devastating to the 
people and to the families who depend on their jobs in many counties 
across America. I think it is important that we understand this 
amendment in the context in which it is being proposed. Federal timber 
sales are in a steep and devastating decline. Since the early 1990s, 
the timber program has been reduced in America by over 70 percent. 
Already, more than 75 percent of the National

[[Page S10769]]

Forest System is off limits to timber harvests. The Federal timber 
supply has dropped from 12 billion board feet to the 3 billion board 
feet being harvested today.
  Both the economic and the ecological context created by this 
reduction are not desirable. More than 80,000 jobs have been lost 
already, and of the 55,000 jobs that remain, they will be jeopardized 
by this amendment. That represents over $2 billion in employment 
income, mostly in rural parts of America. The families who depend on 
those jobs are counting on us to understand this issue and to vote 
correctly.
  It is confounding also that these additional cuts are being 
considered at a time when the industry and those working men and women 
who depend on it have already been deeply hurt by the critical cuts in 
the timber program.
  In my home State of Idaho, our rural communities continue to suffer 
devastating reductions in the 25 percent funds from timber sales. 
Schools are going without needed renovation, and county governments are 
going without needed support and jeopardizing their basic services 
because of these steep reductions.
  This amendment is also counterintuitive from an environmental 
perspective. Active forest management, including thinning and other 
timber harvest, has widely acknowledged benefits. In fact, most timber 
sales are currently designed to attain other stewardship objectives, in 
addition to the sales themselves. Timber sales are the most economic 
and efficient and effective methods available for our managers to treat 
and control many insect epidemics.
  Madam President, each year the National Forest System grows by 23 
billion board feet; 6 billion board feet die naturally. Only 3 billion 
board feet are being harvested. Tree growth in our National Forest 
System exceeds harvest by 600 percent.
  I stand firmly with those who have cast their opposition today 
against this amendment and encourage my colleagues to reject it.

                          ____________________