[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 117 (Tuesday, September 17, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8632-S8644]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT,
2003
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now
resume consideration of H.R. 5093, which the clerk will report by
title.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (H.R. 5093) making appropriations for the Department
of the Interior and related agencies for the fiscal year
ending September 30, 2003, and for other purposes.
Pending:
Byrd amendment No. 4472, in the nature of a substitute.
Byrd amendment No. 4480 (to amendment No. 4472), to provide
funds to repay accounts from which funds were borrowed for
emergency wildfire suppression.
Craig/Domenici amendment No. 4518 (to amendment No. 4480),
to reduce hazardous fuels on our national forests.
Dodd amendment No. 4522 (to amendment No. 4472), to
prohibit the expenditure of funds to recognize Indian tribes
and tribal nations until the date of implementation of
certain administrative procedures.
Byrd/Stevens amendment No. 4532 (to amendment No. 4472), to
provide for critical emergency supplemental appropriations.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I would like to speak directly to the issues
raised both by the majority leader and the Senator from Montana;
specifically, with respect to how we are going to resolve issues
related to the health of our forests.
I know the discussion has greatly focused on fires and the
catastrophic results of fires this year. I am going to talk about that
to a great extent. But I would like to make a point at the very
beginning which I hope we don't lose sight of; that is, fire is merely
one component of the problem we have to deal with. What we are really
talking about is the health of our forests, both for the protection of
people from catastrophic wildfires and also for the ecological benefits
that a healthy forest provides. It provides wonderful recreation for
our citizens. It provides habitat for all of the flora and fauna we not
only like to visit and like to see but to understand that it is very
important for ecological balance in our country. It protects endangered
species. It provides a home for all of the other fish, insects, birds,
mammals, and reptiles we would like to protect, whether they are
endangered or not.
In order to have this kind of healthy forest, we have come to a
conclusion, I think pretty much unanimously in this country, that we
are going to have to manage the forest differently than we have in the
past.
What the debate is all about is how the Congress is going to respond
to this emergency, not just from the catastrophic wildfires but from
the other
[[Page S8633]]
devastation of our forests that has created such an unhealthy condition
that it literally threatens the health of probably somewhere between 30
and 70 million acres of forest land in the United States.
The administration has come forth with a far-reaching proposal that
will begin to enable us to treat these forests in a sensible way. We
have legislation pending before us--an amendment by the Senator from
Idaho--that was put in place as a means of being able to discuss this.
And we have been trying, over the course of the last week or so, to
negotiate among ourselves in the Senate to be able to come to some
conclusion about what amendment it might be possible to adopt as part
of the Interior appropriations bill so that it will be easier for us to
go in and manage these forests.
I am sad to say that so far our efforts at negotiation have not borne
fruit. I think, therefore, it is necessary today to begin to recognize
that unless we are able to reach agreement pretty soon, we are going to
have to press forward with the kind of management approach that I
believe will enable us to create healthy forests again.
Let me go back over some of the ground that has been discussed but
perhaps put a little different face on it in talking about my own State
of Arizona.
Some people may not think of the State of Arizona as containing
forests. They may think of it as a desert State. The reality is, a
great deal of my State is covered with some of the most beautiful
forests in the entire United States--the entire world, for that matter.
We have the largest Ponderosa pine forest in the United States.
Ponderosa pines are enormous, beautiful trees, with yellowing bark. It
is not uncommon at all for them to have a girth of 24 inches and above
in a healthy forest. They are a little bit like if you want to think of
the sequoia trees in California--not quite as big but coming close to
that kind of magnificent tree.
One hundred years ago, the ponderosa pine forests in Arizona were
healthy. These trees were huge. They were beautiful. There were not
very many per acre; and that, frankly, was what enabled them to grow so
well. They were not competing with a lot of small underbrush or small
trees for the nutrients in the soil, the Sun, the water, which is
relatively scarce in Arizona, and they grew to magnificent heights.
Several things happened to begin to change the circumstances. First
of all, loggers came in and, seeing an opportunity, cut a lot of these
magnificent trees. Secondly, grazing came in, and all of the grasses
that grew because of the meadow-like conditions in which this forest
existed were nibbled right down to the base in some cases. A lot of
small trees, therefore, began to crop up and crowd out the grasses, and
pretty soon there was not any grass. There was simply a dense
undergrowth of little trees that began to crowd out what was left of
the bigger trees, as well.
Then came the fires because these little trees were so prone to
burning. It is a dry climate. They are crowded together. Instead of
having maybe 200 trees per acre, for example, you might have 2,000
trees per acre or more. But they are all little, tiny diameter trees
that are very susceptible to fire. And the big trees that are left, of
course, are susceptible to fire as well because when the lightning
strikes, it sets the small trees on fire, which then quickly crown up
to the larger trees, creating a ladder effect, going right on up to the
top of the very biggest trees. It explodes in fire, as you have seen on
television. That kind of environment is what we are faced with today.
The old growth has come back. We have some magnificent, big trees,
but they are being crowded out by all of these very small-diameter
trees and other brush and other fuel that has accumulated on the forest
floor. So what happens when there is a fire--whether man set or
lightning created--is that the fuel begins to burn. It burns quickly
just like a Christmas tree, if you can imagine, if you have ever seen a
Christmas tree burn. It quickly burns the smaller trees and underbrush,
and then catches the branches, the lower branches of the bigger trees,
and then crowns out, and then you have a big fire.
What is the result of the big fires in Arizona this year?
First of all, we can talk about the size of the fires. We can talk
about the size of the Rodeo-Chediski fire in Arizona. It was about 60
percent the size of Rhode Island. This is simply one fire. You can see
from this map the size of the Rodeo-Chediski fire. Here is the size of
the State of Rhode Island. If you add in other fires that have occurred
in Arizona this year, you have a size that exceeds the size of Rhode
Island. That is in my State. That is how much has burned in my State--
about 622,000 acres in this fire alone.
Let me show you what it looks like after that burn. And I have been
there. I have walked it. I have driven through it. I have seen it from
the air by helicopter. It is a devastating sight. Here it is, as shown
in this photograph.
The ground is gray. It burned so hot that it created a silicone-like
glaze over the soil. And, of course, it just absolutely takes all the
pine needles and branches off the trees, so all you have are these
sticks left standing. Some of these, by the way, are pretty good size
trees. And there is salvageable timber in here if we are permitted to
go in and do that salvaging.
But because of the glaze over the soil, the report from the experts
in the field is that when the rains finally began to come, it did not
soak into the soil; it ran off. And what you now find throughout the
central and eastern part of Arizona is massive mud flow into the
streams. It kills the fish. It makes the water unpalatable. It
devastates the free flow of the water, so it creates new channels and
erodes the soil. It goes around bridges, and there is one bridge that
was very much in danger.
It flows into the largest lake in the State, Lake Roosevelt. And
Roosevelt Lake is the biggest surface water source of water for the
city of Phoenix and the other valley cities. There has been great
concern that mud flow will affect the water quality and the water
taste, as well as damaging the environment for the aquatic life in the
lake and in the other streams.
There are some other sad things about this fire. Just to mention some
of the devastation, the total of this fire was about 468,000 acres
burned. The total in Arizona is about 622,000 acres. The structures
burned in Arizona were about 423, the majority of which were homes and
some commercial structures.
In the United States, this year alone, we have lost 21 lives as a
result of the wildfires, and over 3,000 structures. The impacts on our
forests in Arizona, the old growth trees will take 300 to 400 years to
regenerate--300 to 400 years. To have a tree of any good size takes at
least 100, 150 years.
We have endangered species in our forests, the Mexican spotted owl,
for example. The fire burned through 20 of their protected active
centers. So I think those who claim to be environmentalists, who want
to protect a forest by keeping everybody out of it, and rendering it
subject to this kind of wildfire have a lot of explaining to do when 20
of these protected centers for the Mexican spotted owls were ruined,
devastated, burned up in this fire. The recovery time for this habitat
is 300 to 400 years as well.
Twenty-five goshawk areas--this is another one of our protected
species--and postfledging areas were impacted or destroyed. Wildlife
mortalities--and these are just those that were actually documented--46
elks, 2 bears, and 1 bear cub, and, of course, countless other small
critters.
I think it is interesting that air quality is something that is
frequently overlooked when you think of these fires. I was up there. I
know because I had to breathe it. But just one interesting statistic is
that the greenhouse gases from the Rodeo fire emitted during 1 day--
just 1 day of the fire; and this thing burned for 2 to 3 weeks in a big
way, and then longer than that in a smaller way--but 1 day's emissions
of greenhouse gases from the Rodeo fire surpassed all of the carbon
dioxide emissions of all passenger cars operating in the United States
on that same day.
So if we are really concerned about greenhouse gases, just stop and
think, all of the emissions from all of the cars in the United States
did not equal 1 day's worth of emissions from this one fire. Of course,
there were a lot of other fires burning in the country as well.
[[Page S8634]]
Let me try to put this in perspective in terms of the amount of area
of Arizona that is subject to this kind of fire.
We have about 4 million acres of forest in Arizona that is classified
as condition 3. That is about one-third of all the forests in Arizona.
Condition 3 is the area that is in the most danger of catastrophic
wildfire. Here is a State map of Arizona. And the area in yellow is
pretty much the forested area of our State, with the area depicted in
red the class 3 area.
So you can see that a great deal of our ponderosa pine forest here is
in very dire condition and needs to be treated as soon as possible.
The Grand Canyon is right here. You can see on the north rim, there
are significant areas that need to be treated. Over here, near the
Navaho Indian Reservation, there are areas that need to be treated.
Flagstaff is here; you can see the mountains that rise over 12,000 feet
just north of Flagstaff. Those areas are very much in danger. You have
the Prescott National Forest, Coconino National Forest, the Tonto
National Forest. The Apache Indian Reservation is probably the largest.
This area is the watershed for Phoenix, the Gila River and its
tributaries. It provides a great deal of the surface water for the city
of Phoenix and surrounding areas.
These are beautiful mountain areas with a base elevation of over
7,000 feet. This area over here is 9,000 feet. The mountains rise over
11,000 feet, covered with ponderosa pines, spruce, fir, aspen, and
others trees. All of this area is in grave danger of beetle kill
disease, mistletoe, wildfire, and being weakened and dying from
insufficient nutrients and water because of the condition of the
forest.
It is a very matted, tightly packed forest with all of the little
diameter trees literally squeezing out the big trees that we all want
to save. It is called a dog hair thicket. It is so thick that a dog
can't even run through it without leaving some of his hair behind.
Let me show you an example of what the forest used to look like and
how it looks today. On the top you see a photograph of 1909. You can
see these beautiful big ponderosa pine trees. There are some smaller
ones back here. You have different age growths, and that is the way you
like to have a forest so as the big ones grow older and die, there are
others to take their place. You see a great deal of grass, sunshine,
open space. You can imagine this is a very healthy forest because you
don't have too much competition for what the trees need to grow. It is
also a wonderful environment for elk and deer and butterflies and
birds. It is open. You have plenty of grass for forage and so on.
This is the same area in the year 1992. This is the way much of our
forests look today--absolutely dense, crowded. I am not sure if the
chart is observable here, but you can see that the forest is now very
crowded. Here you have beautiful, large ponderosa pines, a couple more
back here, but they are being squeezed out by all of the smaller
diameter trees.
What we are talking about in management is not cutting the big trees,
not logging the forest. We are talking about taking out the bulk of
these smaller diameter trees that are not doing anybody or anything any
good and are clogging up the forests, preventing the grass from
growing. They are ruining the habitat for other animals and creating
conditions for insects, disease, and catastrophic wildfire.
For those who say we don't want to go back to logging, nobody is
talking about that. We are talking about saving these big trees, not
cutting them down.
The problem is, a lot of the environmental community is in total
concert with this general management. But you have a very loud,
activist, radical minority that is so afraid commercial businesses will
want to cut large trees, that they want to destroy any commercial
industry. In the State of Arizona, there is essentially no logging
industry left. We have two very small mills, and the Apache Indian
Reservation has two mills. The Apache Reservation I will get to in a
moment because that is where the Rodeo-Chediski fire occurred.
What we are talking about here is having well-designed projects,
after consultation with all of the so-called stakeholders, with the
Forest Service having gone through all of the environmental planning
and designating projects, stewardship projects with enhanced value so
that they can go to these commercial businesses and say: Can you go
into this forest and clean all of this out and make it look like this?
Whatever you take out of here that we mark for you to be able to take
out, you can sell that. You can turn it into chipboard, fiberboard. You
can turn it into biodegradable products for burning and creating
electricity. You can perhaps take some of the medium-size trees and get
some boards out of them, maybe some two-by-fours. Can you make enough
of a profit to do this for us because there is not enough money for us
to appropriate to treat 30 or 40 or 50 million acres?
We are talking about a lot of money we simply don't have. You have to
rely upon the commercial businesses to do that. Some of the radicals
are so concerned that when they are doing this job for us, they will
say: We don't have anything more to do; we want to take the big trees.
And they are concerned that we won't have the ability to tell them no.
Therefore, they are going to prevent us from cleaning up the forest for
making it healthy again. They will create a condition that results in
the catastrophic wildfires I was talking about; in effect, cutting off
our nose to spite our face.
We are not going to do what everybody recognizes needs to be done
because maybe when that is all done, 40 years from now, somebody will
say: We want to go after the big trees.
Does anybody believe the political environment in that setting is
going to permit us to do that? None of us are going to agree to that. I
don't agree to it today.
Let me tell you a story. Former Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt
is a very strong supporter of what we are talking about. An area he
used to hike in when he was young is called the Mt. Trumbull area on
the north rim of the Grand Canyon north of Flagstaff. As Secretary of
Interior, being BLM land under the jurisdiction of the Department of
Interior, he was able to do the rules and regulations that enabled us
to go in and do the clearing. So they hired a couple of brothers that
had a small business. They brought some pieces of equipment down from
Oregon. One of them was a very small caterpillar thing that could snip
all these small diameter trees. They cleaned out a fairly good size
area. They made enough money to be in business, and isn't that fine.
What they left was a forest that looked more like this.
I remember one tree that a BLM person there said: I have to show you
this. Here was a tree that looked like a big California sequoia. It was
a big ponderosa pine. The boughs came all the way down to the ground.
And all around it were these small dog hair thicket kind of trees and
brush. He said: We have to get them to clean this out because this tree
is very much in danger of burning. If any spark comes within a mile or
so, it will just climb up this ladder.
That beautiful tree, that was maybe 200 or 300, 400 years old, is
going to go up in flames. That is the kind of tree we are trying to
protect. For those who say we want to somehow do logging and so on, I
simply say they are wrong; we are not. This is what we are trying to
create, not this.
Let's go on to talk about some of the other aspects. In Arizona,
there were about 4 million acres classified as condition 3, meaning
most subject to catastrophic wildfire. Nationally, there are just under
75 million such class 3 acres. Out of this, the Forest Service
identifies about 24 million as the highest risk of catastrophic fires.
And this definition means they are so degraded that they require
mechanical thinning before fire can be safely reintroduced.
According to the General Accounting Office, we have a very short
period of time in which to treat these acres. According to a 1999
study, the GAO says we have 10 to 25 years to treat this 30 plus
million acres of class 3 land if we are to prevent unstoppable fires.
This shows you what can be done when you treat the acres. This is
full restoration, meaning we have gone in and cut out quite a few of
the small diameter trees leaving relatively few, mostly larger trees
per acre. This is exactly what this particular acre had on it when the
cutting and thinning had
[[Page S8635]]
been done, going in and cutting out the small diameter trees.
In Arizona you can introduce fire in prescribed burns during the
month of October and November because it is cooler. It is moist, and
the fires are not going to get out of control. Fire was introduced here
in this area in October, the wet month, and you can see that it is
burning along the ground, burning the fuel that has accumulated on the
ground. It is not going to go through this tree here or these trees
here. It may burn some of the smaller trees, but what is going to be
left is a nice environment in which you have grasses that can crop up
the next spring and reintroduce a lot of species and habit and protect,
as well, from fire.
If lightning were to strike one of these trees and start a fire, it
would return along the ground like this. In the hot summer months, once
it has been treated, it is likely, with all of the fuel having burned
off the previous winter, the fire will move around the ground and it
will not crown out to a higher degree of fire.
The reason you cannot treat these forests with fire alone, and you
have to mechanically thin and cut out some of the underbrush first, is
demonstrated by the next chart. This shows you what happened when we
left this many trees per acre. This shows you when you do minimal
thinning. They didn't do very much thinning, and they reintroduced
fire, and you can see this fire is starting to climb the trunks of
these trees and is going to crown out. You see it coming up along the
top of this tree. It is going to catch the crowns of a lot of these
larger trees. They are at great risk of burning and a fire starting.
This is during the wet month of October when you have a lot of
moisture. If you don't take out very many trees, a la this particular
treatment here, minimal thinning, and you introduce fire, you are going
to have a risk of fire in the hot months. It is going to be a very
grave risk.
Let's turn to the third chart, which shows what happens when you
don't do anything at all, you only burn. This demonstrates why you have
to do thinning first. No thinning was done on this particular acre.
This is during the cool, wet month of October in Arizona. They
introduced fire, and look at what happened. It got out of control and
created a crown fire. This is the beginning of what the Rodeo-Chediski
fire looked like.
So it is too late in much of our forests to introduce prescribed
burning. It will go out of control. You have to go in, as I said, and
thin it out first and then, that fall, you set a prescribed burn and
you burn all of the fuel on the ground. Thereafter, the grasses grow
and everything regenerates and you have a very nice environment.
There is another myth. I talked about cutting old-growth trees. When
people talk about saving old growth, we need to be careful because the
reality is that a lot of old-growth trees, particularly in Arizona, are
not big trees at all. They are not the ones you necessarily want to
save. If you have been on the California coast, perhaps you have seen
trees over a thousand years old. Some of the oldest ones are gnarled.
Which tree here is the oldest? Interestingly, this smaller tree is 60
years old and this bigger one is 55 years old. This is the younger
tree--the big one. This tree was in an area that wasn't competing for a
lot of nutrients, water, and sun. It was in a more open area. It grew
as you would expect it to--very well, very quickly, and very big.
Obviously, this is a tree we are going to want to preserve. It will
get bigger and bigger. But if you have that area in which the trees are
crowded together in these very dense thickets, you can have a tree no
bigger than this small one after 60 years. In fact, I have another one
about the same size that is 88 years old.
Old growth would be something over 120 to 150 years. We have trees
not much bigger than this that are designated old growth. We desire to
create an environment in which you get these big beautiful trees that
grow old and big and create the habitat for all of the fauna I
discussed before for which we are trying to preserve the forests. This
is an illustration of why you don't want to have arbitrary limits on
cutting old-growth trees. The tree you want to save is this big
one, not that one, the small one. That makes a much nicer environment
and one that is better for the wildlife.
(Mrs. CLINTON assumed the Chair.)
Mr. KYL. Let me now discuss one of the concerns that has cropped up
during the discussions about the kind of legislation we want.
There are those organizations in the environmental movement that
understand there is too much public opinion in favor of doing something
to manage our forests now because of this wildfire season, this
catastrophic fire season. They understand they have to make some
concessions. They have concluded that the best thing to be for is what
they call urban/wild interface management. What that is supposed to
mean is that you can go in and thin the areas right around communities
and right around people's expensive million-dollar summer homes, and
the like, but you cannot go out into the forests themselves.
We will put up the chart that shows the class 3 lands.
The problem is, first of all, it treats very few acres. This will
illustrate the point. We don't have very many communities in these
forests. There are five or six little towns in this whole area here. To
do urban/wild interface management alone, by going out a half mile
around the city limits of those little towns, is going to do nothing to
enhance the environment in the rest of the forest. It will do nothing
to protect the habitat of the endangered species out there. Actually,
it does very little to protect the communities themselves.
The Rodeo-Chediski fire--and I will show you the chart later--burned
with such ferocity and intensity that the small areas that had been
treated provided little or no protection. It was only the areas where
there had been a larger area of treatment that were protected as a
result of the fire.
I can tell you, while the fire was still burning in the eastern area,
we helicoptered up to the Rodeo-Chediski lookout and we drove about
another 2 miles on a road that divided between an area that had been
treated--that is to say, there had been thinning, and I believe
prescribed burning in the area as well, and on the other side of the
road it was not treated. The side that was not treated looked like a
moonscape. There was no living thing. Every tree had all of the
branches and pine needles burned off--nothing but ghostly, ghastly
sticks. On the side that was treated, you could hardly see that a fire
had gone through there. It laid on the ground, and it burned itself
out. It was in a large enough area that it did not burn in that area.
Unfortunately, where you had just a thin, light, little strip of a
quarter mile or half mile, the fire jumped right over it. I saw that as
well in different areas.
Part of the problem is a phenomenon that exists particularly in the
West, where you have dry, hot conditions on the ground. The fire crowns
out, as you have seen on television, and these massive spires of flame
go 100, 150 feet in the air, which creates a plume of high, hot air,
smoke, ashes, cinders, carried upward, and it looks like a mushroom
cloud from an atomic kind of explosion because the column of hot air
rises like this and it creates a mushroom effect. It gets up into the
cooler atmosphere, 15,000, 20,000 feet, and it cannot rise any more
because the heat doesn't sustain it. The cool air dampens it down and
begins to create condensation. Eventually, the weight of the plume that
has risen is greater than the capacity of the hot air to sustain it and
it collapses. The firefighters call it a phenomenon of a collapsing
plume. What happens then is the whole thing comes crashing down,
creating a huge rush of air down on the ground, which pushes out all of
the hot cinders, sparks, smoke, and ash out, like this, for 2 or 3
miles.
That happened many times in the Rodeo-Chediski fire. I witnessed the
creation of one such plume in an area of Canyon Creek, where I have
been hiking and camping. It was devastated by this fire. So it doesn't
do you any good to create a bulldozer kind of a firebreak, or a quarter
of a mile or half mile of thinning, if the fire can spread with such
ferocity. That is what happened over and over in this particular fire.
Let me explain that, notwithstanding the fact that there had been
some treatment around some of our communities. Just stop and think
about this
[[Page S8636]]
for a moment. About 30,000 Arizonans had to pick up everything they had
within about a 6-hour--I forget exactly how many hours of warning it
was, but it was very few hours. They had to pick up what they could in
their pickup trucks and cars and find somewhere else to live for the
next 2 weeks. Show Low, AZ, is a town of over 20,000, 25,000 people,
and in Pinetop and Lakeside and McNary, a few smaller towns, they had
all had to leave. They could not go back in for anything. A few people
tried to feed livestock and keep horses and cattle and pets alive, but
a lot was lost when these people had to be gone for 2 weeks.
Just think of having to leave your home and not knowing whether it
was going to burn or not. Some did burn, but the towns were saved.
Interestingly, one of the reasons Show Low was saved was that a
canyon to the southwest had been treated. It had been thinned, and
there had been prescribed burning in that area I believe 2 or 3 years
before; I have forgotten exactly how long before.
When the fire hit that area, the combination of that plus the
backfire they lit in this particular canyon prevented the fire from
reaching the outskirts--it reached the outskirts but prevented the fire
from burning the town of Show Low.
Think about that. What we need to do is not treat quarter-mile or
half-mile or even mile-long strips of property around fancy summer
homes or small communities but, rather, treat the forest itself--as
much as we can treat, as quickly as we can treat it. Only in that way
will we get the environment back to the healthy state it was.
Only by treating large areas of the forest will we be able to return
it to the status shown on this chart, where the small mammals will have
a place to graze, really small animals will have a place to hide from
the hawks, which will have a place to get the small mammals. We will
have the birds, the butterflies, and more introduced as a result of
this kind of treatment.
I mentioned before the issue of salvage timber. There is objection
even to going in and cutting down the trees. I will show a chart of
these trees. This is a huge amount of timber that could be salvaged as
a result of the fire. In this kind of landscape, we need to cut some of
the trees to lay it down and stop some of the erosion which inevitably
occurs because of this kind of fire. It will enhance the regrowth of
that area. Even seeding and planting does not do any good because the
water washes all that material into the streambeds and it does not
take.
This is timber that has a huge amount of value if it is able to be
removed quickly, but disease will set in and deterioration will occur
within a few months. If it is not removed in a 12-to-18 month period,
it is lost. This is one way to help pay for what we are trying to do.
Rabid, radical environmentalists do not want to even salvage that
timber. Why? Again, because it will actually provide some jobs for the
commercial timber industry and the mills that would mill the trees into
lumber. They do not want them to be in existence because they then pose
a threat to the rest of the forest. That is their logic. It is amazing
logic.
Most of the Rodeo-Chediski fire was not on Forest Service land.
Sixty-some percent was on the White Mountain Apache Indian Reservation.
One can see on this chart the area of the fire. The green area is the
Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, and the yellow area is the Fort
Apache Indian Reservation.
The White Mountain Apache Tribe relies a great deal on the revenues
of its timber operations to sustain its tribal operations. In fact, it
is the tribe's biggest source of revenue.
Also significant to the tribe is the revenue it derives from the
hunting that it permits on its land. The White Mountain Apache Tribe
for decades has been very smart about how they have managed their
forests. They understand that if you are going to have wild turkey, if
you are going to have bear, if you are going to have wildcat, huge elk
that people are willing to pay $10,000 to hunt, if you are going to
have that kind of wildlife that will bring in these kinds of trophy
hunters who will pay the tribe a lot of money to hunt on the
reservation, then you have to do a couple of things. First, you can
only take out the number of animals necessary to keep healthy herds, a
healthy group of bear or lion, or whatever it might be. So they take
out very few of those animals, just enough to keep the forest ecosystem
in balance.
Second, you have to have a healthy forest. You have to have a forest
that is not all grown over in this dog-hair thicket environment but,
rather, the more open forest that I showed before. The reason is that
these elk have to have grass on which to graze, as I said. You are not
going to have an environment where the lions are going to be able to go
after the smaller critters because there will not be any small critters
if they do not have places to forage and places to hide.
The White Mountain Apache Tribe has been very smart about the way
they have managed the forests. They have not been subject to the same
restrictions as has the Forest Service. They have been able to do more
prescribed burns. They have been able to do thinning and utilize that
small-diameter timber in their mills, and they have taken out modest
amounts of medium- and a little bit of larger diameter timber as well.
Some environmentalists say: You cannot do that; there has to be a
diameter cap of 20 inches, 16 inches, or some number. The tribe has not
been subjected to that. It has asked itself the question--it is the
type of question experts, such as Wally Covington from Northern Arizona
University, ask: Not to define old growth or diameter cap, but take a
look at the area and determine its carrying capacity. What will this
particular area carry? What did it carry 100 years ago in terms of the
kinds of trees, and other growth, and the number of trees?
When one determines that, then one knows what kind of treatment is
called for. In some areas, you are going to cut all but 150 trees,
leaving mostly large trees with a few more intermediate-size trees. In
other areas, you may cut less. It may be that an area is so full of
medium-size growth trees, let's say 20-inch diameter trees--you may be
taking several of those out or maybe quite a few of those out. It does
not mean you are harming the environment. It means you are reducing the
number of stems to the carrying capacity of the land so it can
rejuvenate, so it can grow back, and the trees left will be the
magnificent trees we are trying to preserve. We will have grass and all
the rest that is necessary for healthy flora and fauna.
That is the idea of this treatment. Over the years, the Apache Tribe
has done a good job managing their forests. As a result, they have had
less of a problem with fire. There are several different areas that
have been treated, and in the bear report that followed the devastating
fire, there is quite a bit of discussion about the kind of timber that
was lost, the areas that were not as heavily damaged, and a discussion
of the areas preserved, by and large, because they had been treated in
the past.
I find it interesting, by the way, and I am going to digress here--
let me make this point. We need to help the Fort Apache Tribe salvage
the timber that is salvageable in this area. They do not have the
capacity in their mills to do it, but they can mill some of it and then
sell some of it to others. They have to get to it right away. They are
making plans to do that. They need about $6.7 million to complete this
project. I hope we will be able to provide that to them and it will
help sustain the reservation.
As to the Forest Service, there are objections already to salvaging
the same timber. We do not know where this boundary is when we are on
the ground. It is all the same. Why the Apache area can be salvaged but
not the Forest Service area I cannot explain. Nobody can rationally
explain it. We need to salvage there as well. Yet there are those who
object to any opportunity to salvage this timber.
One of the ideas for legislation was to have an opportunity to
complete some stewardship projects or enhanced value projects that
would in a temporary way--maybe over a 3-year-period of time, for
example--treat areas of the forest that have not burned to see how well
this kind of management worked.
This has been tried in the past. One of the cases is the so-called
Baca timber sale. When we talk about timber sales, some of the more
radical environmentalists get all upset because we
[[Page S8637]]
are actually going to sell some timber to a mill that can mill it into
lumber and build homes and lower the price of homes, by the way, so we
do not have to buy all the timber from Canada at higher prices.
This Baca timber sale was proposed in 1994 to reduce hazardous fuels
both in the interface and to improve forest health. It followed 5 years
of planning and public participation. All the stakeholders were
involved. But environmentalists appealed and litigated the case for 3
years.
The Baca timber sale was in this area. When the Rodeo fire went
through that area, it burned about 90 percent of the proposed area. An
area that could have been treated, that could have been made healthy,
that the fire would largely have skipped around, was left to be ravaged
by this catastrophic fire. The same environmental groups currently
threaten lawsuits that would prevent the restoration of this area,
which is why I mention that.
I ask my colleagues, when are we going to say we are no longer going
to be jerked around by the radical environmentalists' agenda to destroy
the commercial timber industry so they never have to worry about any
big trees being cut, in the process permitting the forests to burn,
destroying the habitat, endangering lives, burning homes, and burning
up the same trees they want to save, as well as the environment for the
species?
I mentioned before some of the species. The goshawk is an example. In
1996, the Forest Service proposed a project to thin near the nest of
the goshawk, partly to reduce the fire hazards that were presented to
the goshawk. These radical environmentalists appealed. That year the
fire burned through the forests, including the goshawk nest. That is
what happens when irresponsible environmentalists have control.
What does the control result from? It results from the fact we have a
legal system that was designed to provide the maximum environmental
input into decisions about abuse by some of the radical environmental
groups. Let me cite some statistics from a report released in July by
the Forest Service that covered the appeal and litigation activities on
the mechanical treatment projects during the last 2-year period. Out of
326 Forest Service decisions during this study period, 155 were
appealed, more than half; 21 decisions that were administratively
appealed ultimately led to Federal lawsuits.
What happens with the lawsuits? You get an injunction which prevents
you from moving forward with the project. In many cases either it burns
while the project is pending or the Forest Service decided to move on
rather than fight the appeal. The appeal, therefore, goes away, the
work never having been done.
In the southwestern region of Arizona and New Mexico, 73 percent of
all treatment decisions were appealed. Nationwide it was almost half--
48 percent of the project decisions in fiscal year 2001 and 2002.
Again, 73 percent in our area were appealed.
We cannot operate that way. The Forest Service is spending half of
its budget preparing for these projects and fighting them and doing the
work in litigation and on appeals to respond to the environmental
community activity. About half of their budget is spent directly
fighting the appeals, dealing with the injunctions, or preparing the
projects in such a way as to be immune from this kind of litigation,
which almost inevitably appears anyway.
On administrative appeals alone in 1999 through 2001, in Arizona--
just one State--environmental groups filed 287 administrative appeals;
75 of these were filed by two groups that are very active. In
litigation in the last 5 years, the Sierra Club and the Center for
Biological Diversity litigated 11 projects in Arizona and in 10 years
litigated 17 projects, including the Baca timber sale which was 90
percent burned while on appeal because of the litigation that ensued.
This is what has to stop. The administration, President Bush, has
visited these areas and has concluded that the best way to try to deal
with this problem is to keep the environmental laws in place so there
is never any question about the application of the proper standards for
the projects that are developed but to make it more difficult for those
who are appealing for the sake of delay, to delay projects to the point
they are no longer worth proceeding. In other words, move the process
along.
The President's idea is you still have to have sales or projects that
comply with the NEPA process where there is environmental review by the
State holders, but you cannot get a temporary restraining order or
preliminary permanent injunction in court unless the court decided the
case and imposed a permanent injunction on the sale, but you could not
go in advance and get that injunction, which is frequently what happens
today.
In addition to that, the administrative appeals would be reduced or
eliminated for certain sales. If you want to file suit, you can file
suit and go directly to the judge. The hope would be that the judge
would decide the case quickly and therefore either the project moves
forward or it doesn't, but everyone knows they can move forward with
alternative plans if the project cannot move forward. It seems to me on
a trial basis, a limited basis, that would make sense.
What we proposed was we limit this proposal to class 3 areas--in my
State of Arizona it would be only the red areas--that we limit it in
time to maybe a 3-year authorization so we see how it works. If people
do not think it works, we do not have to continue it. And that we limit
the amount of acres that would be treated--maybe 5, 7, or 10 million
acres per year, something like that. That, obviously, could be
negotiated. And you would limit the way in which the appeals could be
brought and have no temporary restraining order or preliminary
injunction to be able to stop a particular sale. There would also be no
limitation on the salvage projects I mentioned before.
Now, would these projects be logging? Would they be clearcut, et
cetera? Of course not. First, they would have to be pursuant to the
plans that have been developed by the forests. All of these regional
plans have long ago discarded any kind of clearcut cutting. They have
basically adopted the management theory of reducing the small diameter
underbrush and small diameter trees, leaving, by and large, the larger
older trees that we want to preserve.
Those are the plans in place now. They are the plans that would be
proposed. If there is any plan that is not consistent with that,
obviously, people could file a lawsuit and they could go to court and
say, judge, this is not consistent with what we had in mind. And the
court, of course, could say, that is right. If the proper environmental
analysis had not been done or was inconsistent with the plan, the
project could be stopped. That is what we are proposing.
As I said before, we have been in negotiations with our friends on
the other side of the aisle. I mention in particular Senator Feinstein
from California has been very helpful in trying to find some middle
ground, to craft a plan to permit us, over a very short period of time,
to be able to treat a small amount of acreage and see how well it
works. If it works well, perhaps we could go on from that. We got to
the point of having a 1-year authorization, with 5 or 7 million acres
maximum to be treated. It would be limited to this class 3 area. And a
high priority would be given to urban wildland interface and to
municipal watershed areas. Even that has not been accepted.
The question is whether or not we are going to be able to reach an
agreement that permits us to fairly quickly pass an amendment, have it
adopted and sent to the other body so we can begin negotiation for a
conference report that enables us to send something to the President
and begin treating these forests or whether we are basically going to
be in a stalemate or gridlock with the two different camps in the
Senate, neither one having the votes to prevail, with the result that
nothing comes out of this legislative session and we will be left with
an opportunity missed, and a heightened risk for the forests that we
want to preserve.
That is the choice before the Senate. I call upon my colleagues who
have been working on this to try to find a way to enable us to be able
to treat some of the acres in good faith, and see how it works, and if
it does work well, as we predict it will, to enable us to expand that
to the roughly 30 million
[[Page S8638]]
acres that the General Accounting Office said we need to treat or else
see burned.
Those are the stakes. I call upon my environmental friends, who are
mostly concerned about protecting these areas of the forests, to think
about the priorities.
Do we want to protect the habitat for those endangered species that
we all would like to preserve? Do we want to protect the habitat for
all the other flora and fauna? Do we want to have a healthy forest or
do we want, in effect, to let it go to seed, risking catastrophic fire,
disease, and insect devastation which will not protect the environment
but will destroy it for all the purposes I mentioned before?
That is the choice before us. It seems to me there is no better time
to act and, in fact, this may be the last opportunity to act this year
in order to achieve this result. I urge my colleagues to find this
compromise; if not, to support the kind of effort I propose that is a
limited project with very tight constraints--in effect, a pilot or
demonstration project to see if we can make this kind of forest
management work.
I thank my colleagues for their indulgence.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
Mr. REID. Madam President, administration budget requests and
congressional appropriations bills are a clear reflection of our
priorities as a nation. As was discussed on the floor earlier today, it
seems we had, from the administration, a focus on Iraq and nothing
else.
I am happy to see a bill just came from the House. I would like very
much to see other things coming from the House, not the least of which
is the rest of the appropriations bills and the matters that are now in
conference. No. 1 on the top of my list is the terrorism insurance
bill. We need to have that done.
I think now we have the second debacle in a row in Florida. We have
election reform that we have passed. It would be nice to finish that
conference report as well as the Patients' Bill of Rights and the
generic drug bill that seems lost over there sometimes. We have a lot
of things that we need to complete.
And, of course, bankruptcy reform. Senator Carper came to me this
morning, here on the floor, and told me how desperately his
constituents feel this is necessary to help many different industries.
So there are a lot of things we need to do.
I listened patiently to the very erudite remarks of the Senator from
Arizona. I would say it is not an either/or situation. It is not a
question of forests burn down or the radical environmentalists caused
all this. The fact is, what we are proposing is instead of 70 percent
of the money being spent where there are no people, we reverse that and
have 70 percent of the money spent in places such as Lake Tahoe, a
beautiful lake shared by California and Nevada. We are very concerned
about what happens if a fire occurs there.
My friend from Arizona said there are million-dollar homes, that is
what we are trying to protect--and I am sure there are, in the Lake
Tahoe area, some very expensive homes. But remember, this is also an
area of hotels, motels, and ski lodges and the service people who work
in those are not millionaires and don't have millionaire homes but they
need to be protected. That is what this is all about.
As I said, the administration budget request and appropriations bills
are a clear reflection of our priorities as a nation. It is where
rhetoric meets reality. In an economic downturn, and that is what we
are in now, it is more important to put people first, ahead of--instead
of handouts to--corporations.
Unfortunately, I am sorry to say, the Bush administration's so-called
healthy forest initiative would add to its already impressive list of
corporate giveaways. This proposal is anti-community and anti-
environment, plain and simple.
My friend is in a neighboring State, Arizona, and I know they have
suffered these devastating fires. We have watched them and feel for
them. But the answer is not to bash on radical environmentalists. That
is not the cause of these fires. We have a number of people in America
who feel very strongly that the proposals made by my friend from
Arizona, where you basically take away judicial review of decisions
made, is wrong. I do not think there are many who would put the League
of Conservation Voters in the camp of radical environmentalists. In
fact, I think they are very moderate. They see things the way the
American people see things--a way to protect the environment. The
League of Conservation Voters will grade all of us, all 100 Senators,
on this amendment and on this vote.
I think it would be a shame if, because of the pending Craig
amendment, that the minority would vote not to invoke cloture on this
most important piece of legislation. We need to move forward with this
bill. If cloture is invoked, the Craig amendment falls--no question
about that. But we have tried to work something out and we have been
unable to work it out.
My good friend from Oregon, Senator Wyden--who is a consensus
builder, who is a longtime legislator--understands the art of
legislation is the art of compromise. He has worked for weeks trying to
come up with a compromise. If Wyden can't do it, it cannot be done,
because he is someone who understands legislation and how to work out a
so-called deal.
The League of Conservation Voters will grade us on this amendment in
its annual scorecard. Whoever votes to agree to this amendment will
fail, in their eyes, fail to protect the environment. That is what this
vote is all about today.
Like the Bush plan, the Republican amendment is championed as a way
to address the real fear and suffering of those who live in danger of
wildfires. Sadly, this is simply a smokescreen for another corporate
handout. This is tragic because wildfires have burned roughly 100,000
acres in Nevada and more than 6.3 million acres nationwide this year.
The fire season is already one of the worst in the record. In Nevada,
it is past. That doesn't mean we can't still have devastating fires,
but this fire season has been bad. The one before it was bad. By
December of this year we may have the grim distinction of it being the
worst year for wildfires in American history.
Faced with this devastation, what is the administration's plan? It
proposes to suspend environmental reviews of timber projects, making it
easier for timber companies to harvest large, healthy, fire-resistant
and, of course, profitable trees. The Republican plan will suspend the
main environmental law applicable to our forest, NEPA, the National
Environmental Policy Act. That is the law that forces the Forest
Service to ensure its timber sales don't hurt the environment. It is
the avenue through which local people and governments review these
sales.
It would also prevent any meaningful judicial review of timber
company and Forest Service actions. That is what this pending amendment
would do. That is because in the Republican plan the issuance of
temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions is prohibited.
That is what restraining orders are all about. If you do not have a
restraining order, by the time you get to court the trees are gone.
What is the point of judicial review if the trees have already been
clearcut by the time you walk through the courthouse door?
The Republican amendment also fails to target funding to the places
where forests meet our communities, where people and property are at
greatest risk. This is not a situation where there will not be work
done in areas outside of municipalities, places where people live. But
we are saying let's reverse things. Instead of spending 70 percent of
the money where there are no people, let's spend 70 percent of the
money where there are people.
The Republican amendment does not require that a certain percentage
of funds be spent on wildlife/urban interface. Instead, it gives the
Forest Service discretion to carve out big tree timber sales and cast
aside community concerns, as they have been doing for such a long time.
There is no hard target to protect our communities because that is
not what the Republican plan is about. It is about making it easier for
the Administration to sell our forests to their favorite timber
companies.
We already have a stack of GAO reports detailing the myriad of ways
that our forests are mismanaged by our agencies.
For example, we know that government agencies do not target funding
to
[[Page S8639]]
the wildland-urban boundary where we can best protect lives and
livelihoods.
According to the President's own budget, only one-third of the fuels
reduction budget was spent to directly protect people and homes. That
report came out in February of this year.
Think about that. The Forest Service has a record of spending most
funding out in the forests, away from people. That is not an acceptable
record. They support logging of large, profitable--and fire resistant--
trees. They place lower value on hazardous fuel reduction projects on
forests and rangeland around communities.
Don't just take my word for it. In response to GAO requests, Forest
Service officials themselves stated that they tend to ``(1) focus on
areas with high-value commercial timber rather than on areas with high
fire hazards or (2) include more large, commercially valuable trees in
a timber sale than are necessary to reduce accumulated fuels.''
How does the President reward agency mismanagement? By repealing
public oversight. The record of agencies in managing our forests
demonstrates just how important it is to have that oversight.
When my colleagues vote on the Republican plan, they should ask
``Would it truly help communities threatened by fire?'' The answer is
no.
I hope the minority will vote to invoke cloture and have this
amendment go down. The Craig amendment should fall.
The big trees that would fall as a result of this amendment aren't
the main cause of the wildfires now scorching many states--including
mine, the State of Nevada, and of course, all over the West.
The real personal and economic danger facing Americans in the areas
where our wildlands meet our communities is being used as the disguise
for this latest giveaway to big corporations.
The Administration and the Republican amendment don't focus resources
on these areas--a principle embraced in the National Fire Plan and the
Western Governors' Association. I don't think they are radical
environmentalists.
Instead, they make it easier to squander fire money on projects that
are far from communities and that threaten to worsen future fires.
I am sorry that it appears that it is the modus operandi of the Bush
Administration--roll back environmental laws, cut the public out of the
process, keep people in the dark and turn over a public resource to
corporations.
Corporations can handle anything; any problem in America, turned over
to corporations. We need oversight of these corporations.
In this case, that choice puts people in harm's way--it diverts
taxpayer dollars from public safety and, in many instances, to private
plundering. We should instead spend fire money on projects that reduce
the risk to communities in forests and rangeland at high risk of
wildfire.
Mr. President, Nevada has relatively little commercial timber but we
do have a terrible hazardous fuels problem that threatens Nevadans from
Caliente to Reno--all over the State. Past practice proves that
Congress needs to direct spending these funds to protect communities
rather than accepting the President's new proposal.
Protecting people should be our priority today, not paving the way
for companies to remove great trees from our public lands.
There could still be work done, and there will be work done in areas
that the Senator from Arizona says there should be. What we are saying
is all the money shouldn't be spent there. We are also asking: Why not
have judicial review? Why not have the ability to look at what is being
done by these agencies?
No one wants these fires to occur. They are devastating. But you have
to recognize what appeared in, I believe, today's Washington Post--it
could have been in yesterday's Washington Post--and what happened in
Montana 2 years after the devastating fires. They reviewed in depth
what happened there. We know fires have been burning for centuries--
forever. You need to have these fires occur on occasion. That is why we
have prescribed burning in all of the country. It is too bad we had the
serious problem with prescribed burning in New Mexico. But we need
prescribed burning. Burning makes for healthier forests. We have to
deal with what we are calling for in the amendment that we want to
offer; that is, have prescribed burning to make healthier forests. We
want to improve forests so we have nature doing what it has to do.
We know pine trees can only germinate if there is a fire. There is
new growth of pine trees after fires, which pop the pinecones, and
causes the planting. That is something which is extremely important.
We tried to work something out on a compromise basis. We can't do
that. The majority leader made the right decision. A cloture motion was
filed. We are going to vote on that this evening.
I hope the Craig amendment will fall so we can move forward with this
bill and complete this legislation.
I am disappointed we won't be able to offer our amendment. Our
amendment would also not be germane. That is too bad because I believe
we should focus on what is going to happen in urban centers--in areas
where there are people. Hopefully, we can get the mix of money being
spent so that more is done there and not out in the middle of nowhere.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BURNS. Madam President, I cannot sit idly by and not offer some
comment on the Senator's statement.
No. 1, the Senator has flopped the money in regard to the President's
budget. I might add that at least the president completed a budget.
Seventy percent of this money would go to wildland urban interface, and
30 percent goes to the less populated areas, not the other way around
as the Senator from Nevada suggested.
In this amendment, we change no environmental law. We deny no one the
appeal process. Both administratively and judicially, those things
don't change.
What I am asking Senators and this country to consider are
environmental laws, NEPA, clean water, clean air, and the Forest
Management Act, which has been in effect for some 25 years. We have
been operating and managing under those laws for that long without some
reform. Look at the track record. I'm asking for proof you are right to
deny this; prove us wrong.
For years and years, I have followed football a little. I guess what
makes that game great is there is only one rule book, and it is in
every State across the Union. If we want to bring some discipline, look
at that fact and compare it to what we are doing in our judicial
system.
When I look at the appeals process--as the chief of the Forest
Service said the other day, if you get 999 people out of 1,000 to agree
on a management decision, it can all be stopped by one person. That has
been the case ever since these laws were put into effect. We see the
result, we get growth, and we burn. We do away with grazing, and we
burn. If we do away with active management of a renewable resource,
what was there before? We saw younger trees that grew old, matured,
died, and regrowth occurred.
Once again, look at the track record of the management we have been
under for the last 25 years. We see great regrowth and reforestation
even in clearcuts where that management has worked: New trees, new
forests, a renewable resource that is in demand by the American public,
to carry on into the next generation and the next generation, a
renewable resource that can be used by all Americans, all Americans;
that is, if housing and the use of lumber appeals to you.
I realize some folks don't worry about the cost of a home or people
getting into their first home. The folks on the other side of this
issue are less caring about it. The League of Conservation Voters--who
are a pretty moderate group, have a little radical group among them
that actually makes the policy to carry out their appeals process in
this situation.
Make no mistake about it, if they who want to manage the forests
differently want us to prove why we think this plan would work, then I
ask for the other side to use the same system to prove theirs has
worked. For 25 years, those management practices have all but
culminated, in the last 4 years, in the destruction of a renewable
resource which could have been somewhat prevented.
[[Page S8640]]
Yes, there will always be fires. They even slash and burn after
harvest is over. Do you know what? They grow back. They are wonderful.
They are beautiful. But what I fear is that the way this system is now,
people who have never had any dirt under their fingernails are making
the management decisions on a resource that should be used for
generations to come. It just does not make a lot of sense to me.
Compare the track records. No money goes to corporations. No law is
changed. All rights are preserved. We are saying let's put the football
at the 50-yard line. Nobody likes to start on their own 20.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, we are attempting to make a very
important policy determination on the management of our public lands.
Many of us have been on the floor over the last good number of years to
talk with some concern about the changing character of our public lands
and the impending crisis that might occur under the normal climate
cycles across the United States as a result of catastrophic wildfires
on our forested public lands.
Tragically enough, many of the alarms we were talking about were
based on studies done over several decades, that inactive management of
our public lands, in the absence of fire, was allowing a fuel buildup
that ultimately could result in catastrophic wildfires.
We are now at that point where it has become obvious to the American
public, from watching television this summer, and seeing the fires that
have raged across the western forests, that something is wrong out
there; that this was not a normal environment; that this was something
they were not used to; Why were these beautiful forests now burning?
They were burning, they are burning--they are still burning--and have
been since mid-June because of public policy that had largely taken
fire out of the ecosystem but had not allowed a comparable activity in
the ecosystem of our forested lands that would remove the underbrush
and the small trees and maintain the kind of environmental balance that
was there prior to European man coming upon the scene a couple hundred
years ago, and especially in the last 65 to 70 years when we had become
very good at putting out fires in our forests. It is from that
perspective that brings us to the floor today.
A few moments ago, my colleague from Arizona was on the floor talking
in great detail about the wildfires that swept across his State this
summer--the white forests of southwestern Arizona, and the phenomenal
damage that occurred there. It nearly wiped out an entire community. It
clearly destroyed valuable ecosystems and watersheds and wildlife
habitat to a point of ultimate devastation.
It, in fact, has created such an environment that it denies Mother
Nature, once she has done this damage, the ability to come back and to
create a resilient forest in a reasonably short period of time. By that
I mean several decades.
These fires are now so intense, based on the fuel loading on these
lands, that it is equivalent to literally tens of thousands of gallons
of gasoline per acre in Btu's. The fire burns deep into the soil, soil
loaded with organic materials that absorb and hold water and allow
plants to flourish, creating what are known as hydrophobic soils. In
other words, it caramelizes them; it fuses them; it ultimately destroys
the ability of these lands to reproduce for decades.
Of course, because you have denied the ability of the land to absorb
water, when the rains come in the fall, massive landslides, erosion,
and watershed damage occurs. Right now, in Colorado, with the current
rainfall, landslides are occurring as we speak. They are not making the
national news that the fires that swept across those lands a couple of
months ago did, but they are making the local news because the roads
are blocked, people cannot traverse the area, watersheds are being
damaged, and, of course, the quality of the water that now flows into
the reservoirs that supply the urban areas of Denver and other places
is in question--all because of public policy and a perception that has
prevailed in public policy for the last several decades that inactive
management, no management, man's hand not present in the forest, was,
by far, the better way to go.
I am not even questioning the fact that several of the industries
that were prevalent in our forests over the last century have lost
credibility in the eyes of the American people. I am not even going to
argue that forest policy of 30 years ago, based on certain attitudes
and certain images, projected by national environmental groups, has not
changed attitudes and has caused us to lose the support of the American
public on certain aspects of national U.S. forest policy. I believe
most of that is true.
But what I also believe is true is that a radical move from one
position to the other, and holding the far position on the other side,
is just as bad as maybe clear cutting policies of 40 or 50 years ago.
Many will now argue: But we are saving old-growth forests across our
country by disallowing the human hand to touch the land. I suggest to
those who so argue that this year we have lost over 2\1/2\ to 3 million
acres of old-growth forest because we were not allowed to go in and
take out the underbrush and the small trees that are below these older
trees. And as the fires swept across the land, it took everything,
including the old growth.
So radicalism or extremism or a fixed policy on one extreme or the
other can produce the wrong results. Putting good stewards on the land
who understand the science of the land and the science of the forest
itself is, by far, the better way to go. But in the last decades, we
have decided that the policy was bad. I say, collectively, as a
Congress, we have decided that. So we began to micromanage from the
floor of the Senate. Every Senator influenced by some of his or her
environmental friends decided they were the forest experts. They would
legislate the particulars or they would deny certain actions that
should be happening on the public lands.
As a result, over the last number of years, we have seen the average
number of fires and total number of acres destroyed per year begin to
rapidly increase on our public forested lands.
What was once an average burn of 1 million, 1.5 million to 2 million
acres a year is now up into the 6 to 7 to 8 million acres a year. And
it seems now, if you were to graph it, to be progressively climbing.
This year we have now burned about 6.5 million acres of forested
land--not just burned it but destroyed it. There is hardly a tree
standing--watersheds destroyed, land hydrophobic, wildlife habitat
gone. Mother Nature will not come in there and replace herself for a
decade. In the meantime, watersheds will slip and slide off the face of
these mountains in landslides, riparian areas destroyed and urban areas
at risk.
We are, therefore, going to sit here, as a Congress, and say: This is
OK. This is the right thing to do.
The majority leader some months ago knew that in the Black Hills of
South Dakota it wasn't the right thing to do, and he was able to work
with groups and accomplish for South Dakota some of what we would like
to accomplish for the rest of the forested States of our country: an
active form of management that brings groups together, creates local
public interest, understands the dynamics of good stewardship, and
allows some degree of active management.
So for the last several weeks we have worked very closely with a
variety of Senators from both sides of the aisle to see if there was
not a bipartisan way of accomplishing this. Tragically, some interest
groups have some of our colleagues so locked into a single position
that they can find no flexibility in their vote.
My colleague from Oregon, Ron Wyden, and Senator Dianne Feinstein of
California have worked closely with us to try to make some of these
changes. They have come a long way. I, too, have come a long way in
trying to craft a middle ground that will allow active management on a
select number of acres of land to prove to the American public that
what we can do can be done right not only in improving forest health
but, at the same time, not damaging the environment and, in a very
short time, allowing that land to rapidly improve as wildlife habitat
and watershed quality land and also be productive for additional tree
production
[[Page S8641]]
for the housing industry and for the American consumer that would like
to own a stick-built home.
Last week, Senator Domenici of New Mexico and I offered an amendment
that we thought was a comprehensive effort to come to the middle
ground, to a position that both sides could support. We took the advice
of the western Governors who met with the Secretary of the Interior and
the Secretary of Agriculture some months ago to express the very
concern I and other Western colleagues have expressed about the state
of at least the western forests and to try to arrive at a collaborative
process that would allow both sides to come together.
In our amendment, what we have offered is basically allowing a
collaborative process to go forward at the State levels to select those
lands most critically in need of active management for the kind of
thinning and cleaning that would be most desirable under these areas
and, at the same time, to recognize the clear protection that would
come as a result of existing forest plans, to not override forest plans
that most of our States have on a forest-by-forest basis, but to
recognize that those are appropriate planning processes, that the
efforts we would recommend to improve forest health would be consistent
with the resource management plans and other applicable agency plans.
We would establish a limited priority of action, and that limited
priority would be in the wildland/urban interface areas. This year, we
have lost over 2,100 human dwellings while we have lost 6.5 million
acres of wildlife dwellings. So the human, in this instance, is
experiencing phenomenal damage to his or her dwelling, just as is
wildlife. As a result of that, we recognize the most critical need of
trying to resolve the wildland/urban interface.
I see my colleague from West Virginia on the floor at the moment. He
was very willing to put additional money into firefighting this year.
It is part of this amendment on the floor now.
Why? Not only do we need it, but now the Forest Service spends most
of its time protecting houses instead of protecting trees and wildlife
habitat and watershed. Why? Because over the last 25 years in the West,
every piece of non-Federal land that is in the timbered areas has found
it to be a place where people like to live. They have built beautiful
homes out there. As a result, we now have a conflict that we did not
have 25 years or 30 years ago when fire became an issue on our public
lands. So we are dealing with the wildland/urban interface areas.
The other area I mentioned, now very critical in the West, is the
municipal watershed area. These are the watersheds that provide the
water and the impoundment or where water is collected for our growing
urban areas. Many of those were devastated this year. I was on one in
Denver, Colorado; now devastated, water that will now flow into the
reservoirs that will feed the city of Denver. Much of that water will
have the result of an acid base produced by the ashes of the forest
fires that destroyed the watersheds of that area.
We also recognize that forested or range land areas affected by
disease, insect activity, and what we call wind throw or wind blowdown,
those are the areas that are now dead or dying. As a result of that,
those are most susceptible to fire. We have recognized the need to get
into some of those areas. That would be important to do.
Lastly, areas susceptible to what we call reburn, where the fire
flashes across it, largely kills the trees, and then causes those trees
to die, making them more susceptible to fire.
We have also said that this approach, while extraordinary, will
include only 10 million acres. When I say only 10 million, I am talking
about over 300 million forested Federal acres in our Nation under the
direction and management of the U.S. Forest Service. These forested
public lands encompass a very small amount. This would be showcased
over a limited period of time with substantial restrictions. So that
would be very important, and the process would have some limitations as
it relates to current law: That we would not allow appeals or
injunctions, but that there would be a judicial review process on a
project-by-project basis. It would allow the filing in a Federal
district court for which the Federal lands are located within 7 days
after legal notice when a decision to conduct a project under the
section is made. In other words, we do provide a legal remedy for those
who openly object to any of this activity.
As I and others have said, and the President said over a month ago,
we will not lock the courthouse door. While we think it is tremendously
important that we begin to deal with forest health, we should not deny
the fundamental process in the end. And we would not deny locking the
courthouse door so that there could be a review as these actions
proceeded.
Those are the fundamentals of what we are proposing to do--a limited
nature, 10 million acres, to allow the groups to come together on a
State-by-State basis to meet with the Forest Service and examine those
acres and the most critical need of action, and to recommend to the
Forest Service those areas, to allow a limited environmental review to
go forward and, through that recommendation, then move to expedite the
process in a way that is commensurate with forest health.
(Mr. JOHNSON assumed the Chair.)
Mr. CRAIG. If we could treat 5, or 6, or 7 million acres a year, and
by that, I mean thinning and cleaning, leaving the old growth; our
legislation talks about leaving no less than 10 trees per acre of the
oldest trees, and more if it fits the landscape, or the species, or the
watershed in which this activity would be going on.
But even if we do all of that--if the public would allow us, and this
Senate were to vote to become active managers of our lands once again--
with all of that, the state of our forests is now in such disrepair
from a health, fuel-loading, big-kill standpoint, that in the years to
come we are still going to lose 4, 5, 6, 7 million acres a year to
wildfire. It is simply a situation of human creation by public policy
that has denied active and reasonable management on these lands for
several decades now. As a result of that, we have a tragedy in the
making.
But if we act, in the course of the next decade we can save 700, 800,
or a million acres of old growth and watershed and wildlife habitat, by
these actions, that might otherwise be burned by wildfire. That is the
scenario and the issue as I see it. It is also the issue that some of
our top forest scientists see.
Is it a political issue today? Tragically enough, it has been
politicized. There seems to be a loud chorus of people out there who
say: Do nothing. The tragedy today is that a do-nothing scenario is,
without question, more destructive to the environment than a do-
something scenario could ever be, because it would be total destruction
instead of limited damage in some areas that we treat, as we move to
protect the old trees and guard against entry into the roadless areas
at this moment in time, but still allow the thinning, cleaning, and
fuel removal to come out of these acreages, as proposed by the Craig-
Domenici amendment that is now pending.
So I hope my colleagues will support us and join with us. While the
fires have dominantly been in the West this year, this is not just a
western issue. We are fortunate to have forested public lands all over
our country. Here in the East, similar problems are now happening:
Overpopulation of our forests, even in the hard woods, bug kill, fuel
loading; and now we are beginning to see more of our forests in the
East, along the Allegheny and the Blue Ridge and down into the South,
become ripe for burn during certain seasons of the year.
So it is a situation that is now beginning to repeat itself in the
East as much as it has since the late 1990s out in the West. So I
believe it is a national issue of substantial importance and one that
we ought to spend time debating and understanding.
I encourage my colleagues to visit with me, Senator Domenici, or
others who have offered this amendment, trying to seek a balanced
approach to allow the U.S. Forest Service to begin the program of
selective, active management of thinning and cleaning, using a
comprehensive, collaborative approach on a State-by-State basis, with
interest groups from those areas, in a way that will begin to restore
the forest health of this Nation.
[[Page S8642]]
We may have a cloture vote at about 5:15. I hope my colleagues will
not vote for cloture but will give us an opportunity to vote up or down
on this amendment, as I think we are entitled, because we believe it is
not only good policy but it is a critical and necessary vote for our
country.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia is recognized.
Mr. BYRD. How much time does the Senator from New Mexico want for his
speech?
Mr. DOMENICI. I didn't know whether we had any time left on our side.
Mr. BYRD. I believe we have until 12:30 overall.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
Mr. DOMENICI. I would ask for 5 minutes at this point.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, do I have the floor?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. BYRD. I ask unanimous consent that I may yield to the
distinguished Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Domenici, for not to exceed
5 minutes, without losing my right to the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from
West Virginia.
I have heard most of the statement on the floor by my distinguished
friend and colleague, Senator Craig, with whom I am a cosponsor of a
very important amendment. We have a number of Democrats and Republicans
who have joined us on this amendment. All I want to do is suggest that
if we are going to have cloture this afternoon, I hope that, with
reference to a cloture that will take this amendment down, Senators
will not do that.
We have not had very much time. It is a very important and easy-to-
understand issue. It will be confronted with an opposition amendment,
which we have not seen yet, that will be forthcoming by the majority
leader and, perhaps, Senator Bingaman. Both of them are moving in a
direction of modifying the existing environmental laws that don't let
us remove certain kinds of trees from our forests that are, by most
people, determined to be the kind of trees you should remove. They
either result in a burndown, or have the result of what is called a
blowdown where whole portions of a forest are blown over, or they have
just accumulated and are not growing because there is so much rubbish
left over that you cannot get the Sun to do any good. When the fires
come, they go from one place to another, right over the top of trees.
We want to set the timeframe within which objection can be made to
going in and cleaning up that kind of forest, that it be moved in a
very short period of time and not be subject to lengthy court hearings
but, rather, that it move expeditiously.
We got our idea from an amendment the distinguished majority leader
attached to a previous appropriation bill. The majority leader did this
modification of the environmental laws that restrained removal of
certain kinds of forests that were no longer needed and that could be
used if you took them out of there rather quickly. The majority leader
did that in an amendment and made it apply to a certain forest in his
State and, thus, in the State of the occupant of the chair.
I don't have any objection to that amendment today. If the majority
leader and his fellow Senator who occupies the chair want to do that,
that is their business. It is about their State. I didn't come down to
talk about changing environmental laws. I waited a couple weeks and
suggested that maybe we ought to do the same thing--that we ought to
get some movement in our forests rather than leave these kinds of trees
there.
There are many other things wrong with the forests that we are going
to have to fix. Essentially, over 6 million acres of our forests have
burned--more than twice the 10-year average--in the current fire
season. Twenty-one people have been killed and 3,000 structures have
burned.
It will be more like an experiment. We will take a piece of these
forests, and we will go in and clear them out within a reasonable
timeframe, rather than the unreasonable timeframe that has become the
procedure heretofore which, by using the courts and various actions of
the courts, imposing NEPA and all of its requirements, whenever groups
do not want any of this clearance, they win, just by delay.
I thought there would be a unification of purpose and we might get
all the Senators to understand this was not an effort to defeat the
environmentalists. We did not think they ought to necessarily take
sides in opposition to this issue. It is a very realistic, commonsense
approach.
We will have more time to discuss it in more detail, and we will get
to discuss it at our respective policy luncheons. I thank the Senator
for yielding me the 5 minutes. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, what is the situation with respect to time?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 10 minutes remaining prior to the
recess.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may hold the
floor beyond the 10 minutes for a reasonably short period of time. I
would say perhaps another 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I yield to the distinguished Senator. He
wants 3 minutes for a statement. So I yield 3 minutes to him. I do not
know why I am accommodating all these Senators like this, but I yield 3
minutes. I yield to him without losing my right to the floor for a
statement only for not to exceed 3 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The
Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAPO. I thank the Chair.
(The remarks of Mr. Crapo pertaining to the introduction of S. 2942
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills
and Joint Resolutions.'')
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, over the course of the last several months,
the Senate Appropriations Committee has endeavored to craft 13--13--
bipartisan, responsible pieces of legislation which fund every aspect
of the Federal Government. The Appropriations Committee accomplished
its goal. Each bill was adopted by the committee without a single
dissenting vote--not one.
This is the largest committee of any committee in the Senate. It is
made up of 29 members--15 Democrats and 14 Republicans. So each bill
was adopted by the committee without a single dissenting vote: 13
bills, not a single nay vote. That is true bipartisan cooperation. In
fact, if one adds up the rollcall votes for the 13 bills, one would
have a tally of 377 aye votes to zero nay votes. That is a record for
which committee members should be proud.
As all Senators are aware, the appropriations bills are stuck. They
are stuck; the ox is in the ditch. The House Appropriations Committee
has not acted on five appropriations bills, and the full House has yet
to pass eight of the bills, leaving the next fiscal year in a dangerous
position of starting without Congress having completed action on the
funding legislation.
Why are we in this predicament? While it would be easy to point the
finger at the House of Representatives, the blame basically, truly
belongs down the avenue--the other end of the avenue.
The White House's Office of Management and Budget remains wedded to
an arbitrary budget figure that undercuts the Congress' ability to
complete its work in a responsible fashion. The Senate has passed
appropriations bills that total $768 billion. Every Senator on the
Appropriations Committee voted for that funding level. Every Senator on
that committee voted for that funding level of $768 billion. Every
Senator on the Appropriations Committee, Democrat and Republican,
recognizes that level of $768 billion is a responsible level that
provides for the largest Defense spending bill ever, that provides for
a significant increase in homeland security funding, and that
accommodates just enough to cover the cost of inflation for domestic
priorities--priorities such as veterans health care, education. These
are not boondoggle bills. These are responsible pieces of legislation.
The House appropriators would be able to complete work on their bills
if
[[Page S8643]]
they were able to utilize the same overall figure. I want to say the
fault is not with the House Appropriations Committee chairman. That
committee would be able to finish its job. But the White House has
insisted that the House allocate no more than $759 billion. So the
House is stuck $9 billion below the Senate and weeks behind the
calendar for completing its work.
The House needs to get its work done, but more importantly, the
administration needs to provide some flexibility to help us to finish
these bills. We do not need political games. We need to complete action
on 13 individual appropriations bills.
I know; I worked closely with the chairman on the other side,
Chairman Young, and with the ranking member on the Democrat side, Dave
Obey. I worked closely with them. Their heart is in the right place.
They know the Senate and the House ought to go to the higher, top line
figure, $768 billion. But it is the administration that has its feet in
concrete and its head in the sand. No, it wants to stay right on the
$759 billion. That is why these appropriations bills are stuck.
Just yesterday--listen to this--in an article in the Wall Street
Journal, Mr. Lawrence Lindsey, head of the White House's National
Economic Council, projected that the military costs for this so-called
war in Iraq will be $100 billion to $200 billion. They were talking
about billions of dollars this year alone. I will say that again: Just
yesterday, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lawrence
Lindsey, head of the White House National Economic Council, projected
that the military costs for this so-called war in Iraq will be $100
billion to $200 billion this year alone.
Now, I would consider $100 billion to be quite substantial. That is a
lot of money, $100 billion. But Mr. Lindsey says it may go from $100
billion to $200 billion this year alone. I consider $100 billion to be
quite a substantial figure, and I would consider $200 billion to be
doubly substantial.
Mr. Lindsey, when asked about that level, said: That's nothing.
That's nothing--$100 billion to $200 billion, that's nothing? If $100
billion is nothing, Mr. Lindsey, what is $9 billion? How can $100
billion be nothing if the White House is willing to put the entire
Government on autopilot over $9 billion? That is why we are not getting
the appropriations bills done. The administration, through its Office
of Management and Budget, says no more than $759 billion, because he
has the authority of the President behind him.
I have heard some strange economic plans in my day, but this one
takes the cake. How can $100 billion be nothing, as Mr. Lindsey is
quoted as saying, if the White House is willing to put the entire
Government on autopilot over $9 billion?
The growth of the fiscal year 2003 appropriations bills is not for
the domestic program. The additional $9 billion in the Senate bills
will fund the President's requested increases in the Department of
Defense and homeland security. For the rest of the Government, that $9
billion is the difference between a hard freeze and a 3-percent
adjustment for inflation. But those facts do not seem to matter. They
do not seem to matter to this administration.
In times such as these, the administration should be working with
Congress to complete action on these appropriations bills, not
attempting to hamstring Congress at every turn.
Obviously, the Office of Management and Budget has adopted a strategy
that places the administration's political goals and rhetoric above the
needs of the Nation. The political goals come first, apparently, with
this administration. What a shame. What a shame. The Office of
Management and Budget has signaled that this year politics wins out
over principle, rhetoric wins out over reality.
So much for the new tone the President was going to bring to
Washington. All this administration wants to do, apparently, is to play
the same old games. The administration seems to believe that the
Federal Government is nothing more than a Monopoly board. The President
is living on Park Place, but the rest of the country is relegated to
Mediterranean Avenue. The administration has asserted that $768 billion
is excessive spending for the coming fiscal year, and yet the
significant increases within that total are to fund the President's
proposal to significantly increase defense spending and homeland
security funding.
I am not against doing whatever is needed to meet the Nation's
requirements for defense, and the same is true with respect to homeland
security. But the Nation should not be forced to cut budgets on health
care, on education, on veterans programs, and other priorities here at
home just to meet some political goal of the administration. The clock
is ticking. We do not have time to play these political games. There is
more at stake than a simple roll of the dice.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article
from the Wall Street Journal published on Monday, September 16, 2002.
The title of the article is: ``Bush Economic Aide Says Costs of Iraq
War May Top $100 Billion.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Bush Economic Aide Says Cost of Iraq War May Top $100 Billion
(By Bob Davis)
Washington.--President Bush's chief economic advisor
estimates that the U.S. may have to spend between $100
billion and $200 billion to wage a war in Iraq, but doubts
that the hostilities would push the nation into recession or
a sustained period of inflation.
Lawrence Lindsey, head of the White House's National
Economic Council, projected the ``upper bound'' of war costs
at between 1% and 2% of U.S. gross domestic product. With the
U.S. GDP at about $10 trillion per year, that translates into
a one-time cost of $100 billion to $200 billion. That is
considerably higher than a preliminary, private Pentagon
estimate of about $50 billion.
In an interview in his White House office, Mr. Lindsey
dismissed the economic consequences of such spending, saying
it wouldn't have an appreciable effect on interest rates or
add much to the federal debt, which is already about $3.6
trillion. ``One year'' of additional spending? he said.
``That's nothing.''
At the same time, he doubted that the additional spending
would give the economy much of a lift. ``Government spending
tends not to be that stimulative,'' he said. ``Building
weapons and expending them isn't the basis of sustained
economic growth.''
Administration officials have been unwilling to talk about
the specific costs of a war, preferring to discuss the
removal of Mr. Hussein in foreign-policy or even moral terms.
Discussing the economics of the war could make it seem as if
the U.S. were going to war over oil. That could sap support
domestically and abroad, especially in the Mideast where
critics suspect the U.S. of wanting to seize Arab oil fields.
Mr. Lindsey, who didn't provide a detailed analysis of the
costs, drew an analogy between the potential war expenditures
with an investment in the removal of a threat to the economy.
``It's hard for me to see how we have sustained economic
growth in a world where terrorists with weapons of mass
destruction are running around,'' he said. If you weigh the
cost of the war against the removal of a ``huge drag on
global economic growth for a foreseeable time in the future,
there's no comparison.''
Other administration economists say that their main fear is
that an Iraq war could lead to a sustained spike in prices.
The past four recessions have been preceded by the price of
oil jumping to higher than $30 a barrel, according to BCA
Research.com in Montreal. But the White House believes that
removing Iraqi oil from production during a war--which would
likely lead to a short-term rise in prices--would be
insufficient to tip the economy into recession. What is
worrisome, ecomists say, is if the war widens and another
large Middle East supplier stops selling to the U.S., either
because of an Iraqi attack or out of solidarity with Saddam
Hussein's regime.
Mr. Lindsey said that Mr. Hussein's ouster could actually
ease the oil problem by increasing supplies. Iraqi production
has been constrained somewhat because of its limited
investment and political factors. ``When there is a regime
change in Iraq, you could add three million to five million
barrels of production to world supply'' each day, Mr. Lindsey
estimated. ``The successful prosecution of the war would be
good for the economy.''
Currently, Iraq produces 1.7 million barrels of oil daily,
according to OPEC figures. Before the Gulf War, Iraq produced
around 3.5 million barrels a day.
Mr. Lindsey's cost estimate is higher than the $50 billion
number offered privately by the Pentagon in its conversations
with Congress. The difference shows the pitfalls of
predicting the cost of a military conflict when nobody is
sure how difficult or long it will be. Whatever the bottom
line, the war's costs would be significant enough to make it
harder for the Bush administration to climb out of the
budget-deficit hole it faces because of the economic slowdown
and expense of the war on terrorism.
Mr. Lindsey didn't spell out the specifics of the spending
and didn't make clear whether he was including in his
estimate the cost of rebuilding Iraq or installing a new
regime. His estimate is roughly in line with the $58
[[Page S8644]]
billion cost of the Gulf War, which equaled about 1% of GDP
in 1991. During that war, U.S. allies paid $48 billion of the
cost, says William Hoagland, chief Republican staffer of the
Senate Budget Committee.
This time it is far from clear how much of the cost--if
any--America's allies would be willing to bear. Most European
allies, apart from Britain, have been trying to dissuade Mr.
Bush from launching an attack, at least without a United
Nations resolution of approval. But if the U.S. decides to
invade, it may be able to get the allies to pick up some of
the tab if only to help their companies cash in on the bounty
from a post-Saddam Iraq.
Toppling Mr. Hussein could be more expensive than the
Persian Gulf War if the U.S. has to keep a large number of
troops in the country to stabilize it once Mr. Hussein is
removed from power. Despite the Bush administration's
aversion to nation building, Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of
U.S. troops in the Middle East and Central Asia, recently
said that the U.S. troops in Afghanistan likely would remain
for years to come. The same is almost certain to be true in
Iraq. Keeping the peace among Iraq's fractious ethnic groups
almost certainly will require a long-term commitment of U.S.
troops.
During the Gulf War, the U.S. fielded 500,000 troops. A far
smaller force is anticipated in a new attack on Iraq. But the
GOP's Mr. Hoagland said the costs could be higher because of
the expense of a new generation of smart missiles and bombs.
In addition, the nature of the assault this time is expected
to be different. During the Gulf War, U.S. troops bombed from
above and sent tank-led troops in for a lightning sweep
through the Iraqi desert. A new Iraq war could involve
prolonged fighting in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities--even
including house-to-house combat.
The Gulf War started with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in
August 1990, which prompted a brief recession. The U.S.
started bombing Iraq on Jan. 16, 1991, and called a halt to
the ground offensive at the end of February.
With Iraq's invasion, oil prices spiked and consumer
confidence in the U.S. plunged. But Mr. Lindsey said the
chance of that happening again is ``small.'' U.S. diplomats
have been trying to get assurances from Saudi Arabia, Russia
and other oil-producing states that they would make up for
any lost Iraqi oil production. In addition, Mr. Lindsey said
that the pumping equipment at the nation's Strategic
Petroleum Reserve has been improved so oil is easier to tap,
if necessary. Both the Bush and Clinton administrations, he
said, wanted to ``make sure you can pump oil out quickly.''
On Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said
he doubted a war would lead to recession because of the
reduced dependence of the U.S. economy on oil. ``I don't
think that . . . the effect of oil as it stands at this
particular stage, is large enough to impact the economy
unless the hostilities are prolonged,'' Mr. Greenspan told
the House Budget Committee. ``If we go through a time frame
such as the Gulf War, it is unlikely to have a significant
impact on us.''
The U.S. economy also has become less dependent on oil than
it was in 1990, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at
Economy.com, an economic consulting group in West Chester,
Pa. A larger percentage of economic activity comes from
services, as compared with energy-intensive manufacturers, he
said. Many of those manufacturers also use more energy-
efficient machinery.
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