[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 7, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H3753-H3758]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1815
                   PRESIDENTIAL TAX PLAN CREATES JOBS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kline). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I am glad I am going to get an opportunity 
to rebut the gentlewoman from Ohio's (Mrs. Jones) statements. 
Obviously, there are a number of exaggerated statements in my opinion. 
I want to go through a few things.
  First of all, in regards to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), 
she talks about the deficit, she talks about the deficit as if she is a 
leading example of programs and her voting is a leading example of 
votes that are cast to reduce any of these programs. I would challenge 
the gentlewoman from Ohio to go ahead and present to her colleagues 
exactly what programs in discretionary spending, keep in mind the 
biggest part of that budget is nondiscretionary. So if you are going to 
do the kind of cuts that she talks about, I think that the gentlewoman 
should accept the challenge and step forward and show exactly which 
programs she is going to eliminate or which programs she is going to 
substantially reduce in order to eliminate that deficit in this budget.
  The fact is she will not even come close. I know it and you know it. 
I think it would be interesting, and I intend to do it, pull the 
gentlewoman's voting record from Ohio and see how many votes she has 
made to reduce programs. I also am going to pull the bills that the 
gentlewoman from Ohio has introduced and take a look at what those 
bills, bills that she is the sponsor of, bills that she is the 
proponent of, what kind of costs those bills add to the deficit. I 
think you would find, I have not looked at them but I think it is a 
pretty good guess that the gentlewoman from Ohio has a number of bills

[[Page H3754]]

that she has introduced that add to the deficit, that under her 
definition of what which ought to be doing in economic sense and 
accounting and so on would defy her own, the discipline that she is up 
here preaching about that we have to exercise.
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. McINNIS. I will be happy to yield in a couple of minutes if the 
gentlewoman would like to stay around, because I have a number of 
points that I would be happy to address with you.
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. All I want to say is pull my record, sir.
  Mr. McINNIS. If the gentlewoman would stay around I would be happy to 
yield in a couple of minutes.
  But what I want to say is it is okay to say something but your action 
ought to follow it. This is not a personal attack. This is a 
professional disagreement. My point is if you are going to stand up and 
preach fiscal discipline, you ought to practice it yourself.
  Now, let us talk about, she says, the Democratic tax cut. Yesterday 
in the Committee on Ways and Means of which the gentlewoman from Ohio 
was present, she was there, there was testimony from the Democratic 
Party that ran the deficit, increased the deficit about $10 billion and 
that the Republican tax cut proposal increased the deficit by about $11 
billion. Well, based on the woman's strong statements about fiscal 
discipline, I would fully expect that the gentlewoman will be voting no 
against the Democratic tax cut bill. And I would fully expect that the 
gentlewoman from Ohio will take the same microphone that she has taken 
for the last hour and preach against the Democratic tax cut which also 
adds $10 billion dollars to the deficit. I would venture to say that 
she will not accept the challenge on either one of those occasions.
  I also want to mention here, by the way, a little rhetoric of your 
colleague, the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. Majette) whose statement I 
thought was pretty interesting, and I understand that she is new to the 
Congress, but she says that this tax increase is the largest tax 
increase in the history of the world, in the history of the world. Now, 
where does that come from? Rhetoric is not what is going to allow us to 
get this economy back growing again.
  I see that the gentlewoman has left. I was more than happy to yield a 
couple of minutes to her but it is clear that apparently that is not 
going to happen. Oh, here she comes again.
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, is the gentleman ready to yield to 
me right now?
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to. I have not yielded 
yet. A couple of conditions I will yield to you under. One is the time.
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. I just need a couple of minutes.
  Mr. McINNIS. I yield the gentlewoman a few minutes. At such time, if 
you are not completed, I will consider yielding more time. I will be 
happy to hear from you on any of the points I brought up.

  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman.
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Sir, I will give you a tax plan that will be paid 
for before the week is out. I will give it to you before the week is 
out.
  Mr. McINNIS. Before the what?
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Before the week is out, that will be totally paid 
for, before the week is out.
  Let me also say to you, sir, that on the floor of the House you are 
entitled to talk about whatever it is you want to talk about as long as 
you do not get personal with your colleague, and I encourage you to 
pull my record. I encourage you to pull my voting record. I encourage 
you to look at the bills that I have introduced, and I encourage you to 
let the American public know that I am here fighting for the working 
class people of this country, that I support business, and that I 
believe that tax cuts would be appropriate if we were not in the 
situation that we are in right now. And that if we are going to have 
tax cuts, they must be fair, they must be fiscally responsible, and 
they must be fast acting.
  Now, I must leave. I have been here for an hour. If you had been here 
while I was speaking for an hour, I would have gladly yielded time to 
you as well. But I am looking forward to continuing the debate because 
the people of the United States need to understand that this Congress 
must do something to stimulate the economy and that what we do must be 
a stimulus. It must not be a facade. It must not be a charade. It must 
do what it is supposed to do. And I challenge you to tell the American 
public how much of the Republican bill that is being presented actually 
goes to economic stimulus, and how much of the rest of it goes to 
giving dividend cuts and capital gains cuts to the most wealthy 
Americans in the country.
  I look forward to debating with you, and I look forward to serving in 
the U.S. Congress with you because I know my constituency knows I am 
doing their job on their behalf.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would remain around for 
about 30 more seconds.
  I would be happy to engage on a special order, we can make some 
accommodation in the next few days. You will take a half hour. I will 
take a half hour. I would engage the entire Democratic Party if they 
want to engage in a debate. But let me say one thing about personal. 
Looking at your record is not a personal attack on my colleague. In 
fact, I am kind of impressed by the energy that my colleague exercises. 
I think she is persistent. Certainly, I have never questioned your 
integrity. I think your integrity is above question. But I would point 
out that if, in fact, you were suggesting a violation of the rules, you 
probably came the closest to it. I did not ask to take down your words 
as I was tempted to do when you made a comment that the President, and 
I missed the middle word was a shameful untruth. You are not allowed to 
call the President shamefully untruthful on the House floor.
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I did not say he was shamefully 
untruthful. I said the representation of the tax package was untrue. 
But write it down. Call me out.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I have not yielded to the gentlewoman.
  I would suggest to the gentlewoman that you and I both know the 
rules. I think we are both observing the rules and I am more than happy 
to engage with you in the next week or so on a debate on any subject 
that you would like. So have your office contact mine. I appreciate the 
gentlewoman participating.
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is nice to talk with the 
gentleman also. Have a wonderful evening.
  Mr. McINNIS. Reclaiming my time, let us talk a little bit about the 
program and let us talk about the budget program and the stimulus.
  First of all, in regards to the gentlewoman from Georgia's (Ms. 
Majette) comments, she kept referring to the people, the lowest income 
people in the country. Remember that the tax cut is targeted at people 
that pay taxes. If you take a look, the lowest income categories of 
wage earners in the United States do not pay Federal income taxes. They 
do pay sales taxes, although they get certain credits, and they pay 
tax, for example, when they buy gasoline and so on, but under our 
system we believe that the lowest income earners of this country should 
not be subject to Federal income taxes. My philosophy is tax cuts 
should not be given to people that do not pay taxes. That is a welfare 
program. And I do not object to all welfare programs. Although, I can 
tell you that every time that you give money to somebody who is not 
working, you are taking that money from someone who is working. And 
under certain circumstances most people agree. For example, if you have 
a wage earner who is incapable of working for some reason, they are 
physically or mentally disabled and cannot work, gainful employment, I 
do not know anybody, Republican or Democrat, that objects to assisting 
those people, to put them on welfare. But, frankly, we have got some 
people out there who are living off the system.

  Now, we did welfare reform several years ago and welfare is to give 
money, that is not a tax cut. It is a welfare program. If the 
gentlewoman or any of the other Democrats wants a welfare program to 
stimulate the economy, they should call it a welfare program. They 
should not come up and advocate giving a tax cut to people who do not 
pay the tax.
  Now, our economy today, first of all, it is not in dire straights. 
Certainly we

[[Page H3755]]

have people unemployed, and if you are unemployed I can see your 
interpretation of dire straights; but on an economic, from a historical 
point of view, on an economic basis, when you take a look at our 
economy, our economy has some positive things about it. I am optimistic 
about our economy. We have got to do some jump-starting.
  When you jump-start something, it is like when your battery of your 
car is dead or when the battery of your car is low you do not attach 
the jumper cables to the bumper of the car. You attach the jumper 
cables to the battery so you can jump-start the car. That is where the 
word jump-start came from. You need to target.
  Now, the Democrats say, wait a minute. You jump-start all over the 
car. We are saying, let us jump-start that portion of the car that will 
give us the biggest buck, that will get the car moving again. We have 
got a dead battery or a low battery. That is where we need to target 
it. That is exactly what this tax cut is. It is targeted as a stimulus. 
And, of course, it has a major impact on the tax structure in the 
future. You cannot do it any other way.
  So my position is on the tax cut and the President's tax cut, first 
of all, I have got a lot of trust in this President. I have a lot of 
trust in his administration. He has done a tremendous job, a job that 
the criticism is minimized, a job of which I hold great honor to him 
for, and that is leading this country, leading this country after 
September 11, leading this country through the Afghan war and a 
victory, leading this country in the Iraqi war. This is a guy who time 
after time after time proves that his leadership is capable of asking 
all of us to follow him. We have a pretty good bet going with this 
President.
  This President has said to us, look, this is the kind of tax cut we 
need to have if we are going to try and jump-start the car. He is the 
one who has said to us, put the jumper cables on the battery and I 
think we can get this car jump-started. Why my friends on the other 
side, outside partisan advantages, in other words, attack the 
Republicans no matter what they do, why some of my colleagues, by the 
way, I think our tax cut will pass with bipartisan support, but why 
some of my colleagues are continuing to put roadblock after roadblock 
and continuing to insist that we attach the jumper cables to the bumper 
is beyond me, other than the fact that they want to play partisan 
politics.
  This is not a time for rhetoric. When we put that tax cut, when you 
take a look at capital gains, for example, sure, not every taxpayer in 
our country gets the advantage of capital gains because they do not 
have an asset that has appreciated in value to the extent that it has 
incurred a capital gains taxation.
  But the fact is if you look historically, and I think we need to look 
at history here, if you look at economic history, every time, no 
exceptions, every time we have reduced capital gains taxation, we have 
seen an immediate uptake in the economy. Every time. No exception. This 
tax package lowers that from 18 percent to 15 percent, 20 percent in 
some cases, but would take it down to 15 percent.
  Now, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones) was very correct in 
saying that our taxes in this country should be fair taxation. Well, 
the most unfair taxation is when you are taxed twice, taxed twice. How 
many of you have out there would be happy going to the grocery store? 
They ring up a dollar's worth of merchandise and they say, all right, 
the tax is 7 cents. So you owe me $1.07. So you pay her the 7 cents in 
tax; and she says, oh, by the way, we are going to tax you again so 
give me another 7 cents. You would say, What are you talking about? You 
do not charge me double taxation at the counter. That is double 
taxation.
  Well, there is one place in our tax structure that we double tax and 
that is dividends. Just based on fairness alone, and I am in complete 
agreement with the gentlewoman from Ohio, the Democrat, who says we 
need to be fair. And following exactly what she preaches, in other 
words doing what you say, if we do that we will get rid of that double 
taxation on dividends. It is imperative, I think, that we do it.
  The President in our tax package that we passed out of the Committee 
on Ways and Means, after lots and lots of research, after lots and lots 
of discussion, that bill is what we need to help stimulate. We want 
jobs. There are a lot of people in this country who need jobs. You do 
not create jobs by building the government. You create jobs by letting 
the private marketplace, by letting small business, and that is what 
our tax bill does. Our tax bill appeals to the small business people 
out there. It is a bill that says, small business, you are great at 
creating jobs. We want you to create more jobs.

                              {time}  1830

  Once you create more jobs it has a trickle down effect. Somebody who 
has a job does use that money, does spend that money or even if they do 
not spend the money, even if they just put the money in a savings 
account, that money still circulate through the economy.
  The other point I want to make is that the gentlewoman has said to me 
that she will within the next four working days present me with a tax 
cut that pays for itself.
  The Democratic tax cut, by the way, the proposal that their party has 
made does not pay for itself. Yesterday, in their own admission in the 
Committee on Ways and Means, they estimated the cost of the deficit of 
an increase of $10 billion. They were pointing out that their plan 
added $10 billion to the deficit. The Republican plan added $11 billion 
to the deficit. So I am assuming that the gentlewoman from Ohio will 
vote no on the Democratic tax plan, as will her colleagues on the 
Democratic side of the aisle who are preaching this fiscal discipline.
  So I look forward to receiving her tax cut that pays for itself.
  We have a lot of people who stand up here and talk about how terrible 
the deficit is. I happen to agree that the deficit is something we have 
to keep our eye on. Clearly, you should not borrow more than you can 
pay back, but keep in mind that a lot of people that say to you here 
how much they hate the deficit and how we should not contribute to it, 
take a look at the bills that they sponsor. Take a look at their voting 
pattern. Somebody told me once when you come back to your district talk 
conservative, talk fiscal responsibility; when you are back in 
Washington vote for spending. I mean that is what goes on here a lot, 
and I think that it is fair game.
  When somebody stands up at this microphone and talks to my colleagues 
here, their voting record is fair game, and we ought to do a comparison 
on it because my guess is that you will find most of the people that 
make those kind of statements, most of the people have a voting record 
that does not reflect fiscal discipline. They have a record of bill 
introduction of whose bills do not reflect fiscal discipline. A lot of 
people talk about fiscal discipline as long as you cut somebody else's 
budget.
  I have people that come in, they may be with transportation, and say 
we want fiscal discipline but by the way do not cut my highways out. An 
educator may come in and say, by the way, you have to get this economy 
going, you need fiscal discipline, but we need more money for 
education. The Department of Defense will come in and say we agree with 
fiscal discipline, just do not cut the Department of Defense. It is 
human nature.
  So I am not defying human nature. I am saying we clearly ought to 
define it right here on the floor when somebody says one thing and does 
something else.
  So that was my intent this evening by the way was not to talk about 
the tax cut, but for one hour, one hour, the Democrats have assailed, 
have assaulted the President's tax plan and the plan that went out of 
the Committee on Ways and Means yesterday from the Congress and I think 
will pass on a bipartisan plan. So there is a necessity for some 
rebuttal. There is a necessity for some clarification of what we are 
intending to do.
  In summary, what we are attempting to do with this on a bipartisan 
effort, what we are attempting to do with this tax reduction is to 
stimulate an economy that needs some stimulation, and as I said 
earlier, it is like you do not need to rebuild a whole new car. Our 
economy is not in a depression. In fact, interest rates are the lowest 
they have

[[Page H3756]]

been in 41 years. There is a lot of positive things out there about our 
economy, but it is just like the dead battery on a car. You do not need 
to rebuild the car. The car is in good shape. You have got one part of 
the car, the battery, that has gone dead on you. We need to jump start.
  Common sense is a word often referred to by the other side during the 
previous hour. Common sense would dictate that you take your jumper 
cables and attach them to the battery. You do not take your jumper 
cables and attach them to the door handle. It may be nice. It is not 
going to get the car started and you can attach them to the bumper. It 
is not going to push the car anywhere. The fact is you have got to 
target your tax cut. We are not saying you can jump the car anywhere. 
If you target it, it will move that car. We think that battery will get 
started.
  If you have got an idea, as I said to the gentlewoman and I have said 
to most of the liberal side to the left, if you have got a better idea 
how to jump-start the car without butting the battery cables on the 
battery, come up with it, but the fact is most of what they are saying 
unfortunately is rhetoric.
  The issue that I wanted to visit with about tonight is I come from 
the West. The State I represent is the State of Colorado. My colleagues 
know that. My district is a very large district. In fact, they are 
voting to change it today so I do not know whether it is larger or 
smaller than the State of Florida, but it is about the size of the 
State of Florida. It is a big district.

  In the West, because of governmental actions clear back in the 1800s, 
there is a lot that is different in the West than there is in the East. 
We live under different regulations in the West than you do here in the 
east. You say how is that possible? Let me just give you a little 
history.
  What happened in the early days of this country when we wanted to 
grow our country with the Louisiana Purchase and things like that, back 
then ownership of property, if you had a deed for a piece of property, 
it did not mean a lot. In order for you to own property, you needed to 
get some kind of deed, put a stake in the ground, and frankly, most of 
the time, you needed to be on the ground with a six shooter strapped to 
your side.
  This country, in its infancy, had its population really isolated in 
the small sliver on the East Coast, and the leaders of our country 
decided we want to create a United States. We wanted to create an 
expansive country. We wanted to go into the frontier. We wanted to go 
West and make it a part of our country, and going West back then would 
be going to Ohio or to Virginia. You did not have to go very far to be 
into new settlements of this country, and in order to do that, the 
government said to itself how do we give incentive for people to leave 
this relative safety and comfort of their home on the east coast and 
move out West where you get bit by snakes, you have got to go out there 
by wagon, no industry out there, you are going to have to be settlers 
and deal with the Native American people that live out there currently 
right now. You have got harsh weather, altitude, elevation you have 
never been faced with in your entire life. How do we give people that 
incentive to go out there to be the frontier people? How do we do it?
  Somebody said what every American dreams of, in fact, one of the 
basic concepts that this country was founded upon, was the concept of 
owning your own piece of property. I can remember when I was in high 
school, in fact, I drew it in art class. I was not very talented in 
art, but in art class, I drew my first home, a picture of what I wanted 
to own, my own house, and I think that is the American dream, own your 
own little piece of property, own your own little farm or condominium 
that is your piece of property, that is yours, and our forefathers 
realized that is what the Americans wanted. They wanted that ability of 
owning private property.
  So what they did is they said, all right, let us create what we 
called the Homestead Act. Let us give some land away and actually it 
was not new. We actually tried to bribe British military people by 
offering them free land in this new country we are creating if they 
would defect. That is the first use interestingly of what we now call 
the Homestead Act. That is the first use of the government giving away 
land, and that was to try and bribe British soldiers to defect and come 
over to our side, and we give them land as a reward.
  So they decided to do this, to give land to people to give them the 
incentive to move West. They said, okay, you go out West and you can 
settle or you settle 160 acres or 320 acres and you live on it for 5 
years and you cultivate it and you get to keep that land. You know 
what? It was a tremendous success. Not a complete success but a 
tremendous success. Why was it not a complete success? Because when the 
population got to the Rocky Mountains or to the West, they found out 
that, hey, in Kansas, even in eastern Colorado, in Ohio and the valleys 
of Tennessee and the wonderful bluegrass of Kentucky, 160 acres, you 
can feed a lot of cows on 160 acres. You can feed a lot of pigs and 
sheep on 160 acres, but when they got to the Rocky Mountains, they 
discovered, wow, it takes four acres to feed one lamb. In some places 
it takes over a hundred and some acres to feed one cow. You cannot 
survive on 160 acres.
  So they go back to Washington, and the bureaucracy says, wow, this is 
working until we hit the Rocky Mountains. People are not going into the 
Rocky Mountains. What do we do? Someone said, well, let us give them a 
proportion of the amount of land, not an equal amount in acreage but an 
equal amount that a family could subside on. So if it takes 160 acres 
in Ohio, it may take 3,000 acres in the Colorado Rockies or the Montana 
Rockies or New Mexico. It may take 3,000 acres.
  Somebody else said, no, no, there is a problem with that. The public 
is very angry at the government right now because there is a perception 
out there that the railroad barons, to get our railroad built across 
the Nation, which was a huge achievement and a huge difference in the 
history of this country, we kind of gotten taken to the cleaners of the 
land we gave to the railroad barons. So people are not very excited 
about us giving more land away.
  What happened was they made a decision. Somebody said, okay, to get 
around that problem, let us go ahead and we will keep ownership of the 
land. The government will keep the lands, and we will allow people the 
use of the land. Let us call it multiple use, the concept of multiple 
use, a land of many uses.
  Let me show you now my poster. Take a good close look at this poster 
of where the government lands are in this country. The color on this 
poster, these are government lands. Some of it is BLM land. Some of it 
is Forest Service lands. Some of it is State forests and so on.
  By the way, down here in the left, and I hope you can see that, that 
is the State of Alaska. I think the State of Alaska is 98, I think it 
is 98 percent of the State of Alaska is owned by the government, not by 
the people, not by the private individuals who build a home but by the 
government.
  Take a look at this comparison. This is what happened. People got 
here. This is when the conscious decision was made not to preserve this 
land so that humans never walk on it for future generations, although 
that happened correctly with wilderness areas. It happened correctly 
with our national parks. It happened correctly with our national 
monuments. This land, the only reason this land does not look like this 
land is because of the pressure as a result of giving too much land 
away to the railroad barons. So now let me go on to my point why it is 
different in the West under regulations and rules than it is in the 
East.
  If you look in the east anywhere east of Denver, Colorado, with the 
exception of perhaps the Everglades down here and the Shenandoah and a 
little area in the Northwest, when you want to put a fence up and let 
us say you have some trees and you want to thin your trees out or you 
want to treat your trees, first of all, if it is a private forest, you 
go do it and you do it because it is logical to do it. If you want to 
make an addition to your house, you go to your local planning and 
zoning commission down at the courthouse or over at the county 
courthouse. This is not what happens in the West.
  In the West, because the government owns the land, you know where our 
planning and zoning office is? Right

[[Page H3757]]

here, little tiny government town called Washington, D.C., they are the 
ones who dictate what happens out here in almost half of the country. 
Keep in mind, our big population centers are in California and on the 
East Coast. Out here in the West, it is pretty sparsely populated. So 
all of the sudden you have a majority of people that do not live in the 
West dictate how people in the West live on government lands.
  One of the big problems that we have suffered as a result of this 
disparity has been reflected in the forest fires that we have had over 
the last several years. I am experienced in forest fires. I fought 
forest fires. I used to be a volunteer fireman, municipal volunteer 
fireman. I used to be a police officer. I have personally seen the 
ravages that fires do to, first of all, human lives. I have removed 
bodies off mountains as a result of a fire on that mountain. I have 
seen what it does to wildlife. I have seen what it does to pollution. I 
have seen what it does to watersheds.
  Do you know that the leading killer of endangered species in our 
country is? Wildfire. Kills more endangered species than any other 
threat across this Nation.
  What happened in these big fires that we have seen are really a 
combination of a number of factors. One, around the turn of the 
century, we used to lose to fire, this is an extraordinary number, hard 
number to believe, but we used to lose to fire about 45 million acres a 
year.

                              {time}  1845

  Back in Washington and across the country we said look, we have to 
start fighting these fires. That is where the birth of Smokey the Bear 
came from, by the way. So we adopted a very intentional policy to put 
out fires. What we did not know was putting out these fires over 
decades and decades allowed a large accumulation of trees that was 
unnatural. It was not native to the forest. It allowed a large 
accumulation of trees.
  We were allowing an acre that maybe had 60 trees on it, we were 
allowing 600 trees on that acre. Combined with the environmental 
movement in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s that did everything they could, 
the radical aspect of that environmental movement, to push out 
timbering, to say cutting down a tree was bad. Keep in mind also in our 
early days, we used wood for everything. We used it to heat the house, 
build the house, for the fence, wagon. Wood was much more widely used 
in proportion to the population than it is today.
  What happened is we have now discovered if we want to avoid these 
fires, we have to manage the forests. What happened in the 1970s as a 
result of a radical environmental movement, we had a group of people 
say we will never be able to be smarter than the Forest Service because 
the Forest Service, the BLM people, the Fish and Wildlife, the State 
foresters, they have been educated in the management of the forest. 
They have experience in the forest. Many of those people who work for 
our Forest Service, it has been their lifelong dream to be a forest 
ranger. You are not going to be able to debate these people on the 
merits of how to manage a forest. They have a good idea how to manage 
it. Certainly they have a better idea how to manage it than Earth First 
or the Sierra Club. These groups, like Earth First, knew you were not 
going to win the argument at the local level with the forest ranger, so 
they had to get it away from science and get the decision made based on 
emotion.
  The way to do that was to move the decisions being made on the forest 
to Washington, D.C. because back here in the Nation's capital many of 
our decisions are based on emotion. Sometimes that is good, but most of 
the time it is not. There is a balance in there. They were very 
successful over a period of time of several years of taking the 
responsibility of managing our forests away from the U.S. Forest 
Service and away from our forest rangers and moving that to the United 
States Congress.
  I am chairman of the subcommittee that has oversight on all of the 
Nation's forests. We have continual debates in the United States 
Congress in my subcommittee, which by the way I do not believe anybody 
in my committee has a major or even a minor and certainly not any kind 
of experience to speak of in managing forests, and we have on a regular 
basis bills to restrict the Forest Service from cutting trees. Remember 
on public lands, and you do not have much of it here because these are 
private forests, so it is primarily in the West, we actually have bills 
that envision restricting the Forest Service; they cannot cut any tree 
more than 4 inches wide, regardless of whether the science says it is 
healthy to thin some trees out.
  In the 1970s, several environmental organizations were correct, 
clear-cutting was devastating and the clear-cutting in the West was an 
abuse. Now in some cases it was the science of the day so I am not 
calling these people criminal, as some of the radical organizations 
would. But the fact is when we learn something you are doing is not 
good, stop doing it.
  So the effort to stop clear-cutting in the West on massive parcels 
was well-intended; and, frankly, it was correct. But now the pendulum 
has swung so far the other way that in the State of Colorado we have no 
major timber industry left in that State. None. We have a matchstick 
company which employs 30, 40 people down in the southwest corner, but 
we have to pay people to come and cut those trees and take them out. We 
have to pay them. They have been very successful.
  Just like the condemnation of mining, how terrible mining companies 
are, how terrible timber companies are, how terrible ski areas are. 
There is really an attempt, instead of having land of many uses, to 
putting out a sign in the West that says no trespass. Well, what has 
happened is unfortunately many of these efforts have been successful. 
As a result of that, we have not managed our forests. We have not 
managed them by science. We can get away with it for a while; but at 
some point it catches up with us, and that is what has happened in the 
last few years.
  In my district we had several major fires. I mean, fires where the 
smoke plumes looked larger than the atom bomb. They would be 30, 40 
feet in the air. These smoke plumes get so high in the sky they 
actually form an ice cap on top of them, and the ice cap eventually 
collapses inward, comes out the bottom and creates hurricane-like winds 
and spreads the fire. Only one or two were started by man, and most are 
as a result of mismanagement, of not going out and thinning the 
forests, of not letting the forests do what nature had them do.

  Some people say the answer is controlled burns. Keep in mind that one 
out of five of our controlled burns gets out of control. We know what 
happened in New Mexico. We almost wiped an entire town out. It is 
difficult to manage a controlled burn; but controlled burns are useful 
as a tool, but we also need to be able to go in and clear these forest 
floors and thin out trees. If there is an acre that has 600 trees on 
it, and historically its natural holding of trees is more like 60 
trees, it needs to be thinned.
  So we have introduced legislation, bipartisan legislation. This is a 
bipartisan bill to thin these forests, to let us go into these forests 
and manage these forests as we need to do. That bill is called the 
Healthy Forest Bill. That bill will come to the House floor some time 
in the next week or two. I look forward to being part of an effort by 
the United States Congress to transfer from emotion back to science the 
management of our Nation's forests.
  If we look at the Hayman fire in Denver, Colorado, that is the one 
that most people saw on television. Hundreds of thousands of acres were 
on fire. Unfortunately, we lost some lives last year in Colorado, 
airplane crashes, a tree fell on a firefighter in Durango. But when we 
look at the losses in the Hayman fire, let me point out some other 
losses. Obviously Members are aware of the human loss. That is the 
highest priority of losses. The most expensive loss in monetary terms 
outside of the loss of human life was the pollution in the watershed, 
in the water supply for the city of Denver. The water supply for the 
city of Denver looks like a thick chocolate malt.
  Other damage was the pollution. Look what happened to our clean air. 
In Denver, Colorado, there was more pollution off the Hayman fire than 
there was from all of the vehicles combined from the city of Denver in 
1 year. Other damage was the horrible devastation to our wildlife and 
wildlife habitat. Could this have been avoided? I

[[Page H3758]]

think so. Let me show an example of thinning a forest.
  This poster to my left is Mesa Verde National Park. It is down in the 
Four Corners of Colorado; and just for some promotional purposes, it is 
the only place in the Nation one can stand in four States at once. I 
hope people come and spend a little money in Colorado on tourism. This 
is Mesa Verde. It may be hard to see, but this area that looks kind of 
dark gray, that is all burned out. A couple of years ago the 
superintendent of the Mesa Verde National Park decided they needed to 
protect antiquities and protect employee housing and the lodge and 
government buildings up here. They ought to thin, and so they thinned 
the forest. You know how you can tell where they thinned, to the line 
of thinning, that is exactly where the fire stopped. The fire did not 
burn through here. Why? Because it was properly spaced. Why? Because it 
was much more in its natural setting. It was not a fire-break that was 
built like you would imagine, something as wide as an interstate 
highway. It is because this area was thinned. There was not the 
underbrush and all of the waste on the forest floor. They cleaned this 
area out.
  When the fire started on Mesa Verde, we would have lost lots of 
history, lots of wonderful artifacts had that park superintendent not 
thinned this area. This is what happens when you thin. This is good 
forest management. This is how we ought to manage our forests. By the 
way, this type of management, this park superintendent's action was not 
directed to him by the United States Congress. It actually would 
probably have been opposed by some Members of Congress, what he did. It 
would probably have been aggressively opposed by the Earth First 
organization and other radical environmental groups; but this park 
superintendent, who knows a lot more about that ground and a lot more 
about a forest and management of these public lands, got to make the 
decision. He made a good decision. He did not act capriciously or 
recklessly. Rather, he made a prudent decision.
  That is why I am advocating the Healthy Forest Bill. It is time to 
take the management of our forests and return it to the green hats, the 
Forest Service people, who I have the highest respect for, our BLM 
people, our wildlife people, our State forest people. Why am I, from 
the West, complaining about this? Because in the East, your forests are 
better managed. Why? They are in private hands. In the East where there 
is not much government lands, people who own homes understand that 
there is going to be a big fire if they do not keep the forests clean.
  Nobody is suggesting that we clear-cut this area so it does not burn. 
That is like tearing down your house so it does not catch on fire. We 
are not suggesting that. Not at all. That is an absurd argument made by 
some of the more radical organizations.
  You will find with interest when you see press releases about 
thinning of the forests, you will find that several national 
organizations, including the national Sierra Club, including Earth 
First and some other radical groups, that in their first paragraph of 
every press release they issue: one, timber because that has a negative 
connotation to it; two, clear-cutting because that has an extremely 
negative connotation to it; three, developers, which has an extremely 
negative connotation to it.

  You can see that they will continue to battle and battle and battle 
so that the management of our forests is based on emotion instead of 
having the management of our forests based on science.
  My bill is very simple. My bill says run these forests with the right 
kind of management that is based on science. Let us, to the extent we 
can, take the emotion out of it. Let us manage these forests in such a 
way that we again here in the West, and frankly at different spots in 
the East, that we will not face the kind of devastating forest fires 
that we saw in the West last year.
  Look, just because we are on public lands, that land is owned by the 
people of the United States Government. It is not just owned by the 
people of Montana or the people of Colorado or Utah, but the fact is we 
need to respect the opinions of the people that manage those lands. If 
one lives in New York State, you should yield to the judgment of the 
park superintendent at the Mesa Verde Park on which is the best way to 
manage that because if you live in New York, or South Carolina, you 
probably do not know a lot about the forest. It is a very arid region 
out there. That is what we are asking in this bill. We are using a 
commonsense approach to the management of the forests.

                              {time}  1900

  I would urge all of my colleagues, although a number of them have 
already signed onto this bill, we have lots and lots of cosponsors from 
both sides of the aisle, I would urge my colleagues to stand up to the 
barrage of press releases that are going to come out from the Earth 
First type organizations about how terrible it is to let the local 
forest guy manage that forest. Or gal, by the way. I do not intend to 
discriminate on gender there. I ask that my colleagues stand up to 
this, that they take and they adopt the approach of management of the 
forest by science, management of the forest by people that have been 
educated on the forest and people that have worked in the forest from 
day to day. If we do that, we will once again return to the forests of 
this country, of which we now have 190 million acres at high risk. If 
we allow our Forest Service and our BLM people to manage the area that 
we have given them the responsibility to manage, if we allow them to 
manage it, in return we will be the big winners because we will have 
healthy forests, we will not have these horrible type of forest fires, 
we will not have the kind of devastation we have seen on wildlife, we 
will not have the kind of devastation we have seen to the watersheds, 
to the water supply system, we will not see the kind of devastation we 
have seen to the wildlife habitat. It is positive, positive, positive. 
It is our opportunity to make a change. We should not in the United 
States Congress be managing the day-to-day operations of a forest out 
in western Colorado or eastern Utah.
  This bill is a good bill. I urge all of my colleagues to join the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), who has put hundreds of hours into 
this bill. The gentleman from Oregon has actually been one of the top 
leaders on the House and Senate side on this issue, that they join the 
gentleman from Oregon, they join myself, they join the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, 
they join the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), chairman of the 
Committee on Resources, in our effort to make these forests manageable 
by science, manageable by common sense, managed by the people that 
really understand it.

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