[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 158 (Tuesday, November 4, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13847-S13848]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HEALTHY FORESTS CONFERENCE

  Mr. CRAIG. I come to the floor this morning a bit frustrated and 
maybe with a good reason to be angry at some of our colleagues for what 
now appears

[[Page S13848]]

to be a general intended deceit of the American people. I hope that is 
not the case and I certainly will take back those words if it is not. 
But actions are occurring behind the scenes as I speak that suggest I 
am not inaccurate.
  What am I talking about? This past week the Senate was consumed in 
debating a bill about healthy forests and trying to develop some degree 
of active management on our public forest lands to reduce the overall 
fuel load that was and has been feeding the fires on our forested 
lands. Of course, last week, while we were debating here on the floor, 
America's attention was riveted in California where people were dying, 
homes were burning, and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of 
acres were being consumed. Probably that was the worst wildfire this 
country has seen in several decades.
  What happened last Thursday after a very full and robust debate on a 
bipartisan bill that had been crafted in the Agriculture Committee and 
then recrafted between the Senator from California, a Democrat, the 
Senator from Oregon, a Democrat, myself, a Republican, and a variety of 
others to build a bipartisan alternative approach to this problem? We 
debated that bill and we passed it by a vote of 80 to 14. That would 
demonstrate to the American people that those who opposed us in the 
past somehow had gotten the message. Somehow there was an awakening 
here in the Senate that there was truly a need to resolve the issue of 
forest health.
  The poster I have just put up was used last week. It says: 
``California Burns, Democrat Filibuster Continues.''
  That filibuster was broken. There was a rousing debate and an 80-to-
14 vote. The Healthy Forests initiative passed, an initiative I had 
worked on for a good number of years as chairman of the Forestry 
Subcommittee. The President of the United States, standing in ashes in 
the forests of California or Oregon the summer before last, declared 
this country had to get busy at being better stewards of their public 
lands or we were going to continue to see catastrophic wildfires.
  All of that finally came together last week. Now, on the morning 
news, we see a caravan of mourning firefighters as they lay to rest one 
of the firefighters who was killed in those cataclysmic fires of last 
week in southern California. While there are those laying to rest over 
20 people killed in those fires, and while the Senate last Thursday, on 
an 80-to-14 vote, passed out a Healthy Forests initiative, now, 
quietly, behind the scene, the Democrat leaders are saying: No more. We 
will not allow the bill to move any further. We will not allow the bill 
that passed by a bipartisan vote to go to conference with the House to 
work out our differences, to actually make it law.
  Do you understand what I am saying? I am saying the debate last week 
and the cataclysmic fires in California somehow have not changed 
anybody's mind; they have not changed or are not going to allow public 
policy to change; that behind the scenes there is now a silent, 
invisible filibuster on the part of Democratic leadership that will not 
allow this bipartisan bill to go to conference because, if it doesn't 
go to conference and the House and the Senate can't work out their 
differences, it will not become law. If it is not law, we cannot begin 
to deal with the 20 million acres of urban/wildland interface that are 
addressed within this legislation so that we will thin and clean and 
make them less susceptible to fire.

  What is the picture here? Am I getting this wrong? Is this scenario I 
have on this picture now replaying itself? The fires are out in 
California, or at least we hope they are nearly out. But they will come 
again. Here is the reason they will come again. Here is a map of the 
United States. All these red areas----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Mr. CRAIG. I ask for 1 additional minute.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CRAIG. The red on this map demonstrates not 20 million acres but 
90 million acres of class 3 lands that are dead and dying and 
phenomenally susceptible to fire. See right down here in southern 
California where the fires burn, that red land that was looked at in 
2000, which we said was going to burn? It burned: 3,400 homes, 20 
lives, billions of dollars worth of assets. Now a silent filibuster on 
the part of Democratic leadership says we will not allow the bill to go 
forward? I hope I am wrong. I was not wrong yesterday. I understand 
they are still blocking a unanimous consent request to appoint 
conferees so the House and the Senate can work out their differences, 
so we can get at the business of being the good stewards of our public 
lands the public wants us to be and somehow, some way, treat our lands 
and deny wildfire to other areas of the country.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, how much time remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Three minutes.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, the Senator from Idaho is entirely 
correct. What is going on here is a filibuster over naming of 
conferees. As a part of the normal legislative process, you send 
Members to a conference with the House to resolve the differences. In 
effect, a Healthy Forests bill is now being filibustered without the 
naming of conferees. The differences between the Senate and the House 
cannot be resolved. Unless conferees are named, the 80-to-14 vote we 
had here in the Senate just last week is meaningless, absolutely 
meaningless. No legislation to protect our forests, our people, our 
firefighters, and our homes can move forward while the appointment of 
conferees is being filibustered.
  While efforts to solve this critical legislation may seem illogical 
or even callous in the face of the disaster we have witnessed in 
California on the nightly news, mind you, what is simply unbelievable 
is that the legislation to prevent catastrophic fires such as these was 
filibustered just over a year ago. Last year when the risk of 
catastrophic forest fires was clear and immediate and action was 
needed, there was an effort to block even the consideration of 
amendments to the Interior appropriations bill that would have reduced 
the sort of hazardous fuels that have set ablaze southern California. 
We knew this was a problem last year. We knew it needed to be 
addressed. But time and time again we have been prevented from moving 
forward. That was then and this is now. Now that 22 lives have been 
lost, 800,000 acres have been burned, and 3,400 homes have been 
destroyed, you would expect Congress might have gotten the message to 
get the lead out and get the job done. But some in the Senate just do 
not get it.
  As the Senator from Idaho pointed out, the American people have a 
right to basic safety and security, which this bill provides. After all 
we have seen, they have the right to ask: Why in the world is this bill 
being delayed by 1 second? We saw this bill move at lightning speed by 
a huge majority last week. Now it is stalled and likely to fail in this 
session of Congress.
  How many acres must incinerate, how many homes must burn, and how 
many lives must be lost before we move forward on the Healthy Forests 
conference?
  During the last year, 27 firefighters lost their lives fighting 
blazes such as those this bill intends to diminish. Would it be today 
that my friends in the Senate will move forward to appoint conferees 
and finally pass this much-needed legislation into law or will the 
Senate, like Nero, fiddle while the Nation burns?
  I yield the floor.

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