[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 160 (Thursday, November 6, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H10462-H10469]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1030
APPOINTMENT OF CONFEREES ON H.R. 1904, HEALTHY FORESTS RESTORATION ACT 
                                OF 2003

  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1 of rule XXII, and by 
direction of the Committee on Agriculture, I move to take from the 
Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 1904) to improve the capacity of the 
Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior to plan and 
conduct hazardous fuels reduction projects on the National Forest 
System lands and Bureau of Land Management lands aimed at protecting 
communities, watersheds, and certain other at-risk lands from 
catastrophic wildfire, to enhance efforts to protect watersheds and 
address threats to forest and rangeland health, including catastrophic 
wildfire, across the landscape, and for other purposes, with Senate 
amendments thereto, disagree to the Senate amendments, and request a 
conference with the Senate thereon.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). The gentleman from Virginia 
(Mr. Goodlatte) is recognized for 1 hour on his motion.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, the Nation is well aware of the problem we have with our 
national forests. The wildfires in California for the past 2 weeks have 
made it all too painfully clear that we need to take measures to 
protect our forests. The legislation that is before the House, H.R. 
1904, that the House passed with strong bipartisan support, 
accomplishes that goal. The Senate has also passed legislation to 
address this matter. There are substantial differences

[[Page H10463]]

between the House and the Senate on this matter, and it is vitally 
important that we address this as quickly as we possibly can.
  There is a lot of work that needs to be done. We will be entering 
another fire season starting next spring. We can see from the 
California fires that these fires can occur any time of year in 
different parts of the country, and so it is vitally important that we 
get this matter resolved as quickly as possible. Because there are 
substantial differences between the House and the Senate and because 
there is substantial agreement here on the House side that some of the 
measures in the Senate legislation do not adequately address the 
concerns that we have raised, we need to have a conference on this, and 
we are prepared to do that and act very, very quickly.
  It is my hope that the House will pass this motion and will move to 
appoint conferees, and then we will turn to the Senate and ask that 
they take the same steps over there. There has been some slowness in 
the movement in the other body on this, and we hope that will be 
rectified by the action taken here on the House side today.
  It is our hope that legislation that was included in an 
appropriations bill a few years ago to address this problem in the 
State of South Dakota, which has far more leniency in terms of the 
flexibility given to the Forest Service to address the measure, address 
the concerns in the State of South Dakota, should be extended to other 
States around the country. Neither the House bill nor the Senate bill 
has language that goes as far in giving that authority as already 
exists in the State of South Dakota, but we would certainly like to 
have the opportunity to pass a measure worked out between the House and 
the Senate to give our national forests and other national lands the 
same type of management tools to expedite what is necessary to protect 
our national forests from wildfire, from disease and insect 
infestation, and we can accomplish that and accomplish it expeditiously 
if we move forward to appoint conferees and the Senate does the same 
thing.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support our efforts to move 
forward.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the 
previous question on the motion.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte).
  The motion was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.


          Motion to Instruct Conferees Offered by Mr. Stenholm

  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Mr. Stenholm moves that the managers on the part of the 
     House in the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two 
     Houses on the bill, H.R. 1904, shall, as soon as practicable 
     after the adoption of this motion, meet in open session with 
     the Senate conferees and the House conferees shall file a 
     conference report not later than Thursday, November 13, 2003.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 7 of rule XXII, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) and the gentleman from Virginia 
(Mr. Goodlatte) each will control 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, this motion is really very simple. It is basically 
intending to return this body to regular process. I know this is a 
novel idea around here lately, but it requires the managers of the 
House to meet in open session with the Senate conferees, House and 
Senate, Democrats and Republicans, as soon as practicable after the 
adoption of this motion.
  In addition, it requires the conferees to file a conference report no 
later than Thursday, November 13. The November 13 deadline is meant to 
highlight the imperative nature of the Healthy Forests legislation. 
However, we all recognize the time-consuming nature of conferences and 
the short time frame this will provide, but let me remind Members, we 
have been talking about this issue for years. I remember when it was 
chairman Bob Smith of the Committee on Agriculture, and the tremendous 
work he did all over this country in trying to reach out and find a 
compromise. It was turned down.
  If we are going to deal with problems as severe as what we have now 
witnessed in California, it means some strongly-held beliefs are going 
to have to be compromised in order to do things that some folks do not 
want to see done; but most people believe and will agree that they must 
be done if we are going to accomplish what is needed for our national 
forests. The important part of my motion is the requirement that the 
conferees meet and deliberate on the merits of the Senate and House 
proposals.
  We will hear that the Senate has a finely tuned deal if it breaks up, 
everything breaks up. I hope that is not going to be the argument. I 
hope that we can have a meaningful conference.
  The House Committee on Agriculture has a reputation, a long-held 
reputation, of working in a bipartisan way and that is why we 
accomplish as much good for our Nation as we do. No Speaker, no 
majority leader, would ever dare rewrite a farm bill in the Committee 
on Rules or in the leadership office. It has been tried, but it has 
never worked.
  I am personally very disturbed by what I have seen going on in the 
energy conference. I am very interested in energy legislation, and I am 
very disturbed when the leadership of this body suggests that they are 
the only ones that can write this legislation. This body does not work 
well when we do some of the things that we have been doing in this body 
over the last several years.
  On the Committee on Agriculture, we have a history of bipartisan 
cooperation. Many of my colleagues have suggested that we simply take 
the Senate bill, pass it and send it to the President. I am not 
supportive of that procedure. We need to reach a consensus on the issue 
surrounding the Healthy Forests legislation. I know many on the far 
left and many on the far right will say that is impossible, but both 
sides of the aisle have a responsibility to come to the table with a 
willingness to compromise. This is an issue that demands just that kind 
of process if we are going to deal with disasters like we have just 
seen in California, disasters like we have seen all over Colorado, and 
all over areas of this country that are witnessing what happens when we 
do what we have done over the last several decades in the handling of 
our national forests. The record is there.
  I think the House bill is a good bill. It was put together with 
bipartisan support, not unanimity of opinion. There were differences 
held, and we will never get 100 percent to agree because politically 
that is impossible. But I think if we do our job in this conference, as 
this simple motion, as I said in the beginning, a novel idea that we 
actually allow this House of Representatives to function as was 
intended by our forefathers who wrote the Constitution, gave us the 
responsibility to deliberate and set forth under the rules of order of 
this body how we should go about it.
  Yes, we can do it in a very short period of time if we are willing 
to. So I hope and fully expect, since I cannot imagine any controversy 
over this motion today, that it will pass. That is not what I am most 
interested in, though. I am very interested in seeing the process work. 
I think this body will be better off if at least one committee, and 
there are a few others that still function in a bipartisan way, but 
very few. The energy bill is a prime example of how not to run this 
House. The Medicare pharmaceutical bill is an example of how not to run 
this House. Maybe we need a good example.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Stenholm), the ranking member of the Committee on Agriculture, that the 
gentleman is correct, this is an unusual motion to instruct. It is also 
a very welcomed motion to instruct.
  This is exactly the approach that we need to take in resolving a 
very, very important piece of legislation and the differences that 
exist between the House and the Senate on this legislation. We can do 
it exactly because, as

[[Page H10464]]

the gentleman notes, the House Committee on Agriculture, the committee 
of primary jurisdiction over this legislation, has a long history of 
working together across the aisle between the parties, Member to 
Member, on all kinds of important and complex legislation.
  The farm bills that we pass are obviously the greatest example of 
that. Farm bills bring together every region of the country, every 
political ideological difference, every type of farm commodity, and we 
have to agree upon one piece of legislation to send to the President 
for signature so American agriculture can plan ahead for 5, 6, 7 years. 
That requires intense cooperation.
  We have the same problems with our Nation's forests and our forest 
policy. It is in disrepair. It is not working. The forest fires that we 
are seeing in California now that we have seen all across the country, 
the infestation of our forests in the east and south from disease and 
insects require proper management and proper management policy. We do 
not have an effective working policy today that allows us to promptly 
address these major problems that in California have taken more than 
3,500 homes, taken the lives of 20 people, have scorched the earth. 
These are not natural fires that occur that thin out our forests, these 
fires take the entire forests. In some places, the heat is so intense 
it turns the ground to glass. Water cannot permeate the soil. The 
devastation lasts for decades. Proper management of these forest will 
yield the correct result.
  So I agree fully with the motion to instruct offered by the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) because it calls on the conferees to be 
appointed here, led by the Committee on Agriculture, to do what we have 
always done. And we will work with the Committee on Resources and the 
Committee on the Judiciary to make sure that we have an effective 
conference, and we look forward to working with the Senate. They have 
put forward a work product that we are interested in. We think there 
are many things in the House bill not included in the Senate bill, and 
some things in the Senate bill that are not included in the House bill 
that are problematic.
  But we are confident, given our history of working together, that 
this will be a conference that includes, as the gentleman requires in 
his motion to instruct, meeting in open session with fair discussion. 
How do we know that will take place, because it has always taken place 
with the Committee on Agriculture. It took place in the farm bill just 
last year, and it will again. We have a good working relationship, and 
we intend that that carries over into the passage of this legislation.
  The proof of it is how we worked this bill through the committee. It 
passed the committee by overwhelming support. On the floor of the 
House, I believe of the 24 Democrats on the committee, I think 19 of 
them voted for the legislation on the floor. There was very strong, 
overwhelming bipartisan support for the legislation that the House 
passed.

                              {time}  1045

  That calls for us to have a conference with the Senate, to not simply 
accept the premise that somehow the Senate should dictate to the House 
as they so often try to do time and time again. This matter is too 
important; this House is too important to accept that premise. It is 
time that we go to conference. We should go quickly. This instructs us 
to act quickly, to report back a conference report within a week. We 
are very prepared to undertake that ambitious agenda and to work it 
through with the Senate, with Members of the House on our committee, 
with Members of the House not on our committee, and work this out as 
quickly as possible. This is important legislation that we should send 
to the President for his signature. He is anxious to sign it.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle to accomplish a very fine healthy forests final product that is 
worked out fairly between the House and the Senate for the President's 
signature.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).
  (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to 
revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the 
gentleman from Texas for offering this motion to instruct and 
appreciate his remarks and the remarks of the gentleman from Virginia, 
the chairman of the committee. The reason this motion is offered is 
because there has been concern about the deterioration of the 
conference process between the House and the Senate. As the gentleman 
from Texas pointed out, the process that we are now witnessing with the 
energy bill and with the prescription drug bill is a disaster in terms 
of public participation, public understanding of what is taking place, 
and the protection of Members of this body as they represent their 
constituencies.
  I am delighted that the Committee on Agriculture has a long tradition 
of open conference committees. I believe that the Committee on 
Resources has that same long tradition of ironing these kinds of 
legislative conflicts out. I think it is also important that this 
motion to instruct have the date due to try to encourage the conference 
to get this done.
  We do this in the aftermath of the California fire disasters, but the 
California fire disasters did not happen in a vacuum. It is not that 
this Congress was not working on this problem; it was that this 
Congress could not reach agreement. Over 2 years ago, the gentleman 
from Colorado (Mr. McInnis), the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), 
the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg), the gentleman from New York 
(Mr. Boehlert), the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), and others 
tried to work on a provision. We ended up reporting from the committee 
a bipartisan agreement. Unfortunately, at the end of the session, it 
was not taken up by the Congress of the United States. But it did, in 
fact, focus the resources on the thinning around communities where we 
know these catastrophic fires can occur in terms of the loss of life 
and the loss of property. It expedited the consideration by the Forest 
Service and the Bureau of Land Management to make sure that decisions 
could be made on a timely basis so we could treat this threat when it 
was necessary, and it provided for robust public participation and 
critical environmental protections.
  But that bill is in the past. That was not accepted. In our committee 
we had open debate. People offered amendments. The gentleman from 
Colorado (Mr. McInnis) went on a different tack this time. I did not 
agree with that. But it was done openly and it was done with the 
amendment process. But I have concerns with that legislation now, and I 
am worried that there are some huge differences between the Senate 
bill, which I think directs more of the resources toward the so-called 
urban interface where these catastrophic fires can happen. I want to 
make sure that we do that. I want to make sure, as the Senate did, that 
we authorize the money to be spent. I think the House bill is built on 
a bit of a fallacy and that is somehow that the timber value of the 
trees that are removed and thinned is going to pay for the fire 
treatment that is necessary. If you really believe that and if that is 
the basis on which you are going to operate, as does the House bill, 
then you would never get around to treating the lands in Southern 
California because they are not timberlands. There is no value to be 
extracted.
  We were saying earlier, I think, in Texas, you hook up an anchor 
chain between two Caterpillar tractors and you drag it across the land 
when you want to get rid of this kind of scrub. That is essentially 
what you are going to have to do here. There is no value. This is going 
to cost Federal dollars. Like the Senate bill, we have got to authorize 
those moneys to be spent.
  We also have got to recognize, as we see in Southern California, that 
this is a patchwork of public and private lands, that we have got to be 
able to go in and treat those public lands. I think we have got to 
figure out some cost-sharing with those private landowners, but we 
cannot let their neglect start fires on public lands or fires that get 
out of control. In the House bill, we do not address that. We must 
address that in the conference report.
  I think that we have got to understand that time is working against 
us.

[[Page H10465]]

They say that we are going to be out of here on November 21. We cannot 
go into another fire year with Congress failing to address this issue. 
It takes time to lay out these treatment plans. It takes time to 
marshal the resources. Unfortunately, historically what we have seen is 
the money that is supposed to be used for treatment, the money that is 
supposed to be used for prevention is not put there because those 
accounts are raided to fight the fires that result because we do not 
treat them. We saw this unfortunate situation where California's 
Governor made application for money to treat the southern lands, many 
of the lands that burned, joined in bipartisan support from our 
delegation asking that this money be used, made the application many, 
many months ago, unfortunately turned down, and then we had the fires. 
Could we have been able to treat that? Some of it. Not all of it. Not 
by any means. But it takes time to move into these areas. It is going 
to take real resources. You simply are not going to be able to take 
enough timber off these lands if you do it properly and pay for the 
kind of treatment.

  So Congress has got to understand after the disasters of California 
that I think most of the people in the United States would believe that 
this is an area of priority where America's government ought to spend 
money to protect America's forests, to protect the timber crops, to 
protect the recreational values, and to protect those communities that 
are now located in that catastrophic zone where fires can get out of 
control and we have no way to prevent the loss of life and of property.
  I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia for his comments and for 
his understanding of what we are trying to accomplish with this motion 
in terms of an open and public conference committee, and I want to 
thank the gentleman from Texas for offering this. I also want to thank 
my chairman of the Committee on Resources, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Pombo), for the manner in which we were allowed to 
debate this measure in the House. I would hope that this would not get 
sucked into this whirlpool of partisanship and the shutting down of 
conference committees, because this is a matter that is desperately 
important to so many of our communities in the timberlands and the 
wildlands of the United States.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to 
the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), the chairman of the 
Committee on Resources who has worked so closely with us and has 
provided so much leadership. Being from the State of California, he 
knows full well the nature of the problem out there and knows this is a 
problem that exists across the country.
  Mr. POMBO. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this motion to instruct. I would 
like to start off by saying I agree with much of what my colleague from 
California (Mr. George Miller) had to say. This is an extremely 
important piece of legislation, not only to the State of California 
because of our recent problems that we have had with wildfires in 
Southern California but we have also had wildfires in Northern 
California and throughout much of the West and quite frankly into the 
South as well in recent years. The reason that we have had those fires 
to a large degree has been because of mismanagement on the part of the 
Federal Government. It has been something that has drug on for and 
built up over the last 100 years, the management of our national 
forests, of our BLM lands. The decisions that were made in this body 
and by numerous administrations over the years led us to this point 
where we have an intolerable level of fuels throughout our public lands 
which has caused these fires not to be a natural fire but to be a 
catastrophic fire that goes in and burns areas.
  I agree with my colleague from California that we cannot allow this 
to drift into some partisan whirlpool, I think was his comment. When I 
hear people in the other body saying that they are going to refuse to 
go to conference on this bill, that is intolerable. This is something 
that we should have acted on many years ago. I hear some of those in 
the other body saying that this is a carefully crafted bill that they 
spent weeks putting together. Well, this body has spent years putting 
this bill together, in doing the research and putting this bill 
together. The first bill, the healthy forest bill that was introduced 
in the House, was introduced in 1995. This has been something that we 
have been working on for a number of years.
  A couple of years ago, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis), the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), and others sat down and tried to 
craft a compromise that we could bring to the House floor. As we worked 
through that compromise, we were not able to get the other body to move 
along with us. We put together a bill and spent months and hours in 
working through and crafting a bipartisan bill.
  As my colleagues on the House Committee on Agriculture have said, 
this was something that was passed bipartisan. I serve on the Committee 
on Agriculture. Yes, it was a bipartisan bill coming out of the 
Committee on Agriculture. It was a bipartisan bill coming out of the 
Committee on Resources. It was a bipartisan bill coming off the House 
floor. It was something that we worked extremely hard on to put 
together and craft a balanced bill. That is what we are going to 
conference with. All I ask is that those in the other body come to that 
conference with that same dedication, to craft a bipartisan bill, a 
bicameral bill that we can put on the President's desk. If we can do 
that, we can deliver something that will help the American people and 
help to better manage our national lands.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).
  Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, inaction is not an option for this Congress. We must 
have this legislation as well as some other essential legislation 
before we leave town. I feel strongly about that. I felt more strongly, 
or as strongly, a year ago when what was previously the largest fire in 
recent Western history burned between my district and the district of 
the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), the Biscuit Fire. We entered 
into discussions last fall and came very close to bringing a bill 
forward into the House. Unfortunately, the clock ran out because of the 
elections. This year we are not operating under the imperative of 
pending elections. We can stay here as long as we need, and we should, 
to get this legislation done.
  The Senate bill is not a perfect bill. It is not the bill that I 
would have written, but it is, in my opinion, in a number of areas, 
which I will touch on briefly, far superior to the House bill; and it 
does have a statement of support from the administration. So we know 
that if we were to just take up that bill and pass it from the desk, 
which is no longer an option having gone to conference, that we could 
enact it into law. So hopefully there lie the seeds of an agreement 
here.
  Why do I feel that the Senate bill is superior? What I say briefly, 
and it is hard to quantify things around here a lot, but the Senate 
bill is 760 million times better than the House bill. Someone may say, 
how did you come up with that number? The Senate bill included a $760 
million annual authorization to do the fuels treatment. Why is that 
important? This is something that cannot be done for nothing. The House 
bill omitted any new funding for fuels treatment. The national fire 
plan, which is supposed to deal with these fuels issues, is chronically 
underfunded as the gentleman from California mentioned previously. So 
is firefighting. So every year the Forest Service is confronted with 
major fires; they then freeze and begin to borrow from other accounts 
and almost every year they borrow from the national fire plan fuel 
treatment accounts.
  So instead of acting to prevent future fires, we borrow the money to 
pay for current firefighting because we always start the year 
underfunded on firefighting. This year was no exception. And despite 
the actions last week on other legislation, the Forest Service is still 
going to have to eat $300 million of those fire costs out of its 
budget, which means reductions in recreation and in fuel reduction and 
other programs that are already underfunded. So we need a substantial 
sum of dedicated funds to deal with this problem.

[[Page H10466]]

  The only good study out there was done at the Northwest Research 
Station in Oregon. They said, looking at the Klamath forest, which is 
fairly typical of a lot of the intermountain forests, dry, not a lot of 
commercial value in there but a tremendous amount of fuel accumulation, 
that after backing out the commercial value of anything removed, it 
would still cost $1,684 an acre to do the work.

                              {time}  1100

  If they say there is 20 million acres that are critical and need 
work, that would be $34 billion. So the Senate bill, at $760 million a 
year, does not get all the way there, but it gets us down the road. It 
would provide for a big boost in rural communities for jobs to get 
people out there and do the work, because it would not pretend that we 
can do this for nothing.
  Further, even more instructive, the President was to go to the 
Metolius basin to hold a press conference regarding the fuel reduction 
legislation this year. He could not because of a fire. But that 
Metolius thinning project was to be conducted of large trees of 
substantial commercial value in an area that is already eroded and 
virtually flat. But even given all that and given the fact there was 
going to be 20 million board feet of high-value commercial timber taken 
out of that fuel reduction, it was still going to cost a net of $400 an 
acre for the Forest Service. So that just underlines the point that 
even in the areas where there is viable commercial timber to be 
removed, unless they remove it all, which would not make a lot of sense 
in terms of protecting the values of the forest and the old fire-
resistant trees, they are not going to be able to do it without paying 
for the work. That would cost $400 an acre. So inclusion for an 
authorization for funding hopefully at the Senate level, maybe even 
higher, would be absolutely essential to pass a bill that is going to 
get the job done.
  Two other issues. I do not totally trust the government to always do 
what is right, no matter who is sitting in the White House. I did not 
trust the Clinton Administration to always do what was right. I do not 
trust this administration to always do what is right. And removing any 
right of meaningful appeal or judicial review is not an option, as far 
as I am concerned, in actions that affect public resources and the 
public generally, and the Senate bill does a much better job of 
preserving people's right to appeal and to go to court, but limits it 
so that there will not be frivolous appeals. It requires meaningful 
participation. And I believe if we adopted something like the Senate 
bill that there would be few, if any, appeals. And very few, if this is 
done right, successful appeals that would delay projects.
  So the bottom line here is we do have the possibility of getting a 
bill done this year, and I believe we must get a bill done this year. 
It must include robust funding. That will not only begin to move us 
forward in dealing with this huge backlog of fuels accumulation and 
doing it the right way, leaving the large, old fire-resistant trees, 
returning the forests to more of a presettlement condition, a natural 
condition, but it will also put rural communities to work, and it will 
avoid sometime down the road, and unfortunately not immediately, some 
of these absolutely massive fires and massive costs that are incurred 
with the fires because after these forests are treated, fires can 
become more of a natural regime, and we will not have to fight them as 
aggressively. They will not present the threats to life and property 
that they do today.
  So I am supporting this resolution with the hope that before this 
Congress leaves that we will have a viable bill that can be passed by 
both Houses by a large bipartisan majority and signed by the President 
of the United States, so we can begin this absolutely vital work before 
the next fire season.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and for his 
indulgence.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Walden), who has been a leader on this issue as well.
  Mr. WALDEN of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to commend my 
colleague from Texas for offering this motion to instruct. I think it 
is a valid one. I think it is an important one. I concur with his 
comments about the need to conduct this discussion in open and in a 
conference. It is probably misplaced in that where it really needs to 
be put is to our fellows and ladies on the other side of the Chamber in 
the sense that we need them to come to the conference. I think we have 
a reputation in the Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on 
Resources, as we have heard, about in the importance of working 
together, debating these issues, coming to closure in a fair and 
aboveboard and open way.
  I want to point out too that when it comes to the issue of hazardous 
fuels reduction, we have heard a lot about how the Senate bill provides 
a $750 million a year authorization, and, indeed, we know that 
authorization is important. What we never hear is the fact that in the 
underlying law, the law already on the books that provides for the 
national fire plan, there is already an authorization that provides for 
such sums as may be necessary to be spent for hazardous fuels work.
  So in other words, the Department of Forestry and the Department of 
Interior both have the authority already under existing law to spend 
whatever sums are necessary that can be appropriated by this Congress 
to do the kind of work that we are talking about needs to be done. And 
in fact, in the last 5 years we have quadrupled in the Congress the 
spending on hazardous fuels work, recognizing the importance of doing 
this work. But so much more has to be done out there if we are going to 
prevent the kinds of catastrophic fires we saw in California this year, 
that we have seen in Oregon year after year, and to get in and clean up 
these forests, to get the brush out, to get the ladder fuels out, so 
that we can have healthy forests, green forests, not black ones, so 
people are not forced to evacuate and lose everything that they have 
spent a lifetime trying to create around their homes, so that we can 
protect communities.
  There are some issues in the Senate bill I have some disagreements 
with. They tripled the size of the bill, first of all, from 51 pages to 
153 pages. Now, there are some editorial writers supporting the Senate 
bill, telling us in the House we had to adopt it before the Senate even 
finished amending it, which is kind of ironic. They have added 
protection for ginseng and Green Mountain National Forest Boundary and 
a prohibition on cock fighting, and Karst conservation in Puerto Rico, 
some things that are not normally considered prime topics when it comes 
to hazardous fuels reductions in Federal forests. I mean, I do not know 
what ginseng labeling has to do with hazardous forests, but we are 
dealing with the other body here, and we will accommodate them to the 
best of our ability. But our focus has to be on making sure we solve 
the procedural problems. In some of the hazardous fuels reductions 
projects the Members have heard about in my State today from my 
colleague, what was not mentioned was the fact that some of those very 
projects were appealed by groups while those places were burning this 
summer. The audacity. These groups are actually appealing a hazardous 
fuels project on the same day part of that proposed hazardous fuels 
project was burning. This is how out of control the appeals process is. 
This is why this legislation is so critical, and why we need to go to 
conference and act swiftly to pass it.
  I thank the chairman for yielding me this time.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from 
Colorado (Mr. McInnis), the original chief sponsor of this legislation. 
We thank him for his efforts.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to compliment 
the chairmen of the various committees. The gentleman from Virginia 
(Mr. Goodlatte), in his committee he expedited this bill. He understood 
very clearly what the threats were out there not only just in the West 
but obviously threats in the East as well.
  And this bill addresses not just fire hazards. Do not forget we have 
a very evil beetle out there, and these beetles go out there, and they 
are like a cancer on a tree. It is like once that beetle lands on that 
tree, that tree is dead, and that tree only has commercial viability 
for about 2 years. So if they cannot get that tree out of the forest 
within a 2-year period of time, two things happen. One, they are going 
to have to

[[Page H10467]]

pay somebody to take it out of there because it has no commercial 
viability for others to pay them to take it out of there; and, two, it 
is a cancer that is sitting there spreading not just to other dead 
trees, but to live trees. This beetle is wrecking havoc on our forests, 
and the chairman saw this. The chairman knows first hand, and I 
appreciate that.
  The gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), the chairman of the full 
committee, the Committee on Resources, of course, he comes from the 
State of California, which has just suffered devastating losses in the 
last 3 weeks. Myself, I come from the State of Colorado. The mountain I 
grew up on, the base, Storm King Mountain, several years ago we lost 
firefighters, 15 firefighters on that mountain. These fires are deadly 
things, and we must deal with them.
  Fortunately, we have had great cooperation. I appreciate the 
gentleman from Texas's (Mr. Stenholm) motion today to instruct the 
conferees. Although it is not binding on the Senate, perhaps it will 
give the Senate a little more incentive, as if the last couple of weeks 
the disasters in California were not enough incentive of its own.
  And I must say that the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) 
and the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), I can tell the Members if 
they set my voting record next to that of the gentleman from California 
(Mr. George Miller) or, in fact, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
DeFazio), outside of procedural votes, we probably disagree 95 percent 
of the time. These two gentlemen, along with the able leadership of the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), came to the table last year, and we 
had some of the best good-faith negotiations that I have seen in my 
elected history, and I have been in elected office for 21 years. The 
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) stood up, and they stood up to the radical 
environmental community, which is the only thing that is going to kill 
this bill.
  Two years ago, as soon as the National Sierra Club and the Greenpeace 
and the Earth First! Organizations found out that the gentleman from 
California (Mr. George Miller) and the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
DeFazio), the most ardent environmental supporters in the U.S. 
Congress, as soon as they found out that they were sitting down with 
the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) and with me and with the various 
chairmen, they said they had just joined the ``chain saw caucus.'' If 
the Members want to know what is going to beat this bill, it is the 
persuasion that some of these organizations like the National Sierra 
Club are having on some of our colleagues in both of these Chambers.
  It is imperative. We are very close to a compromise. We are very 
close for the first time in several years of being able to go in and 
manage our forests. What has happened is we have taken the management 
away from the green hats. What are the green hats? I say that in a 
complimentary fashion. Those are the Forest Service people. Take a look 
at the U.S. Forest Service, stop any ranger anywhere in the country. Do 
the Members know what they are going to find out about their 
background? They are going to find out that ever since they were little 
they dreamed of being a ranger in the Forest Service. They went to 
college. They got a degree in forest management. They are in that 
forest every day of the week. They do not work for money. We do not pay 
them a lot of money. They work because they love the forest. They love 
that job.
  Who do the Members think ought to be managing those forests? The 
National Sierra Club, which tries any obstacle they throw up? Do the 
Members think the United States Congress ought to be managing those 
forests? The people that ought to be managing those forests are the 
experts, the U.S. Forest Service.
  We will continue to suffer massive losses as a result of fire and 
beetle kill if we do not let the Forest Service do what the Forest 
Service is best at doing, and that is in managing the forests. And that 
is what this bill does. But we do have a roadblock facing us out there. 
Our roadblock is the National Sierra Club, which has put everything 
into overdrive to try to stop this bill. They are saying to the general 
public they are going to cut down old growth. They are saying they are 
going to clear-cut, as if we are going into the Sequoia National Park 
and cut down those great big trees. They are saying this is all about 
lumber companies. Thank goodness, we have got somebody who will take 
that wood.
  And by the way, there is not one person in this Chamber, there is not 
one member of the National Sierra Club, there is not one member of 
Earth First!, there is not one member of Greenpeace that does not use 
wood products. They sit at wood tables, by the way, to write us nasty 
letters. They live in a house that has got wood throughout the house.
  The key here is do not let Greenpeace, do not let the National Sierra 
Club, do not let Earth First! block what is the most significant piece 
of forest legislation we have had in 2 decades. We have got very ardent 
support from very capable people from the environmental side of the 
U.S. House, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), two very capable, strongly 
environmentally-oriented people. We have the gentleman from Virginia 
(Mr. Goodlatte), the chairman of our committee, and the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Pombo), both, very strongly committed to the 
environment but with the understanding that we have to use common sense 
in the management of our forests. That is what this bill is about. That 
is why this bill should be approved. That is why the gentleman from 
Texas's (Mr. Stenholm) motion to instruct and get this done now while 
we have got a deal in line, that is why we ought to support this. So I 
stand strongly in support of that. I commend Members on both sides of 
the aisle. This bill has bipartisan support. It ought to pass, and we 
need to get into those forests and let our green hats do their job.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Inslee).

                              {time}  1115

  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we are looking forward to a healthy, open 
conference. We hope this conference will set a new high standard in 
openness and bipartisanship in the House. But there are a couple things 
I think we need to talk about that are challenging us in bringing this 
bill to completion, and that is, first, a recognition that we have a 
severe resource limitation that is the real limitation as to what real 
treatment we can do on our forests, and that no matter what we do in 
this bill, the amount that has been appropriated to date still will 
only treat about maybe 2 percent of the acreage of the hundreds of 
thousands of acres that need treatment in our national forests.
  That is an important point, because if we only have enough to do 2 
percent of the acreage that really could potentially use thinning or 
other treatment in our forests, we have to really prioritize where we 
are going to do this work.
  One of the elements we hope to talk about in our conference is how to 
prioritize this work where it is going to be most effective. That is 
why many of us have been talking about prioritizing our work to be in 
the areas where it will have the greatest benefit to save human life 
and human property, and that is in the wild-line urban interface and 
the areas closest to our towns, suburbs, and homes.
  We will be talking in the conference about a way to focus our 
energies on those highest priority areas, because, if we do not, we 
risk really squandering some of it out in sort of the Timbuktu areas 
while we are losing homes in fires, as we have in California most 
recently. So that will be an element we hope to discuss in the 
conference.
  Second, we hope to have a product that can be embraced by all points 
of the ideological compass. One of the things we hope to be able to 
accomplish is a description of the thinning that will assure that we 
are really doing thinning, rather than disguised commercial harvest. We 
think we can accomplish that in some fashion of taking off-limits the 
old-growth timber that gets us into political battles, rather than 
really furthering the effort to carve out or to thin out some of the 
litter brush on the forest floor.

[[Page H10468]]

  Frankly, one of the problems we have of winning public trust for this 
program is the fear that this will be used as a guise to cut down 5-
foot-in-diameter trees in some of our old-growth forests to finance 
this program. We hope we will come out with a final conference bill 
that will not be using old-growth timber to finance this program.
  There are a lot of ways, probably 1,000 different ways, to describe 
old-growth timber. We need to find some. We need to assure the American 
public we really do have a healthy forest initiative, not a clear-cut 
initiative, and not a ``let's get the old growth timber because that is 
where the most commercially valuable trees are.'' That should be 
doable. I look forward to working on a bipartisan basis to accomplish 
that.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say to 
the gentleman from Washington, I appreciate his comments; but I would 
point out that with regard to the old-growth forests and the 5-foot-
diameter trees that the gentleman referred to, nothing in the 
legislation that the House passed, much less anything in the Senate 
bill, would override the Northwest Forest Plan that protects every old-
growth tree in the entire Northwest. It does not override any forest 
plan anywhere in the country. So the gentleman should rest assured that 
this legislation is not going to affect the type of tree that he 
described to us a few minutes ago.
  Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Bartlett).
  Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, since there still is embolded 
in large cast letters above your chair the words ``In God We Trust,'' 
maybe it would be appropriate for me to note for the Sierra Club or 
Earth First! and Greenpeace that if they will go and read the Biblical 
account of creation, they will find that when the Lord placed Adam and 
Eve in the garden, he charged them to dress and keep the garden. The 
point is that even in a perfect world, the Lord recognized there was a 
need for man to intervene in the process of nature.
  So I hope these groups will take that into account and note that that 
is exactly what this bill does, and it is all that this bill does, is 
to appropriately intervene in the process of nature to benefit the 
forest.
  The other body has passed a similar bill, of course, with a lot of 
extraneous material, most of which costs money. I know you are going to 
want to prune a lot of that out. I hope there is one little piece of 
that extraneous material that survives the pruner's knife, and this is 
a little piece of legislation that has to do with animal rights. It 
simply enhances the penalties for interstate commerce in cockfighting 
and dog fighting. It costs zero dollars; and it will do a lot of good, 
because now these crimes will be prosecuted.
  So my congratulations for a really good bill. I hope that this little 
animal rights addition in the Senate survives the pruner's knife.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, I will just say very briefly that this motion to 
instruct conferees offered by the gentleman from Texas is very welcome. 
It is exactly what we need. We hope the message is received, not only 
here on the House side, but also on the Senate side, that we will work 
together in an open conference, across party lines, and we will work 
together with the Senate to accomplish that. But it is absolutely 
essential that the Senate take the same step that we are taking here 
today and do it as quickly as possible so we can meet the timetable put 
forward by the gentleman from Texas.
  Secondly, it is absolutely important that the message go out that 
this Congress on this issue has worked together, and worked together 
very well. The place where we find the extremism that some have 
expressed concern about has been on the outside, the organizations like 
Greenpeace and the Sierra Club and Earth First!, extremists who send 
the mail to so many people.
  We have all seen it. It is designed to raise money for these 
organizations. If they said that the gentleman from California (Mr. 
George Miller) was meeting with the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
McInnis), who has very different points of view, to work out their 
differences, do you think that would generate a lot of revenue for 
these organizations? I think not.
  What they do is try to portray this legislation and this Congress as 
being extremist. That is wrong, and that is where the problem lies. We 
need to reject that. We need to reject the falsehoods that are being 
portrayed about the legislation on the outside, to work together in the 
interests of the American people, work together in the interests of our 
national forests here on the inside to produce a final product that 
will really address a severe crisis that we have.
  It is time to stop that kind of game playing, and it is time to get 
serious about addressing this problem. We are so close to something 
that we have sought for so long that we should not allow that outside 
rhetoric, that outside pressure, to deter us from what needs to be 
done.
  What needs to be done is exactly what the gentleman from Texas has 
described in his motion to instruct. We need to meet, we need to meet 
openly, we need to meet now, and we need to produce a product that 
works out the differences between the House and the Senate by next 
Thursday.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to endorse and support this motion 
to instruct conferees.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, I would just say I appreciate the tenor of this 
discussion and debate today, because that is exactly what we intended 
from this motion. It is the history of the Committee on Agriculture, 
working with other committees, to let the process of the House of 
Representatives work its will and come together in compromise.
  Compromise has never been a four letter word to me or to anyone else 
in this body. It means that some have to give on some very strongly 
held beliefs. Sometimes it means to have to say no to some of the 
organizations who take a great deal of interest in this process.
  My friend from California mentioned a moment ago that down in my 
district, when we clear out the underbrush, we take two Caterpillars 
and a string of chain between them and drag it across it. I want to go 
a little further with that. We do that for a different reason; we do 
that to preserve moisture.
  In fact, we have a couple of bills pending right now, working with my 
colleague, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce), on salt cedar. 
In areas of arid Texas and New Mexico and Colorado and other areas, 
more New Mexico and Texas in this instance, we have a need of 
controlling brush to preserve water so that our people will have 
something to drink.
  But here a little novel idea just popped into my mind, because when 
we clear brush in Texas, many times the landowners pay for all of it 
themselves, if they can, and many of them can and do. They expect no 
one to come in and help them clear out the trash on their own land.
  In many cases though we have cost-share. We have programs that are 
set up that are designed to provide cost-sharing. We have got an 
excellent one going in Texas, in which the State of Texas puts up a 
share of money, the local landowner puts up a share of money, in some 
cases the local county puts up a share, and the property owner is 
expected to put up their share of the money. The Federal Government 
then puts up its share.
  This is an idea that I think we ought to pursue as we go into a 
conference on this, because the gentleman from California is exactly 
right, we are not talking about forest lands in the area many a time 
that have been burning recently in California. We are talking about a 
different kind of problem that needs to be solved, and can be solved, 
if we would just put our shoulder to the wheel and solve it.
  Resource limitations are very real, that is true; but also doing 
nothing is not an option. Even though in my district we do not have any 
forests, I recognize the importance of the work of the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), 
the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
DeFazio), the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), all of my 
colleagues that have spoken today.
  Everyone now recognizes that this debate has gone on longer than it

[[Page H10469]]

should. We are that close. We have two bills. It is not impossible. In 
fact, it is more than possible that we can achieve what we are saying 
with this motion to instruct today. It will just take the sincere 
dedication that we know we have on the House Committee on Agriculture, 
working with the Committee on Resources. And I know it exists with the 
Senate. We have always had, when it comes to agriculture, an excellent 
working relationship to go to conference, to work it out. That is 
exactly what this motion does. I hope the House will accept it.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman 
yield?
  Mr. STENHOLM. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman 
for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, when I was talking about dragging the chains across the 
desert, I did not mean that to be derogatory. That is a practice that 
works. In California, we cannot criticize that, because then we take 
the mesquite and turn it into mesquite charcoal for those oven-roasted, 
free-range chickens.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I took it exactly like 
the gentleman meant it. It was a compliment. I appreciate the support 
in this, because in many cases some of the folks do not agree with us 
on doing that either.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. STENHOLM. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will provide the 
mesquite, we will provide the chickens.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, one of the 
requirements that I have had all along in this is do not muck around 
with my mesquite trees, whatever you do. But now we are talking about a 
very good, constructive use of mesquite trees. We have now got 
delineated, outlined clearly, how we can provide more of it, and we 
have a market for it, so I already see some benefits to this bill that 
are going to accrue to the 17th Congressional District of Texas in the 
new market for mesquite trees.
  But here let us get back to seriousness. I hope we can do what this 
motion does.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the 
previous question on the motion.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shaw). The question is on the motion to 
instruct offered by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).
  The motion to instruct was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the Chair appoints the 
following conferees:
  From the Committee on Agriculture, for consideration of the House 
bill and the Senate amendments, and modifications committed to 
conference: Messrs. Goodlatte, Boehner, Jenkins, Gutknecht, Hayes, 
Stenholm, Peterson of Minnesota and Dooley of California.
  From the Committee on Resources, for consideration of the House bill 
and the Senate amendments, and modifications committed to conference: 
Messrs. Pombo, McInnis, Walden of Oregon, Renzi, George Miller of 
California and Inslee.
  From the Committee on the Judiciary, for consideration of sections 
106 and 107 of the House bill, and sections 105, 106, 1115, and 1116 of 
the Senate amendment and modifications committed to conference: Messrs. 
Sensenbrenner, Smith of Texas and Mr. Conyers.
  There was no objection.

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