[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 75 (Wednesday, May 7, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H3177-H3181]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MOTION TO INSTRUCT CONFEREES ON H.R. 2419, FOOD AND ENERGY SECURITY ACT
OF 2007
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to instruct at the desk.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion.
The Clerk read as follows:
Mr. Cantor moves that the managers on the part of the House
at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses
on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 2419 be instructed
not to agree to the provisions contained in section 12808 of
the Senate amendment (relating to qualified forestry
conservation bonds).
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from
Virginia (Mr. Cantor) and the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy)
each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Virginia.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise around this motion to instruct, which is centered on an
objection that I have in the Senate-passed farm bill around one
particular provision that certainly raises a lot of questions in my
mind and should raise a lot of questions in the minds of my colleagues.
In the bill there is, without question, a $200 million earmark that
benefits one wealthy landowner. Section 12808 in H.R. 2419, as passed
by the Senate, provides for a tax credit bond program. There is a
scheme in this bill that was so narrowly crafted that the bonds
authorized thereunder can only be used for the acquisition of one, just
one, piece of land in the entire country. This piece of land happens to
lie predominantly in the State of Montana and is owned by timber giant
Plum Creek. According to press reports, the Nature Conservancy would be
allowed to issue $500 million in bonds under this bill and then use the
proceeds to purchase the land from the timber giant. Even more
egregious is that the provision does not even appear to require the
protection of a single additional tree or a single additional fish. If
this isn't a tax earmark, I don't know what is. Mr. Speaker, this is
the ``bridge to nowhere'' of the farm bill.
Now, I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will argue
that the Montana bond provision does not fit the definition of an
earmark under House rules. Their reasoning will be that many taxpayers
will potentially own the Montana bonds and then get tax credits from
the Federal Government. But make no mistake. This provision is designed
to facilitate one land sale by one landowner.
[[Page H3178]]
Now, Mr. Speaker, here's my question: What in the world are we doing
here contemplating the expenditure of $200 million in U.S. taxpayer
money to fund the purchase of a tract of land that benefits just one
wealthy landowner, all the while American families are struggling with
skyrocketing gas prices, food prices through the roof, plummeting home
prices, and an economy that is barrel, barely growing?
It is time for us, Mr. Speaker, to say ``no'' to these types of
backroom deals that have been struck in the middle of the night that
benefit a wealthy few. It is time for us, Mr. Speaker, to say ``no'' to
business as usual in Washington. And it's time, Mr. Speaker, for us to
put the people first.
Think about it. Imagine what we could do with $200 million. It would
go a long way to help solving the problems that so many people are
facing across this country. This $200 million earmark is exactly what
is wrong with Washington and why the American people are demanding
change. It's time for all of us to insist that the Federal Government
start working for the people again.
Mr. Speaker, my motion is a very simple one. It asks that the House
instruct its conferees on the farm bill to reject section 12808 of the
Senate-passed bill.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, the point of the farm bill at issue with this motion
deals with a concept of public interest. Will private land adjacent to
forest land be protected or will it be sold off and developed into very
nice, very expensive private lots, taking land out of general public
access and enjoyment? That's really the issue.
I believe it's an extremely serious issue, and I'm going to introduce
into the Record coverage of this that appeared in the New York Times
October 13, 2007, under the title ``As Logging Fades, Rich Carve Out
Open Land in West.'' This article cites the prospect of vast timber
sales by a company named Plum Creek Timber. And I would quote from the
article:
``Some old-line logging companies, including Plum Creek Timber, the
country's largest private landowner, are cashing in, putting tens of
thousands of wooded acres on the market from Montana to Oregon. Plum
Creek, which owns about 1.2 million acres in Montana alone, is getting
up to $29,000 an acre for land that was worth perhaps $500 an acre for
timber cutting.
`` `Everybody wants to buy a 640-acre section of forest that's next
to the U.S. Forest Service or one of the wilderness areas,' said Plum
Creek's president and chief executive, Rick Holley.
``As a result, population is surging in areas surrounding national
forests and national parks, with open spaces being carved up into
sprawling wooded plots, enough for a house and no noisy neighbors.''
And the article goes on to talk about the extraordinary pressure,
development pressure, for the wealthy few that can spend recreation
dollars buying up and carving up land adjacent to the Forest Service.
As Logging Fades, Rich Carve Up Open Land in West
(By Kirk Johnson)
Whitefish, MT.--William P. Foley II pointed to the
mountain. Owns it, mostly. A timber company began logging in
view of his front yard a few years back. He thought they were
cutting too much, so he bought the land.
Mr. Foley belongs to a new wave of investors and landowners
across the West who are snapping up open spaces as private
playgrounds on the borders of national parks and national
forests.
In style and temperament, this new money differs greatly
from the Western land barons of old--the timber magnates,
copper kings and cattlemen who created the extraction-based
economy that dominated the region for a century.
Mr. Foley, 62, standing by his private pond, his horses
grazing in the distance, proudly calls himself a
conservationist who wants Montana to stay as wild as
possible. That does not mean no development and no profit.
Mr. Foley, the chairman of a major title insurance company,
Fidelity National Financial, based in Florida, also owns a
chain of Montana restaurants, a ski resort and a huge cattle
ranch on which he is building homes.
But arriving here already rich and in love with the
landscape, he said, also means his profit motive is
different.
``A lot of it is more for fun than for making money,'' said
Mr. Foley, who estimates he has invested about $125 million
in Montana in the past few years, mostly in real estate.
The rise of a new landed gentry in the West is partly
another expression of gilded age economics in America; the
super-wealthy elite wades ashore where it will.
With the timber industry in steep decline, recreation is
pushing aside logging as the biggest undertaking in the
national forests and grasslands, making nearby private tracts
more desirable--and valuable, in a sort of ratchet effect--to
people who enjoy outdoor activities and ample elbow room and
who have the means to take title to what they want.
Some old-line logging companies, including Plum Creek
Timber, the country's largest private landowner, are cashing
in, putting tens of thousands of wooded acres on the market
from Montana to Oregon. Plum Creek, which owns about 1.2
million acres here in Montana alone, is getting up to $29,000
an acre for land that was worth perhaps $500 an acre for
timber cutting.
``Everybody wants to buy a 640-acre section of forest
that's next to the U.S. Forest Service or one of the
wilderness areas,'' said Plum Creek's president and chief
executive, Rick Holley.
As a result, population is surging in areas surrounding
national forests and national parks, with open spaces being
carved up into sprawling wooded plots, enough for a house and
no nosy neighbors.
Here in Flathead County, on the western edge of Glacier
National Park, the number of real estate transactions, mostly
for open land, rose by 30 percent from 2003 to 2006,
according to state figures. The county's population is up 44
percent since 1990.
The United States Forest Service projects that over the
next 25 years, an area the size of Maine--all of it bordering
the national forests and grasslands--will face development
pressure and increased housing density.
But the equally important force is the change in ownership.
According to a Forest Service study, not yet published, more
than 1.1 million new families became owners of an acre or
more of private forest from 1993 to 2006 in the lower 48
states, a 12 percent increase. And almost all the net growth,
about seven million acres, was in the Rocky Mountain region.
Institutions, pension funds and real estate investment
trusts have been particularly aggressive buyers. Over the
last 10 years, at least 40 million acres of private forest
land have changed hands nationwide, said Bob Izlar, the
director of the Center for Forest Business at the University
of Georgia. It is a turnover that Mr. Izlar said was
unmatched at least since the Great Depression.
Here in the West, questions of clout and class have been
raised by the new arrivals.
This year, the conservation group Trout Unlimited, which
had been considering ending its involvement in disputes
between private landowners and fishermen over public access
to fishing streams, backtracked after its members rose up in
protest. Some members accused the group of siding with the
landowners by not fighting for fishermen's access rights.
In parts of Colorado where communities have committed tax
money to preserve open space, conflicts have erupted on the
borders of the public lands over whether the programs--which
in many cases buy out an owner's right to develop property,
but not the property itself--are simply enriching landowners
who keep the land and the public off, too.
``When you're there, you're on four million acres,'' said
Michael Carricarte, who bought an 800-acre property in
Glenwood Springs, Colo., in 2005, and now has the place,
bordered on three sides by federal land, up for sale, asking
$23.5 million.
``To get to where our property touched public land would
take three hours by public road, but from our house it was 10
minutes by four-wheeler or Jeep,'' he said.
Mr. Carricarte, 39, said he was now in the process of
selling a conservation easement to the Aspen Valley Land
Trust that would lock 600 acres, all bordering public land,
into permanent preservation.
Longtime residents tied to the old timber economy are
finding it difficult to keep up. In parts of New Mexico and
Colorado, the timber industry has all but collapsed; log
harvests in the national forests have fallen to about one-
fourth of what they were 20 years ago in the Rocky Mountain
region, and less than a tenth what they were in the Pacific
Northwest.
Some privately owned timberlands have increased production,
but in the West, where more than two-thirds of all forest
land is publicly owned (compared with about one-sixth in the
eastern United States) private owners, even if they want to
allow logging, cannot make up the difference.
Ronald H. Buentemeier, a second-generation forester, said
he struggled every day to get enough wood to stoke the
family-owned mill he runs in Montana, the F. H. Stoltze Land
and Lumber Company.
``There's not enough private land out there,'' said Mr.
Buentemeier, a blunt-talking 66-year-old with a flat-top crew
cut. ``We've been pulling rabbits out of the hat to keep
going.''
In ways that would have been unthinkable only a few years
ago, environmentalists and representatives of the timber
industry are reaching across the table, drafting plans that
would get loggers back into the national forests in exchange
for agreements that would set aside certain areas for
protection.
Both groups are feeling under siege: timber executives
because of the decline in logging,
[[Page H3179]]
and environmentalists because of the explosion of growth on
the margins of the public lands.
One of the most ambitious proposals is here in Montana. It
would allow some logging in the Beaverhead and Deerlodge
National Forests in the state's southwest corner in exchange
for the designation of new areas within the forests as
permanent wilderness.
Some timber companies say that gaining conservationists as
allies may be the only way to get back into the national
forests, and so stay in business. But both sides say that
success will require a turn of the historical momentum
against logging in the West that began in the early '90s.
A court decision in 1991 involving the northern spotted owl
required the Forest Service to manage for more than just
timber production. The national forests in the northern
Rockies constricted logging, fostering expansion in other
forest areas like the South.
``If there's anything the industry should have learned over
the years, it's that we can't do this by ourselves,'' said
Gordy Sanders, the resource manager at Pyramid Mountain
Lumber, one of the mill operators involved in the Beaverhead
and Deerlodge negotiations.
Many environmentalists say they have come to realize that
cutting down trees, if done responsibly, is not the worst
thing that can happen to a forest, when the alternative is
selling the land to people who want to build houses.
Stoltze Land and Lumber, for example, which owns about
36,000 acres near the border of Glacier National Park, has
said that the failure of the logging industry would leave the
company no option but to sell land into the booming
development market.
That prospect chills the blood of people like Anne Dahl,
the director of the Swan Valley Ecosystem Center, a
conservation and education group.
``I'm a former tree hugger who was opposed to everything,
every timber sale,'' Ms. Dahl said, ``but now I see that the
worst thing you can do is lose it all to development.''
Other new partnerships are emerging. Last year, the
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Indian tribes, which have a
reservation south of Whitefish, joined with conservationists
to buy a square mile of land from Plum Creek that was deemed
crucial to the endangered bull trout.
The tribes chipped in $4.8 million, half the purchase
price, and the Trust for Public Lands put together the other
half. The two parties recently completed a plan to manage the
property jointly, said the Salish and Kootenai tribal
chairman, James Steele Jr.
Plum Creek, based in Seattle, changed its corporate
structure in 1999 to become a real estate investment trust.
Some Plum Creek property has been bought by conservation
groups, including about 68,000 acres in the Blackfoot Valley
northwest of Helena. Negotiations continue for more
conservation sales, with money surging into funds organized
by groups like the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for
Public Lands.
Mr. Holley, the Plum Creek executive, said that his company
was committed to both the timber and real estate businesses,
but that only a small percentage of its land, perhaps 30,000
acres or so, had the combination of attractions--proximity to
public lands but also to other amenities, like shopping and
restaurants--to make sale for development feasible.
The Forest Service, meanwhile, is struggling to find its
own balance. A spokesman for the agency said that the
national forests across the West were increasingly tilting
toward recreation and away from logging. But, the growth in
population on the forests' edge also means more need than
ever to thin the trees, through some logging, if only for
wildfire protection.
Tom Tidwell, the regional forester for 25 million acres of
national forest that includes Montana, northern Idaho, North
Dakota and part of South Dakota, said the Forest Service was
eager to keep timber companies in business to help with the
thinning.
``We're more in the need of the industry,'' Mr. Tidwell
said. ``It's essential that we have someone to do that work
so that taxpayers don't have to pay for it.''
One broiling and unresolved issue is who gets to use the
land as it changes hands.
Most private timber tracts in the West, including those
owned by Plum Creek, have traditionally been open to
recreational use, treated as public entry ways into the vast
national forests, grasslands and wilderness. areas that in
Montana alone add up to nearly 46,000 square miles, about the
size of New York State. But in many places, the new owners
are throwing up no trespassing signs and fences, blocking
what generations of residents across the West have taken for
granted--open and beckoning access into the woods to fish,
hunt and camp.
``Part of our character is that we have so much big sky and
open country,'' said Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana, a
Democrat who has publicly sparred with Plum Creek about its
land sales. ``We're going to have to be creative. There's no
textbook written on how to do this.''
So the proposal at issue here is something different. It would
provide a new category of tax credit bonds and establish a national
program allowing the issuance of $500 million in tax-exempt timber
conservation bonds. The way it's structured, the bonds will be issued
by a nonprofit organization whose holdings consist primarily of forest
lands. Their board of directors would include specified representation
of public officials as well as conservation organizations. The funds
from the bonds will be used to purchase sizable tracts of forest lands,
a minimum of 40,000 acres protected from the kind of development I was
referencing earlier. And this acreage would have to be adjacent to U.S.
Forest Service lands, basically leveraging the critical area already
protected in Forest Service holdings. At least half of the land
acquired would be transferred to the Forest Service. The development in
previously forest lands not only diminishes substantially the public
use and enjoyment potential of this property; it increases
significantly the public cost.
We've all seen these forest fires across the West and the lavish
homes they have taken out. We've also witnessed the extraordinary
taxpayer dollars spent fighting to the very best effort of our talented
firefighters, trying to protect these beautiful, extraordinary
properties carved into areas that were previously pristine forest.
Now, an issue was raised in terms of whether this was simply too
narrow a tax benefit. The bonds sold under this provision would go to
numerous holders of qualified forestry conservation bonds; so there's
no special earmark-type interest there. And when you consider the fact
that half of the holdings have to be transferred to the United States
Forest Service, we think everyone in the country is a beneficiary of
this provision in that area.
We voted on this once before in the House, debated it as part of the
energy bill. It passed 235-181. And at that time a discussion was held.
The minority leader raised an issue in terms of whether we ought to be
talking about preserving trees and fish or something like that, his
argument went, in the context of an energy bill. Well, we decided to at
that time--the bill did not ultimately become law; so it's back before
us again. But, clearly, there can be no issue raised about its
appropriateness for consideration as part of a farm bill. A farm bill
is where we address forest issues. General forestry legislation is
within the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committees. We have passed
farm bills that have included provisions addressing forestry,
especially on private lands. In addition, the U.S. Forest Service is
within the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture. So we think
attaching it to the farm bill certainly makes sense in many respects.
But to be candid, this wasn't a provision that originated in the
House. It originated in the Senate. I have been party to discussions
now going over the last couple of weeks that have involved many, many
issues in difference between the House and the Senate. That's what
happens when you reach the final stages of bringing a bill out of
conference committee. There are back-and-forth negotiations. And this
ended up in the bill, a bill that, in my opinion, was improved in very
substantial ways by priorities that we also have in the House.
Certainly, the $10.3 billion commitment into nutrition, helping people
afford food at a time when the cost of groceries has risen so
dramatically, this is going to be a feature directly responsive to
priorities we've had in the House. It's all part of the negotiation
process. There will be stuff in this bill that I think anyone will
like. There will be stuff in this bill that people will be less
enthusiastic about. It's a great big bill. But in balance I believe
this reasonably is in the package. I like the fact that it addresses
this subdividing of this forest land adjacent to the U.S. Forest
Service. I like keeping the big tracts and expanding U.S. Forest
Service holdings at a time when they're under such extraordinary
development pressure, which would take it out of, basically, public
access and enjoyment.
So I think that this proposal is fine in the bill, and I would
therefore urge a ``no'' vote on the motion to instruct.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
{time} 2300
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the ranking member on the Ways
and Means Committee, the gentleman from Louisiana, as much time as he
may consume.
Mr. McCRERY. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
[[Page H3180]]
Mr. Speaker, I reluctantly rise to educate the House on a provision
that was in the Senate version of the farm bill, and according to
reports as being considered for inclusion in the conference report. I
say ``reluctantly,'' Mr. Speaker, because my good friend, Mr. Baucus,
is the sponsor of this provision in the Senate bill, and I certainly
respect the right of any Member to try to bring Federal dollars to his
district. But that is exactly what this is. And it ought to be exposed
for that. It is not a tax provision really. It is a really more like an
appropriation.
And my good friend on the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Pomeroy, said
that, well, this is not really just for one entity, there will be lots
of bondholders, so this money will be spread out among numerous
bondholders. That's true. It will be. But that evades the point. The
point is that the way the provision is written in the Senate bill would
limit the application of these bonds to one specific piece of property
in the United States.
Now I will read to you the criteria that lead us to that conclusion.
First, ``some portion of the land must be adjacent to United States
Forest Service land.'' Well there's lots of parcels of land like that
around the United States.
But second, ``at least half of the land acquired must be transferred
to the United States Forest Service at no net cost to the United States
and not more than half of the land acquired may either remain with or
be donated to a State.'' Again that's fine. Nothing wrong with that.
Third, and this is where it begins to tighten, ``the amount of
acreage acquired must be at least 40,000 acres,'' a fairly large
parcel. And then fourth, ``all of the land must be subject to a native
fish habitat conservation plan approved by the United States Fish and
Wildlife Service.''
So upon examination of all the parcels of land in the United States,
only one meets this criteria. And it happens to be a large piece of
land of which about 90 percent of it is in the State of Montana. And it
is owned by one landowner in the State of Montana.
So, Mr. Speaker, even though, yes, there will be scores, hundreds,
thousands maybe of bondholders, they're not going to be the ones
getting $500 million for a piece of property. It is one landowner. And
the taxpayers will be footing about $200 million of the bill.
Now that is like an appropriation. That is a $200 million
appropriation basically to the Nature Conservancy which will buy the
land and give the money to the current landowner. So let's call it what
it is. It's an earmark. It's an appropriation disguised very cleverly
as a forest tax credit bond.
Now, this provision could have been written to apply to any property
in the United States so that anybody who wanted to set aside land could
utilize these bonds. But it wasn't. It was restricted to this one piece
of property. It's a rifle shot. It's an earmark.
And Mr. Cantor's intention, I believe, is to educate the House of
this and to say, and I agree with him, that this has no place in the
farm bill. It ought to be in an appropriations bill. It ought to be
clearly defined as an earmark for the purchase of this piece of
property.
Now I don't know if $500 million is an appropriate amount of money
for this piece of property. I don't know what Nature Conservancy might
have offered for this piece of property. But my guess is that when you
have a $200 million subsidy from the taxpayers, it just might distort
the market. It just might raise the value of land in that particular
parcel and all around that parcel.
So I believe, Mr. Speaker, that the gentleman's motion to instruct
conferees is well placed. This ought not be in the farm bill. And
frankly this farm tax credit idea ought not be used to distort the
market for real estate anywhere in the country, and certainly not on a
piece of property this big in one location.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I would just say that the Plum Creek Forest
tax credit scheme is plumb wrong. This is the ``bridge to nowhere'' of
the farm bill. This has no business being in the farm bill. This is
clearly, as the gentleman from Louisiana said, an earmark directed at
one wealthy landowner. And this is why the American people are sick and
tired of the way this town does business.
We owe it to the public. They deserve better. Let's call this what it
is. The Plum Creek Forest is plumb wrong. This is a ``bridge to
nowhere'' in the farm bill. That is why, Mr. Speaker, I rise in support
of this motion to instruct the House conferees.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. POMEROY. I have enormous respect for each of the speakers, my
friends, on the other side. I think they have made their points well.
But I would like us to come back to really what's at stake with the
issue in front of us. Essentially, we want to avoid a bridge to wealthy
development communities placed into pristine forest lands adjacent to
U.S. forests. I earlier referenced a New York Times article covering
this extraordinary development pressure that's on these lands.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?
Mr. POMEROY. I would be happy to yield.
Mr. CANTOR. I would ask my good friend from North Dakota, what is the
date on that article in the New York Times?
Mr. POMEROY. October 17, 2007.
Mr. CANTOR. So clearly, Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentleman, I
would imagine that the economic times surrounding that article 6, 8
months ago certainly may have been different than they are today. We
have been on the floor all day, and will continue to be on the floor
tomorrow, talking about the housing crisis and the plummeting real
estate values.
Let's face it. If you have got 40,000 acres of land today, and that
land was scheduled for development and sale of parcels, that land is
not worth what it was in the fall of 2007.
Mr. POMEROY. Reclaiming my time.
Well, my friend, I think we are talking about a different section of
the economy. In fact, economic analysis of the functioning economy
shows that there has been extraordinary wage growth of the wealthiest 1
percent, top 10 percent, consumptive patterns have continued unabated
at the peak earning levels in our economy. And it is those people that
are the customers for this land. This isn't your average Joe deciding,
hey, Ma, let's move to Montana and buy a little forest land. No.
There's no jobs there other than former timber industry jobs. The
economy is in transition there. These are wealthy people that want to
have essentially recreational property in areas we can't imagine.
One of the individuals referenced in that article has invested about
$125 million in Montana. It talks about his not liking what a logging
company was doing. They began logging too much of the view in front of
his yard. So he bought the land. He bought all the mountain that they
were mining on. That's the kind of guy that we are talking about.
They talk about another guy here. They quoted a man named Michael
Carricarte who bought an 800-acre property in Glenwood Springs,
Colorado, in 2005. He has got the place bordered on three sides by
Federal land. And he is now asking $23.5 million for it.
This isn't the kind of property that is involved with our earlier
discussion about the housing crisis. This is quite a different deal
entirely. And it is for those reasons that I think it is important that
we act to preserve the public interest.
We are in a recession. But it is not a recession that is diminishing
the development pressure on forest lands. And we are not going to be in
a recession forever. And that pressure, especially as baby boomers age
and have this disposable income, is only going to continue. In fact,
they talk about the pressure being extraordinary. And again, in
Montana, more than 1 million acres are under threat alone.
So basically this provision has been fashioned, and if you think
about it, a 40,000-acre minimum, it is entirely protected by Fish and
Wildlife plans. Now my friend, Mr. McCrery, cites that as a negative
thing. I think essentially if the goal of this is to try and preserve
property, it might be a good thing. And of course there is a provision
for a perpetual conservation easement. So really the aim of this, and I
think it will achieve it, is to make certain we don't have private
development, little lots with great big houses chunked into the
pristine forest. We would like to preserve this. We would like to
actually expand the holdings of the U.S. Forest
[[Page H3181]]
Service and have the land adjacent to it protected under perpetual
conservation easement.
So all in all, there certainly is a sound rationale behind this
proposal. It was included in the negotiations back and forth between
the House and the Senate. And again it certainly invites the kind of
questions and scrutiny that this provision has been put under tonight.
But I think when you think about the importance in this country of
preserving for general public use and enjoyment, we certainly come down
on the right side as compared to dividing this into little lots and
having that kind of development in this area.
So I think that we have covered the area. Is the gentleman ready to
close? If so, I will wrap up now or I will reserve the time.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I just have one additional comment to make.
Mr. POMEROY. I think that we have discussed this at the end of a long
day. I will reserve the balance of my time, but if the gentleman's
comments are in the nature of a close, then I'll yield back without
saying anything further.
Mr. CANTOR. I thank the gentleman. And I admire him for his valiant
effort to defend this provision in the Senate-passed farm bill. He did
a great job.
Mr. Speaker, I just still believe that if we were serious in wanting
to preserve land adjacent to Federal forest and parkland, we would have
a provision here, maybe not in the farm bill, but a provision in a
program authorizing some legitimate awarding of bonds, wherever the
program deemed appropriate, not so narrowly drawn that the $500 million
could only be used to purchase one particular parcel.
I think anyone looking at this would have to conclude that the aim
was to afford the current landowner the ability to sell the land in
this difficult climate.
So Mr. Speaker, the Plum Creek Forest and the bond programs
associated therewith is plumb wrong. This is a ``bridge to nowhere.''
This is where America, once again, will be let down by the actions of
this House if this provision is allowed to stay in.
I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the previous question is
ordered on the motion to instruct.
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to instruct
offered by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor).
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further
proceedings on this question will be postponed.
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