[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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