[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 169 (Saturday, December 18, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10685-S10686]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     FOREST JOBS AND RECREATION ACT

  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about the 
omnibus bill that was pulled down 2 nights ago because there were not 
the votes from across the aisle to get the bill moving.
  In that omnibus bill, there was a number of very important projects 
for every State in the Union. But there were a lot of very important 
projects for the State of Montana in that bill that I am afraid now 
will be put on the back burner.
  Nonetheless, there was also some very important language in the 
omnibus bill. In my particular case, there was language in that bill 
that was going to help put people back to work, and that language was 
contained in a bill we call the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.
  What this bill does is create 660,000 acres of new wilderness. It 
creates 370,000 permanent acres in new recreation areas. It requires 
forest restoration and logging of 100,000 acres over 15 years.
  It is important in Montana for several reasons. The first reason is, 
we have been attacked by beetles, the bark beetles that have killed a 
large percentage of our forests, and we need to give the Forest Service 
the tools they need to be able to treat that.
  The second thing is that in the western part of Montana the economy 
has been hurt pretty badly. The unemployment rate there is the highest 
in our State. This bill will create jobs. Let me give you an example.
  Over the last year, in Montana, 1,700 jobs were lost in the wood 
products industry alone. This bill would help get those folks back to 
work. How? Well, it would help the folks running the chain saws, doing 
the cutting in the woods, the mills that create dimension lumber and 
plywood, and those kinds of things, get back up running and employing 
people.
  It would help provide the opportunity for biofuels with these trees, 
to be able to get a dependable supply, to be able to put the investment 
in to create biofuels, and move that industry along, to make this 
country more energy independent.
  It would help save our timber infrastructure because, quite frankly, 
if you look at some of the States in the West, that timber 
infrastructure is gone, and our ability to manage those forests leaves 
us when that timber structure goes. That is not the case in Montana, 
but we are getting very close. It is why this bill needs to be passed. 
Unfortunately, it does not look as though it is going to happen at this 
point in time.
  The other part about this bill--as I said, while there were so many 
projects in the omnibus, the CBO says this bill is deficit neutral, 
with no cost to the taxpayers. It is a bipartisan bill. It is a bill we 
have support for from both sides of the aisle, with Governors and 
Senators and Congressmen and local county commissioners, from both 
parties.
  It is a bill that the Forest Service, through Secretary Vilsack, 
supports. It is popular with over 70 percent of Montanans.
  As I said earlier, we are in dire need of it because our forest is 
dying, with

[[Page S10686]]

over 1 million acres of dead and dying trees. This bill has been the 
subject of intense public debate for the past year and a half since I 
dropped it in. We had a Senate hearing a year ago, a year ago 
yesterday, I believe it was. We have had townhall meetings, 11 in 
total, across Montana. We have had unprecedented transparency with this 
bill, with it being online and explaining and taking input and changing 
the bill as it has moved forward, making it a better bill. We have 
taken suggestions from the public, and where we have been able to 
address those concerns, we have been able to address them straight-up 
and move forward. It really is a new way of doing business for the 
Forest Service, for our forested lands, our government-owned forested 
lands in this country.

  It has not been an easy go. This bill would not have happened 10 
years ago. It absolutely would not have happened 20 years ago because 
for the last 30 years we have had gridlock in our forest industry. We 
have had conservationists and environmentalists and loggers and mill 
owners and recreationists all fighting with one another, and nothing 
has gotten done in the last 30 years.
  Well, about 5 years ago these folks got together and they said: You 
know, we have all been losing. Nobody has been winning. We should set 
our differences aside--and this body should listen to this--set our 
differences aside, find a common ground, and move forward with 
solutions. They did exactly that. It was not easy, but they did exactly 
that--where everybody gives a little but gets a lot. They sat down at 
those tables and they met, and they met for years, and they came up 
with this proposal.
  Shortly after I was elected, they came to me and said: Would you 
carry it?
  I looked at it, and I said: You know what, this bill makes sense. It 
makes sense for Montana. It makes sense for the West.
  We were on track to get this bill passed until the omnibus was pulled 
the other night because of a lack of support. Our No. 1 responsibility 
right now is jobs--jobs, jobs, jobs. This bill helped create jobs, 
helped put people to work in an industry that needs help.
  Regardless of what happens from here, it is going to be critically 
important that we stay focused on jobs in this body. I will tell my 
colleagues that I think if we do that and we are successful in that, 
this country will be a better place. It will be a better place for our 
kids and our grandkids, and it will be a better place for people right 
now. Quite frankly, I haven't seen a lot of that working together in 
the last 4 years. When we have a piece of legislation that really isn't 
a Democratic piece of legislation or a Republican piece of legislation 
but, rather, a good piece of legislation, it gets caught up in the 
process.
  I will continue to fight for jobs for everybody in this country, 
particularly in Montana. We will continue to work to get this bill 
passed and bills like this passed because it is good for the country 
and it gives the agencies--in this case, the Forest Service--the kinds 
of tools they need to manage our forests.
  As I said before, I was going to ask unanimous consent for the 
passage of this bill. I have been informed that will be objected to, so 
there is no reason to go through that formality. But I will say we hope 
to bring it up again, and hopefully next time we will be successful 
because it is a good bill.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, I wish to respond briefly to my good friend 
from Montana.
  First of all, let me say that I, of course, was at the hearings the 
Senator referred to in our Energy and Natural Resources Committee. 
Ordinarily, I wouldn't involve myself at all in the internal matters in 
Montana. Natural resource issues are best decided by the people who 
live in the particular counties and in the particular States where that 
resource is located. On this particular issue, however, one of the 
areas of land included in the landmass my good friend from Montana 
described in his bill is an area that is referred to as Mount 
Jefferson. Mount Jefferson and the area included admittedly are 
entirely within the State of Montana. However, the only way the 
southern part can be accessed is through the State of Idaho.
  I couldn't agree more with my good friend from Montana in saying that 
we need to keep our eye on the ball, and that is jobs, jobs, jobs.
  The particular area in question is not a large area. I think the 
total amount is 4,400 acres. The amount I am talking about is about 
2,200 acres, but it is used intensively by Idaho people engaging in 
recreation in the wintertime. Under my good friend's bill, that would 
have been closed out, and the snowmobiling particularly would have been 
prohibited in this area, which is the south side of Mount Jefferson.
  I sincerely appreciate my friend's willingness to talk about this and 
to work on this particular issue. As we go forward with this--and I 
have no doubt that his commitment to his State will cause him to 
continue to work with us on this issue and to deal with this particular 
bill and the areas of land he is talking about in this bill as we go 
into the next Congress. I commit to work with him, and I hope we can 
resolve this issue. As I say, the issue of winter snowmobiling only as 
far as motorized use of this particular area is of great importance to 
the people of the State of Idaho.
  I thank the Senator for his courtesies thus far, and I look forward 
to working with Senator Tester in the next Congress on this issue.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. Thank you, Mr. President.
  I appreciate the remarks of the good Senator from Idaho. I understand 
the Senator's concern as we have talked about the Mount Jefferson issue 
before. Overall in the bill, just for the record, we have added 370,000 
acres of recreation area for exactly that--snowmobiles. That doesn't 
solve the problem on Mount Jefferson of the 4,400 acres, but we will 
continue to work with the Senator from Idaho and move forward to try to 
get something as close to what meets the needs of everybody as we can. 
As Vince Lombardi once said, the recipe for failure is trying to please 
everybody.
  I thank the good Senator from Idaho.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.

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