[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 2 (Tuesday, January 5, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H7-H9]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         HARNEY COUNTY, OREGON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Abraham). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I am sure my colleagues are aware of the 
situation in Harney County, Oregon, where a group of armed protesters 
have overtaken a Federal facility in the Malheur National Wildlife 
Refuge.
  This group is led largely by people who are not necessarily from 
Oregon, although they obviously have supporters from Oregon. They were 
originally there to protest the sentencing of Dwight and Steve Hammond.
  I know the Hammonds. I have known them for probably close to 20 
years. They are longtime, responsible ranchers in Harney County. They 
have been sentenced to prison not once, but now twice. I will get into 
that in a moment.
  The point I want to make at the outset is for people in this Chamber 
to understand what drives people to do what is happening tonight in 
Harney County.
  I have had the great honor and privilege to represent Harney County 
for a number of years. I have seen the impact of Federal policies from 
the Clinton administration to the Obama administration. I have seen 
what happens when overzealous bureaucrats and agencies go beyond the 
law and clamp down on people. I have seen what courts have done. I have 
seen the time for Congress to act and then it has not.
  I want to put this area in perspective because I think it is really 
important to understand how big this region is. By size, my 
congressional district in Oregon is something like the seventh or 
eighth biggest in the Congress. If you overlaid it over the east coast, 
it would start in the Atlantic and end in Ohio.
  The county where this occupation is taking place--Harney County--is 
over 10,000 square miles. There are 7,000 souls inhabiting it. If my 
math is right, that is one person for every 1.4 miles. One person for 
every 1.4 miles.
  Just this one county is 10 times the size of Rhode Island. It is 
larger than the State of Maryland. And 72 percent of it is under the 
command and control of the Federal Government.
  It is the public's land. That is true. But what people don't 
understand is the culture, the lifestyle, of the great American West 
and how much these ranchers care about the environment, about the 
future, about their children, about America, and how much they believe 
in the Constitution. Now we see the extent they will go to in order to 
defend what they view as their constitutional rights.
  Now, I am not defending armed takeovers. I do not think that is 
appropriate. I think the time has come for those to consider that they 
have made their case in the public about what is happening in the West, 
and perhaps it is time for them to realize they have made their case 
and to go home.
  But I want to talk about what happened with the Hammonds. I want to 
put in perspective what happens almost every year in my district. That 
is these enormous wildfires.

                              {time}  1930

  The Miller Homestead Wildfire in 2012 burned 160,000 acres, mostly in 
this county, if not all; 250 square miles, a quarter of the size of the 
State of Rhode Island. That was just in 2012.
  The Barry Point Fire that year, in Lake County, next door, burned 
93,000 acres. Last summer alone, we burned 799,974 acres across Oregon; 
that is both forest and high desert. In 2012, 3.4 million acres burned 
in Oregon.
  There was another fire in Malheur County. The Long Draw Fire, in 
2012, burned 557,000 acres, five times the size of Rhode Island. So 
93,000 acres, 557,000 acres, 160,000 acres, all burning.
  The Hammonds are in prison tonight for setting a backfire that they 
admit to, that burned 139 acres, and they will sit in prison, time 
served and time going forward, 5 years, under a law that I would argue 
was never intended to mete out that kind of punishment, and I will get 
to that in a moment.
  I have told you I worked with the Hammonds and many ranchers in 
Harney County. In the last years of the Clinton administration, despite 
their own agency's reviews and analysis, Bill Clinton threatened to 
create a giant monument on Steens Mountain.
  When Secretary Babbitt, the Interior Secretary at the time, came 
before the House Resources Committee, of which I was a member, I said: 
Mr. Secretary, your own resource advisory committees in the area just 
reported that

[[Page H8]]

there was no need for additional protection on Steens Mountain, and 
yet, you and the President are threatening to create this national 
monument. Why do you waste the time of the citizens to go through a 
process to determine if additional protections are needed and then 
ignore what they came up with?
  To Bruce Babbitt's credit, he agreed when I told him: I think you 
would be surprised about what the local ranchers and citizens of Harney 
County would be willing to do if you give them a chance. To his credit, 
he said: All right, I will give them that chance. And he did.
  We went to work on legislation. It took a full year. I worked with 
the Hammonds. I worked with Stacy Davies, I worked with all kinds of 
folks, put a staffer on it full-time, multiple staffs, and we worked 
with the environmental community and others. And we created the Steens 
Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Act, model legislation, 
never been done before, because I said: We don't have to live by past 
laws, we write laws.
  So we wrote a new law to create a cooperative spirit of management in 
Harney County. The Hammonds were part of that discussion. We saved a 
running camp, Harlan Priority Runs. We protected inholder. We tried to 
do all the right things and create the kind of partnership and 
cooperation that the Federal Government and the citizens should have.
  Fast forward on that particular law. Not long after that became law, 
and it was heralded as this monumental law of great significance and 
new era in cooperation and spirit of cooperation, some of those 
involved on the other side and some of the agencies decided to 
reinterpret it. The first thing they tried to do is shut down this 
kids' running camp because they said: Well, too many, maybe more than 
20, run down this canyon and back up, as they had for many, many years. 
They wanted to shut it down. So we had to fight them back and said: No, 
the law says historical standards.
  Then the bureaucrats, because we said: You should have your 
historical access to your private property, if you are up on Steens 
Mountain, you should maintain that access like you have always had it. 
Do you know what the bureaucrats said? They began to solicit from the 
inholders in this area: How many times did you go up there last year? 
You see, they wanted to put a noose around the neck of those who were 
inside. That was a total violation of what we intended, and we had to 
back them off.
  See, the bureaucracy wants to interpret the laws we write in ways 
they want, and in this case they were wrong, not once, but twice.
  Then, a couple of years ago, I learned that, despite the fact we 
created the first cow-free wilderness in the United States under this 
law, and said clearly in this law that it would be the responsibility 
of the government to put up fencing to keep the cows out, as part of 
the agreement, the Bureau of Land Management said: No, we are not going 
to follow that law. And they told the ranchers they had to build the 
fence.
  I networked with my Democrat colleague from Oregon, Mr. DeFazio, who 
was part of writing this law. I said: Peter, you remember that, right? 
He said: Yeah, I didn't like it, but that was the case. BLM still 
wouldn't listen. So we continued to push it and they argued back.
  Well, it turns out there had been a second rancher who brought this 
to my attention who they were telling had to do the same thing, build a 
fence, when the government was supposed to under the law I wrote. The 
arrogance of the agency was such that they said: We don't agree with 
you.
  Now, there aren't many times, Mr. Speaker, in this job when you can 
say I know what the intent of the law was, but in this case I could 
because I wrote the law, I knew the intent.
  Oh, that wasn't good enough. No, no, no. No, no, no. The arrogance of 
these agency people was such that we had to go to the archives and drag 
out the boxes from 2000, 1999-2000, when we wrote this law, from the 
hearings that had all the records for the hearings and the floor 
discussions to talk about the intent. And our retired Member, George 
Miller, actually we used some of his information where he said the 
government would provide the fencing. They were still reluctant to 
follow it. So I put language in the appropriations bill that restated 
the Federal law.
  Do you understand how frustrated I am at this? Can you imagine how 
the people on the ground feel? Can you imagine? If you are not there, 
you can't. If you are not there, you can't.
  You ridicule them. The Portland Oregonian is running a thing, what do 
you send? Meals for militia. Let's have fun with this.
  This is not a laughing matter from any consequence. Nobody is going 
to win out of this thing.
  This is a government that has gone too far for too long. Now, I am 
not condoning this takeover in any way. I want to make that clear. I 
don't think it is appropriate. There is a right to protest. I think 
they have gone too far. But I understand and hear their anger.
  Right now, this administration, secretly, but not so much, is 
threatening, in the next county over, that looks a lot like this one, 
Malheur County, to force a monument of 2.5 million acres, we believe. I 
think this is outrageous. It flies in the face of the people and the 
way of life and the public access.
  There is a company, Keen Shoes, that already has a big marketing 
campaign. This is about selling shoes, for God's sake.
  I call on the President, if he wants to help reduce the tension that 
is out there, to walk away from this. And if he doesn't want to walk 
away and say, no, we are not going to do that, to help us bring down 
this level of frustration and anger, then at least be honest, or his 
Secretary of the Interior needs to be honest with us and tell us they 
are going to do it.
  Either they are or they aren't. But all they are is being coy. That 
feeds into this. It feeds into the anger that I feel. It feeds into the 
anger out there.
  So the President should say: I am not going to do a national 
monument. I am not going to add more fuel on this fire in the West.
  We have fought other issues. More than half of my district is under 
Federal management, or lack thereof. They have come out with these 
proposals to close roads into the forests. They have ignored public 
input. They often claim to have all these open meetings and listen to 
the public, and then, in the case of Wallowa-Whitman, the forest 
supervisor who was eventually relieved because of this, I believe, 
completely ignored all the meetings, all the input, all the work of the 
counties and the local people, and said: Forget it, I am going my own 
direction.
  There were 900 people that turned out at the National Guard Armory 
where they had a public hearing, standing room only and beyond, 
furious.
  You see, how do you have faith in a government that doesn't ever 
listen to you? How do you have faith in a government that, when elected 
Representatives write a law, those charged with the responsibility of 
implementing it choose to go the other direction and not do so? That is 
what is breaking faith between the American people and their 
government, and that is what has to change.
  The other thing that has to change, the law under which the Hammonds 
were sentenced. Now, they probably did some things that weren't legal. 
I have given you the size of the acreages that burned naturally. I 
haven't gotten into the discussion about how these fires are often 
fought and how the Federal Government frequently will go on private 
land and set a fire without permission to backburn. That happens all 
the time.
  In fact, in the Barry Point Fire down in Lake County, they set fire 
on private timber land as a backburn while the owners of the property 
were putting out spot fires down in the canyon. I drove down there 
afterwards. They are darn lucky to have come out alive.
  There was nobody sentenced under the terrorism act there. Oh, heck 
no. It is the government. They weren't sentenced. Nobody was charged. 
Oh, it just happened.
  Now, fires are tough to fight. I have great respect for firefighters. 
There are always two sides on how these fires get fought. But I can 
tell you, a few years back in Harney County, because I went and held a 
meeting out there right as the fire was being put out, that the fire 
crews came in, went on private ground, lit a backfire on private 
ground, behind a fence line, that then burned out the farmer's fence, 
the rancher's fence, and burned all the way over and down into

[[Page H9]]

a canyon where there was a wetland, which would have been the natural 
break to stop the fire from the other side. You see, they never needed 
to burn that land.
  These things happen in the course of fighting fire. It doesn't mean 
they are right. But rare is it that somebody ends up 5 years in prison.
  Let me tell you what the senior judge said when he sentenced the 
Hammonds the first time, Judge Michael Hogan, senior Federal judge, 
highly respected in Oregon. He sentenced Dwight Hammond to 3 months and 
Steve to a year. There were different offenses here.
  He said: ``I am not going to apply the mandatory minimum because, to 
me, to do so, under the Eighth Amendment, would result in a sentence 
which is grossly disproportionate to the severity of the offenses 
here.''
  The Judge went on to say: ``And with regard to the Antiterrorism and 
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, this sort of conduct would not 
have been conduct intended under the statute.
  ``When you ask, you know, what if you burn sagebrush in the suburbs 
of Los Angeles, and there are homes up the ravines, it might apply. Out 
in the wilderness here, I don't think that is what the Congress 
intended.
  ``In addition, it just would not meet any idea I have of justice 
proportionality. It would be a sentence which would shock the 
conscience, to me.''
  Senior Judge Mike Hogan, when he did the original sentencing.
  But, you see, under this 1996 law under which they were charged and 
convicted, it turns out he had no judicial leeway. He could not mete 
out a sentence that was proportionate to what the crime was.
  So yesterday, Dwight and Steve went to prison again. Dwight will be 
73 when he gets out. Steve will be about 50.
  Meanwhile, in Harney County, on the ranch, Susie will continue to try 
and survive; 6,000-acre ranch, she needs grazing permits to make this 
happen. It would be a cruel and unjust act, by the way, if access to 
those grazing permits that allow that ranch to work were not extended. 
What possible good could come out of bankrupting a grandmother that was 
trying to keep a ranch together, while the husband sits in prison, her 
son sits in prison? What possible good?
  They will serve their sentences. There is nothing, short of clemency 
that only the President can offer, that we can do. But we can change 
that law, and we should, so that nobody ever is locked in like that for 
a situation like this, where a senior judge, literally, on his final 
day on the bench, says this goes too far, it goes too far. They 
appealed that, by the way, and lost. But I believe that the judge was 
right.
  We have to listen to the people. We have to understand why events 
like this are taking place in our communities. They are taking place in 
cities. We have witnessed that, and we try and get our heads around it.
  There are more people from the cities, so there are more Members from 
the cities. There aren't many of us that represent these vast, wide-
open, incredibly beautiful, harsh districts like the one I do.
  The people there love the land. It was the ranchers who came up with 
the concept of the cooperative management. It was the ranchers who 
loved Steens Mountain that know that for them to survive they have to 
take care of the range.

                              {time}  1945

  They are good people. Their sons and daughters, by a higher 
proportion, fight in our wars and die, and I have been to their 
funerals. So to my friends across eastern Oregon, I will always fight 
for you. But we have to understand there is a time and a way. Hopefully 
the country through this understands we have a real problem in America: 
how we manage our lands and how we are losing them.
  It is not like we haven't tried here, Mr. Speaker. Year after year we 
pass bipartisan legislation to provide more active management on our 
forests so we don't lose them all to fire, and we are losing them all 
to fire. We are losing firefighters' lives, homes, and watersheds--
great resources of the West. Teddy Roosevelt would role over in his 
grave. He created this wildlife refuge in 1908.
  There were some bad actors there in the 1980s, by the way. They were 
very aggressive running the refuge, basically threatening eminent 
domain and other things that took ranches. It was bad. That lasted for 
at least a decade or more. It has gotten better though. It is not 
perfect. There is a much better relationship, and the refuge and the 
ranchers work closer together. In fact, during this fire in 2012, the 
refuge actually opened itself up to the ranchers for hay and feed 
because theirs was burned out because of this big fire. So there was a 
better spirit there.
  But there are still these problems: the threat of waters of the U.S. 
shutting down stock ponds and irrigation canals and a way of life, the 
threat of fire every year that seems to not be battled right and just 
gets away, and no one is really held accountable; the continued 
restriction on the lives of the men and women who, for generations, 
have worked hard in a tough environment. It has just gone too far. It 
is hurtful.
  I hope people understand how serious this is felt and how heartfelt 
this is by those who pay their taxes and try and live by the law and do 
the right things and how oppressed they feel by the government that 
they elect and the government they certainly don't elect, and how much 
they will always defend the flag and the country, and their sons and 
daughters would go to war, some will not come back--and they have not 
from this area.
  There is a better solution here. The President needs to back off on 
the monument. The BLM needs to make sure Susie Hammond isn't pushed 
into bankruptcy and has her ranch taken by the government and added to 
those that have been. We need to be better at hearing people from all 
walks of life and all regions of our country and understanding this 
anger that is out there and what we can do to bring about correct 
change and peaceful resolution.
  It is not too late. We can do this. It is a great country. We have 
the processes to do it right.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________