[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 28264]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 28264]]

                       CURRENT EVENTS IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, today in a hearing before the full Committee 
on Resources we discussed the President's proposal to lock up some 40 
million acres of our national forests.


  I am sure this sounds good to some. But what it mainly will do is 
drive up prices on houses and everything else that is made from wood, 
and it will destroy jobs.
  So if my colleagues want to hurt poor and working people by driving 
up prices and destroying jobs, then they should support this proposal 
to lock up our national forests.
  In the 1980s, the Congress passed what was then thought to be a very 
strong environmental statement that we should not cut more than 80 
percent of the new growth in our national forests.
  Today we have reduced logging down to less than one-seventh, less 
than 14 percent of the new growth. Today we are not even cutting half 
the number of dead and dying trees each year.
  This is causing so much fuel buildup that the Forest Service tells us 
now that 39 million acres are in great risk of burning. Actually, we 
need to cut some trees to have healthy forests. And we are not even 
coming close to doing that.
  Today, in my part of the country, the Forest Service says that only 
.02 percent of the trees in the Cherokee National Forest is being 
harvested annually, two-tenths of one percent. Yet, the July-August 
issue of the Sierra Club magazine said that the Cherokee is being 
logged at a ``furious pace.''
  Much of the environmental movement has been taken over by extremists. 
Some are putting out very false or very distorted or very exaggerated 
information because they know they have to scare people to keep their 
big contributions coming in. Many of these environmental extremists are 
wealthy or upper-income people who simply do not realize how much some 
of what they advocate hurts the poor and working people.
  Also, some of this environmental extremism is financed by extremely 
big business because they know the stringent rules and regulations and 
red tape about the environment drives the small farmers and small 
businesses out. Thus, the big guys have less bothersome competition to 
deal with.
  Which brings me to my second topic, the Kyoto agreement.

                              {time}  1945

  I read in one of the nonpartisan congressional publications this week 
that the administration knows it cannot get the Senate to ratify the 
Kyoto Agreement, so it is trying to get it enacted through the back 
door. This report said that Federal agencies hope to build big business 
support for Kyoto by giving favorable treatment on regulations, 
contracts and so forth to businesses that will voluntarily comply in 
advance. Then they believe these big businesses would then lobby the 
Senate for the agreement in order to force everyone else to comply.
  Many people around the world and some rich socialists in this country 
think it is unfair that with just 5 percent of the world's population, 
the U.S. consumes about 25 percent of the world's goods. This is really 
what was behind the Kyoto Agreement. The administration was apparently 
so eager to say that an agreement had been reached that it approved a 
very bad deal. The Senate passed a resolution 95-0 saying that if an 
agreement was reached in Kyoto, it should apply to all countries and 
should not harm the U.S. economy. This agreement exempts 129 of 173 
countries including China and Mexico. The Global Climate Information 
Project says: ``So while the U.S. cuts energy use by more than 30 
percent, most U.N. countries get a free ride. Because U.S. energy 
prices will rise, American products could be more expensive at home and 
less competitive overseas. That will slow down our economic growth and 
cost American jobs. All for a treaty that will produce little or no 
environmental benefit.''
  One thing it would do for sure is speed up the transfer of wealth and 
jobs from this Nation to underdeveloped countries. Unless we want to 
make our constituents' jobs even less secure and force them to cut 
their energy use by 30 percent or more, we had better oppose the Kyoto 
Agreement.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, in talking about big business and big money in 
politics and government today, let me briefly mention campaign finance 
reform. This administration has done more to get around or flout or 
violate our campaign finance laws than any in history. Over 90 people 
pled the fifth or even fled the country to avoid testifying in the 
various campaign finance investigations. It is ironic that some of the 
leaders who are the loudest in support of campaign finance reform are 
some of the biggest violators of our present campaign finance laws.
  What people should think about, Mr. Speaker, is that when the Federal 
Government was small, we did not have all this trouble with big money 
influencing politics and political decisions. If we really want to 
remove the influence of big money and big business in government today, 
then the best way to do so is to downsize the Federal Government and 
decrease its costs. Big government liberals who always say they are for 
the little guy have done more to help extremely big business than any 
conservative ever dreamed of doing. It is no accident that the bigger 
our Federal Government has become, the harder it has become for small 
businesses and small farmers to survive, and the more the gap between 
the rich and the poor has grown.

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