[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 20717-20718]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                             RURAL AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about 
rural America.
  Sometimes I think it is the forgotten part of America. Having lived 
my entire life there, I think it is the heart and soul of America. In 
my view, it is the part of this country where basic values are still 
important, where people believe they work hard for a day's pay and they 
are willing to do their fair share, they do not want a free lunch.
  But as we look at the history in the last 8 years, and we will start 
with agriculture, in the times of unparalleled prosperity, the finest 
economy America has ever had, agriculture is struggling to even exist.

[[Page 20718]]

  Family farms are leaving all parts of America. In my part of 
Pennsylvania, we have been watching that and they grow up into rag weed 
and other weeds for a few years and then they become brush and then 
they grow back to forests.
  How could agriculture not flourish when our economy is so strong? We 
have had a Clinton-Gore administration that has not kept their promise 
to American farmers. They promised to open world markets. We have 
unparalleled ability in this country to produce food and fiber. But 
without world markets, there is no place to sell their products.
  Farm products have never been cheaper. Agriculture products have 
never been at a lower value. And it is almost impossible for so many of 
our farmers to pay the bills. So agriculture has had a bad 8 years 
during Clinton-Gore, and I do not think we can stand 8 more. We need a 
leader in this country that will open our markets and help agriculture 
to be profitable once again.
  Energy, the issue that is in the pocketbooks of all Americans. We are 
going to have a winter this year where the poorest of Americans will 
pay in some places twice as much for their home heating fuel as they 
paid last year.
  How did that happen? How did we go from $10 oil to $35 oil in less 
than 18 months? It is because this leadership of the Clinton-Gore 
administration had no energy policy. They were drunk on cheap oil. They 
paid no attention to the oil patches of this country and the other 
energy resources of this country, and they allowed them to slowly go 
out of business.
  During this administration, our dependency has gone from 36 percent 
to 56 percent oil not from our friends, not from our neighbors in many 
cases, but from unstable parts of the world who care nothing about our 
economic future.
  And today, the policies of this administration have put us in a 
position where we could be paying $45 for oil before the year is over. 
And we all know what that will do to home heating, cost of trucking, 
cost of driving our vehicles.
  A lack of an energy policy of the Clinton-Gore administration has 
been devastating to rural America. Because not only do we consume it, 
that is where we produce it.
  The timber industry. In the West, we have great softwoods. In the 
eastern part of the United States, we have the finest hardwoods forests 
in the world. My district has one of the finest hardwood forests in 
America. But again we have watched Clinton-Gore policies that have 
tried to stop all timbering on public lands.
  Someone might say, well, that sounds good. But you know the Federal 
Government owns a third of America. When we add the State governments 
in, we are at about 44 or 45 percent of public ownership. And when we 
add local governments in, we are approaching half of America is owned 
by government.
  So government policies from an administration have an awful lot to do 
with whether we practice good forestry and whether we are able to 
timber.
  Timber is a natural resource and it is a resource that replenishes 
itself. You could have good forestry practice on the land forever and 
it will continue to grow fine quality timber that we use to build our 
homes, make our paper, and all the things we sort of take for granted.

                              {time}  1730

  I am told we are approaching 50 percent on the importation now of 
softwoods in this country because we have had a policy that opposes 
cutting timber.
  Public land ownership I have talked about. When a huge part of a 
State and much of rural America, that is where they own, in rural 
America, when you have public policy changes, you have a huge impact on 
the rural economies; when you no longer allow grazing; when you no 
longer allow mining; when you no longer allow timbering. Much of our 
land was purchased with a promise that it would be multi-use, it would 
be for recreation, it would be for natural resource supply. Today, that 
promise has been broken.
  While we own all this land, our National Park Service and our Forest 
Service facilities, our Bureau of Land Management facilities and our 
Fish and Wildlife Service facilities have never been in greater 
disrepair, because we are on a land-buying grab. We are in the process 
of buying land and not maintaining the land we have. Many of these 
things and many more are the reasons why rural America has not 
prospered under this administration, and it needs new leadership in 
Washington if it is to survive.

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