[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 18858-18859]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    INACTION ON APPROPRIATIONS BILLS

  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, on one point I agree with my colleague from 
Iowa: This Senate is dysfunctional. We have not done our work. It is a 
new year. It has already begun. We have not passed and sent to the 
President a single appropriations bill.
  But I have to differ very strongly with his accusation, which is 
totally unfounded, that the objection I raised was for political 
purposes. The objection is raised because this body has before it an 
appropriations bill. We have the Interior appropriations bill before 
us, and it has been stalled by my colleagues on the other side. We need 
to vote on that bill.
  One of the reasons we are in this problem is because we have not 
passed a budget, the first time since 1974 we have not passed a budget. 
I serve on the Budget Committee. I happen to believe that the budget 
that was reported out by the majority, on a party-line vote, was and is 
indefensible. The fact that the majority leader has not brought it up 
tends to confirm my suspicion.
  But when you do not have a budget, you have a great difficulty trying 
to pass appropriations bills. We have passed good bills out of the 
Appropriations Committee. And I happen to have not only a great 
interest in the Labor, Health, and Human Services bill, but in the VA-
HUD and independent agencies bill. We have to get those done. And we 
are going to get those done. It looks as if we are going to have to 
wait for a new Congress to do it. We are going to

[[Page 18859]]

get those funds out there because they are vitally needed. And we have, 
in all of these bills, incorporated many important projects and 
programs that need to be funded.
  But we are stuck. We have been almost, I guess it is, 5 weeks now on 
Interior. Why haven't we voted on and passed out an Interior bill? Why 
not? Because Senators from the West--and I include myself in that; it 
is close; we are on the west side of the Mississippi River--want to 
have the same protection for our forests, for the neighbors of the 
forests, for the people who work in the forests--the firefighters--for 
the people who live by the forests, for the trees themselves, the 
wildlife in the forests, we want to have the same protection from 
devastating catastrophic forest fires.
  Senators Craig, Domenici, and Kyl offered an amendment which I was 
proud to support. Very simply, that amendment gave, with many more 
limitations, the same kind of flexibility to the Forest Service in 
other States that it has in South Dakota, which is desperately needed.
  The Senator from South Dakota included a provision nobody knew about 
in the Defense bill that said you could go in and clean out the high-
density fuel and the volatile compounds lining the floors of the 
forests in South Dakota, but he made it just for South Dakota.
  Fires are raging in the West, in California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah. 
They are threatened in Missouri. We said: We want the same protection 
for our forests. We want to be able to use sound forest management, 
which means getting the dead, diseased logs out of the forest before a 
spark from lightning or a manmade spark or some kind of machine sets 
them on fire and causes a catastrophic fire that outraces the wildlife, 
that burns old-growth trees, that kills people. Over 20 firefighters 
are dead in the West from these catastrophic fires. It is burning up 
property.
  Do you know what the result is? The environment suffers tremendously 
because wildlife cannot escape from these fast-moving fires. The forest 
floor is baked so hard that nothing will grow for decades. What we are 
saying is, sound forestry management demands that you clean out the 
high-fuel areas to prevent catastrophic fires. It makes common sense. 
Except there are special interest groups, specifically the Sierra Club 
and others, that say you cannot vote for that bill. They have too much 
political clout.
  If we are talking about politics, holding up the appropriations, 
let's look at the politics holding up the Interior appropriations bill. 
That is where the politics are being played. That is why people 
throughout the West and anywhere where there are national forests are 
in danger of catastrophic forest fires, because the majority refuses to 
make their Members vote between cleaning up the forests, preventing the 
fires, protecting their people, and the Sierra Club. They don't want to 
make that choice.
  That choice is easy. If we can get a vote on it, one way or the 
other, you may beat us. You may have enough votes to say, no, we don't 
want to give you that protection. But at least we want to have a vote. 
Then we can pass the Interior bill. We could get to Labor-HHS. We could 
get to the CJS bill on which my colleague from South Carolina has 
worked so hard. We can get to the VA-HUD-independent agencies bill on 
which I have worked with my colleague from Maryland.
  There is politics in the holding up of the appropriations. The 
politics are not on this side.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.

                          ____________________