[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13545-13551]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     ECONOMIC STIMULUS AND SENSIBLE FOREST MANAGEMENT AND LAND USE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burgess). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I have been waiting now for about an hour, 
an hour and a half, reading back there and waiting for my turn, and 
have been witness to this constant pounding by the Democratic side of 
the aisle, taking cheap shot after cheap shot about the tax cut that, 
by the way, some of the Democrats supported; but even their leader came 
over here to take some cheap shots on this tax bill.
  I am telling the Members, we have an economy that needs some 
stimulation. We have got to go out to the people that earn that money. 
The government does not earn this money. Contrary to what the 
Democratic leadership would like us to believe, we are not 
automatically entitled to the workers' monies in this country. This is 
not a Communist-type of country; this is not a socialistic-type of 
country, where we take money from people and make sure that no matter 
who works the hardest, it is of no consequence.
  It is distribution of the money that is of consequence in a 
socialistic country. In other words, everybody is treated absolutely 
equal. There is no incentive for people to go out and work hard.
  It is amazing to me that Democrat after Democrat has been up here at 
this microphone, and of course there is no time allowed for rebuttal 
until I now have the microphone. But for the last hour and a half, 
Democrat after Democrat has stood up here and said, gee, this tax cut 
did not go far enough. We need to include this group of people, even 
though they did not pay taxes. We do not want to exactly call it a 
welfare program, which is what it is. That may be appropriate under 
certain circumstances.
  But all they want to do, they are saying, well, we need to expand it 
to this particular group of people. And then, mark my word, we may see 
even yet this evening or tomorrow, we will see them out here talking on 
the floor being exactly contradictory to that, speaking in a 
hypothetical-type of approach saying, gosh, look at what the 
Republicans have done to the deficit. Look at what the Republicans have 
done to the deficit.

                              {time}  2100

  The fact is the Democratic Party in general has never seen a tax cut 
that they support. The Democratic Party here as witnessed in the last 
hour, and I am not attempting here to get up here and engage in a 
partisan debate, but somebody has to stand up and speak for the other 
side. Somebody has got to stand up and speak for the moderates and the 
conservatives for the middle-income families in this country for the 
people out there that are working.
  Remember when you distribute money, when this government takes money 
and especially when this government takes money and gives that money to 
people who are not working, that money is simply a transfer. The 
government does not create wealth. Governments do not create wealth. 
All they are is an agent of transfer. So when the government gives 
money, under the Democratic plan gives money to people who are not 
working, they are taking that money from people who are working.
  Now, I know most working people, in fact, almost every working person 
I have every talked to, they said they think at certain levels it is 
appropriate to take money from people who are working and give it to 
people who are not working, for example, I think, for somebody who is 
physically and mentally disabled to the extent that they cannot be in 
the workforce. Nobody disagrees that those people should not receive 
help from society. That is what society is about. That is what team 
work is about. But that is not what the leadership of the Democratic 
Party is about.
  They constantly want to expand the welfare programs. They constantly 
want to expand the government programs. And their response to the needs 
of our society is let the government handle it. When it comes to health 
care, it is the Democratic leadership that calls about socialized 
medicine. When it comes to the situation on the international basis, it 
is the Democratic leadership that talks about a world order. It is the 
Democratic leadership that talks about giving up our sovereignty to the 
United Nations. Let the United Nations determine what is best for the 
United States.
  There is clearly a distinction between the Democratic and the 
Republican parties. A lot of young people that come to me and they ask 
because they are at that point in their lives because they want to 
decide, gosh, should I be a Republican or should I be a Democrat. I 
say, let me explain because there are some clear differences. And the 
last hour and a half of listening to the Democrats bash these tax 
reductions as if the people who pay the taxes are not entitled to keep 
their money, that money is not government money. You can talk to the 
Democratic leadership until you are blue in the face, and they never 
get the message. That money did not originate on this House floor. That 
money originated with an iron worker or a taxi cab worker or a banker 
or a teacher or somebody in the military. Those are the people that 
made that money. We did not make that money here. We got the easiest 
jobs in the world in government. All we do is reach in that pocket and 
make that decision to transfer the money here. Someone else works for 
the money. That iron worker out there, for example, makes $25 an hour 
maybe on a very risky job; and the government reaches into his pocket 
and takes money out of that pocket and redistributes a portion of that 
money that that man or woman makes as an iron worker.
  Now, we have all agreed in this country that there are certain needs 
that as a group, as a team, as a United States there are certain needs 
we should pool our money for and we should redistribute to help some of 
these, highways, for example, a justice department, a strong military, 
good schools, a welfare system for those people who really cannot work. 
Unemployment, not unemployment that last forever, but unemployment as a 
temporary, temporary assistance for people between jobs to help them 
get back on their feet.
  The easiest way to describe to these young people the difference 
between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is an example 
somebody told me once, and they said, with the Democrats when somebody 
is hungry what they do is the Democrats provide them, and I am focusing 
on the Democratic leadership, their idea is to give the hungry person 
fish. And whenever the hungry person is hungry, you give them more fish 
and give them more fish. Our philosophy on the Republican side is give 
them some fish at first so they are not hungry, but at the same time 
give them a fishing pole and say, look, you have got to help catch the 
fish. You cannot just depend on us showing up and constantly giving you 
fish and giving you fish.
  Now, in the last hour and a half we have heard the Democrats one 
after another take cheap shots about that tax bill. Let me tell you 
that tax bill was as a result of a lot of compromise between a lot of 
moderate people. What you have heard from in the last hour and a half 
is not what I would say is the mainstream of the Democratic Party. What 
you have heard from in the last hour and a half is the extreme left. 
That is what we hear from on the environmental issues. That is what we 
hear from on the antimilitary issues. That is what we hear from on the 
pro-United Nations, pro-world order issues. That is what we hear from 
on the anti-tax cut issues.
  We are worried about this economy. We need to stimulate this economy. 
I say to people, it is like a battery in a car. We got a car we have to 
climb a hill and the engine went off. We have

[[Page 13546]]

discovered we have a dead battery. We need to use jumper cables. The 
Democrats, if you listen to them, they would put, the leadership 
especially, they would put the jumper cables on the bumper. They would 
put them on the door handles. And what I say with all due respect to my 
Democratic colleagues is it does not do us any good to get us moving to 
put jumper cables on the door handle. It does not do us any good to put 
jumper cables on the bumper. We need to put these jumper cables on the 
battery terminals.
  I know that the battery is only a small part of the car. This tax cut 
is a very focused tax cut. What we want to do, and the reason we are 
saying to the Democrats put the jumper cables on the battery terminals, 
we are promising the Democrats that if you do that, just go along with 
us, which, of course, they will not do because they have a Presidential 
election coming up here in 2 years. That is what the last hour and a 
half has all been about. It has been about politics. We have asked them 
put the politics aside and help us. Let us put the jumper cables on the 
battery terminals. You know what happens if we charge the battery? The 
whole car will receive the benefit of that charged battery because when 
the battery is going, the car moves as a unit. The whole car will move 
up the hill.
  We have an economy that is holding its own and I think is going to 
improve. I am optimistic about it. But it seems to me listening in the 
last hour and a half that the Democratic leadership will do whatever 
they can do to make sure that car or that economy does not get moving 
because they want this economy to be sour for one reason. They want to 
win the Presidential election in a year and a half from now. That is 
their whole purpose in this last hour and a half is Presidential 
politics. It will be their whole purpose for the rest of this session 
and, unfortunately, for next year's session. Do whatever you can even 
if it costs the American worker their jobs, even if it costs the 
American society their economy. Do whatever you can to obstruct George 
W. Bush. Do whatever you can to blame whatever is going wrong on George 
W. Bush, because it is all about politics.
  I go back every week to my district in Colorado and I make it a 
point, I do not go down to my district offices. I go out on the road 
and I go out and talk to people, those people who, frankly, whose money 
we are taking to finance this government. You know what they want? They 
are sick of some of this last hour and a half of political cheap shots. 
They want for you to help us move this economy. Whether you like it or 
not, the President of the United States happens to be a Republican. But 
the fact that George W. Bush is a Republican should not stop you, based 
on that alone, from at least trying to work with us, from trying to 
help us as a team move this economy forward. There are a lot of people 
out there whose jobs are dependent on a good economy.
  There are a lot of people who you consider rich people. And by the 
way, time after time after time in the last hour and a half you hear 
the Democrats talking about the rich people. You know what the 
leadership of the Democratic Party considers the so-called rich people? 
That would be even a couple that earns 35, 40, $50,000 a year. There 
are a lot of couples that work out there, and all the more power to 
them. That is our society. If you can go out and improve your life, go 
out and do it. Yet you criticize success and you call rich somebody 
making 50 or $60,000 a year. That is not rich. Making 50 or $60,000 and 
a year you go out and buy a car, $25,000, that is a half a year's 
salary.
  What we are trying to do is get an economy that will allow these 
people to continue to make that kind of money, that will allow these 
people to reinvest this money. Do you know if you take a look at 
capital gains, take a look at the economic history which the Democratic 
leadership is completely ignoring, intentionally, and completely 
ignoring the economic history of capital gains because they know every 
time in history without exception, every time in history the government 
has reduced the capital gains taxation, the economy has received a 
boost, the economy has seen an uptick.
  The last thing the Democratic leadership wants is an uptick in the 
economy because they want to beat George W. Bush a year from now.
  The last thing, and I say this very honestly, the last thing that a 
lot of Democratic leadership wanted to do was to support President 
Bush's policies in Iraq and in Afghanistan because they are afraid that 
he is going to look too good; that, in fact, he is the leader who he is 
and they want to beat him in a Presidential election a year and a half 
from now.
  It is amazing to me. Every night, night after night after night we do 
not have some of my colleagues talking about how we can help the 
economy, how we can work as a team to work with the economy. All we see 
is night after night after night trying to attack George W. Bush and 
blame him for everything they can possibly blame him for in hopes of 
defeating him a year and a half from now.
  You know what you ought to do? We all win if the minority leader 
would come across the aisle and work with us. We all win when the 
Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership work as a team. 
Where we do not win is where we have gotten a tax cut we put through. 
It is already in place. It is law. So get over that and try and help us 
get this economy moving on the Republican side. And, frankly, to the 
Democratic leadership, I hate to tell you this, but a lot of your 
Democratic Members happen to agree with the Republicans and that is we 
want this economy to grow. We are tired of the class warfare argument. 
We are tired of the political argument that you have continued to throw 
out, which you have for the last hour and a half.
  To the minority leader, there are members of your party who want this 
economy to improve. There are members of your party, to the minority 
leader, who want George W. Bush to succeed in his foreign policy. There 
are people of your party, minority leader, who want George W. Bush to 
succeed in his economic policies. Why? Because if you jump the battery 
on the car and you get the battery started, the whole car benefits, the 
whole car moves forwards.
  Sure, you may feel better by putting your jumper cables, minority 
leader, on the bumper of the car and saying we want to distribute 
electricity. We want to jump the whole car, make the whole car feel 
good, distribute it across the whole car. The fact is we are trying to 
target because we want everybody in that car to benefit. We want it to 
move forward.
  So I plead with the Democratic leadership, get over this, help us 
come to a better solution, help us move forward. If we have a better 
economy, we get better schools. If we have a better economy, we get 
better jobs. If we have a better economy, we get a better life-style. 
If we have a better economy, we get more people covered with health 
insurance. I mean, the pluses of a better economy are tremendous. So 
quit trying to obstruct us every step of the way, simply for the fact 
that you want to defeat George W. Bush, you want to pull his numbers 
down in the polls in hopes of defeating him in a Presidential election 
in a year from now. That is all this last hour and a half has been 
about, and we deserve better; the American people deserve better.
  There is an excellent article today, and I want to talk about this in 
regards to this economic question that has arisen in the last hour and 
a half. It is an editorial out of the Wall Street Journal. The new tax 
bill exempts another 3 million-plus low-income workers from any Federal 
tax liability whatsoever. Exempt. The new tax bill exempts another 3 
million people.
  So in the last week when we voted for this tax bill, we exempted an 
additional 3 million people, the very people that some of my colleagues 
were talking about, what they say are the working poor or the 
nonworking people that are not earning money. This exempts 3 million in 
addition to what we have already exempted from income tax, 3 million 
low-income workers from any Federal tax liability whatsoever.

[[Page 13547]]



                              {time}  2115

  So you would think that the class warfare, the class lawyers would 
now be pleased, but instead we are all now being treated to their 
outrage because the law does not go further and cut income taxes for 
those people that do not pay income taxes.
  This is the essence of the uproar over the shape of the child care 
tax credit. The tax bill the President signed last week increases the 
per child Federal income tax to $1,000, up from the partially 
refundable $600 credit passed in the 2001 tax bill.
  Let me say to the Democrats, most of the Democrats did not support 
increasing the child tax care credit for those people who do pay taxes. 
Instead, today, the leadership appears here on this House floor and 
supports increasing the child tax credit for the people that do not pay 
taxes, but they voted against the very bill a week and a half ago that 
increased it for the people that do pay the taxes. So they are saying, 
okay, thank you to the working Americans out there, regardless of your 
income, thank you for working but we are going to vote against an 
increase so that you can have increased child credit, but by the way, 
if you did not pay any Federal income tax you may choose not to work, 
you do not make enough, you do not pay any tax, we are going to let you 
increase your child credit, and by the way, how would you increase the 
credit? They do not pay any tax. They do not need the credit. The 
Democrats include the word ``refundable'' so you actually send tax 
money to people that did not pay any taxes. They make it refundable, 
and of course, the only place you can get that money is to take it from 
the people that do pay the taxes.
  Let me skip from here and jump through some of this, but among tax 
cut opponents it is a political spinning opportunity, and that is 
exactly what we have seen. It is spin in its purest form in the last 2 
hours. Let me go on here and just say, more broadly, that critics, 
there are lots of things it talks about in the bill, good things like 
the $10 billion earmarked for Medicaid, the State/Federal health 
insurance program for the poor.
  Look at the money we put in that bill for the States to help the 
States try and get out of a hole that they have dug themselves into. 
That bill was a good bill, and yet in a very hypocritical fashion, we 
have people here talking about, look, the people that ought to benefit 
from a tax cut bill are the people that are not paying taxes. That is 
the spin that is going on around here.
  More broadly, the critics want everyone to forget how steeply 
progressive the Tax Code already is. These are very important numbers. 
These are facts. These are not the kind of facts that the minority 
leader wants you to hear, but these are facts. These are not made up by 
the Republican Conference. They are not put together by the Democratic 
Conference. These are statistical facts.
  The IRS data released last year, so they are recent, this is recent 
data, the top 1 percent of the earners in this country paid 37.4 
percent of all Federal income taxes in 2000. The more important number 
here is, the top 5 percent paid 56 percent. So the top 5 percent of 
income earners in this country pay 56 percent of the taxes.
  I do not have a problem with the progressive tax system. I think this 
is fine, but let us give credit where credit is due.
  The most important thing that I can say right here, and listen to 
this statistic, the top half of all earners, of all the people, all the 
earners in America, the top half, the top 50 percent pay 96.1 percent 
of the tax. We are talking about Federal income taxes, not payroll tax, 
not State. We are talking about Federal income taxes. The top 50 
percent of earners paid 96 percent of the bill. The lower 50 percent, 
the lower half, it is obviously half, but 50 percent of the income 
earners in this country paid 3.9 percent of the tax.
  I am not going out there and saying, guys, we ought to shift more 
burden to that lower 50 percent. That is not what I am saying, but what 
I am saying is, the Democratic leadership that continues time after 
time to talk about class warfare, it is a socialistic type of approach. 
It is not important what your capabilities are, that is what they say 
in socialism. It does not matter how much money you earn because what 
we do is redistribute it so that everybody is equal. So if the iron 
worker gets out there and has to walk on a beam this wide and takes 
substantial risk high on a building, high in the sky, and gets $25 an 
hour, it does not matter what that person's talent is or that person's 
skill is or the risk or the danger of their job because under the 
Democratic leadership approach, this money should be shared equally. It 
is a transfer. It is called class warfare.
  That is exactly what the spin is about, not because they can justify 
it under a democratic system. Under our democratic capitalistic system, 
you cannot justify that, but the reason you can justify it and the 
reason they have hit so hard this evening is because they are looking 
ahead to next year's Presidential election. That is what all of this 
spin is about, and if there is any obstruction or roadblocks in the 
pathway, it is being put there for one reason, in my opinion, not 
because there is a legitimate dispute as to whether or not the policy 
will work, but there is a concern, a deep concern that it will work and 
that the beneficiary will be George W. Bush; and the number one goal of 
the minority leader is to beat George W. Bush. The number one goal is 
not to improve the economy. The number one goal is not to improve the 
number of jobs and cut down the unemployment. The number one goal is to 
spin it in a way that you can beat George W. Bush.
  In my discussion this evening, I wanted to focus not on this part. I 
really did not come over here this evening to talk about the tax bill 
and talk about the need for a strong economy and the jobs out there and 
the opportunity to let people in this country succeed. If you can 
invent a better mousetrap, why should you be penalized? That was not my 
approach until I heard the spin put on by the Democratic leadership and 
going unrebutted for over an hour and a half. Nobody stood up to them. 
They went unrebutted time after time doing this class warfare spin.
  So I had to rebut that. That is what the purpose of that is, but I do 
want to spend the remaining part of my time talking about our Nation's 
forests, and I think it is very important. This, of course, goes across 
both party lines.
  I can tell you that in the last 2 weeks, about a week and a half ago 
my bill, the healthy forest bill, and I have got to give a lot of 
credit to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) for his great work on 
this. Also to the chairman, the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), 
and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), who did a tremendous 
job, and all the others, as well as the Committee on the Judiciary.
  We had a lot of help on that bill, but that was my bill, the McInnis 
and Walden bill, and that bill recognizes the fact that we have got to 
take care of our forests, but I think it is kind of a preparedness. I 
want to do just some brief remarks on what got us to this point, why 
our forests today have become managed, believe it or not, managed by 
the United States Congress instead of being managed by what we call the 
``green hats,'' those people, those forest rangers, those people that 
dreamed about being a forest ranger, those people that dreamed about 
working for the U.S. Forest Service, many of whom grew up in the 
forests.
  Almost all of them are educated in forest management. They all work 
in the forest day-to-day-to-day-to-day. They know the forest like we 
know the back of our hand, and yet over the last 20 years or 30 years 
there has been a shift, taking management away from the U.S. Forest 
Service and like agencies and putting it right here on this House 
floor, to the extent that we actually have debates on this House floor. 
We have in the committee that I chair, which oversees the Nation's 
forests, we actually have Members of that that want the U.S. Congress 
to determine what the diameter of a tree should be out in, for example, 
the White River National Forest, what size it should be, dictated out 
of Washington, D.C., off this House floor, the

[[Page 13548]]

size of tree that our forest rangers and managers out there should be 
doing.
  I will explain a little history, but the first concept we have to 
think about is public lands. There is a little history to public lands 
in this country. What are public lands? Public lands are, as described, 
lands owned by the government, and in the East really, relatively 
speaking, you do not have a lot of public lands owned by the Federal 
Government. You have got the Shenandoah and Everglades down in Florida 
and you have a little here and there, but where the real public lands 
are, as far as real meaning, the vast holdings of public lands are in 
the West; and my poster here to the left kind of gives you an idea.
  The colored spots on the map of the United States indicate public 
lands, and you can see where the big public lands are. They are not out 
here in the East. In fact, a lot of States have very, very little 
public lands, but in the West, we have huge amounts of Federal lands, 
huge, hundreds of millions of acres of Federal public land or 
government-held land.
  Here is the State of Alaska, if you can see, right down here to the 
left. Look at the State of Alaska. That is how much land in Alaska is 
owned by the government. So the land policies, just by the sake of 
ownership, are different than the land policies you find out in the 
East where you have private property.
  The reason we got into this circumstance was when the country was 
settled by our forefathers they needed to figure out a way to get the 
people out of the comfort of their homes on the East Coast and give 
them incentive to go West. The West, frankly, was even deep into 
Virginia, and it was a challenge.
  It was a lot of risk to leave the comfort of your homes and go to the 
West, disease, accidents, death by childbirth because a lot of women 
died in childbirth. Men typically died in their 20s of accidents. They 
would fall off a cliff or get bitten by an animal or infection by a 
rusted nail. It was high-risk.
  So the government decided, how do we give people incentive to go to 
the West, and they decided to use the same tool they used in the war 
against the British. They tried to bribe the soldiers to defect, to 
leave the army of the Queen and come over to the United States, and we 
would give them an award of private property land they could own, and 
here we knew that from our settlers that one of the fundamental 
foundations of this country was to have your own little castle, to have 
your own little piece of property, private property. It is a very 
sacred part of our government, a very sacred part of this country.
  So the government decided, well, let us call it the Homestead Act and 
let us offer people, say, 160 acres or 320 acres if they go out, settle 
on the land and work the land for a certain period of time. Then they 
can keep the land and it is theirs. They own it. And that worked very 
well. You get out into the fertile fields of Missouri or Kansas or even 
eastern Colorado or Nebraska, and a family that had 160 acres could 
survive. It made sense. It was the right number of acres to give to 
support that family and be enough encouragement for that family to stay 
there, hopefully generation after generation after generation.
  Then what happened is it worked pretty well until they hit the Rocky 
Mountains. When they hit the mountains, they found that in many places 
you could not feed one sheep on an acre. You had to feed a sheep with 
four acres out here. In a lot of places you could put lots of sheep on 
an acre, not mountains. You go up much higher in elevation, in fact, 
the mean elevation of my district is the highest place in the North 
American continent on an average. I mean, there are a lot of different 
things when you get into the high mountain country, and you cannot 
raise a family on 160 acres from a farm.
  So what they decided to do was they came back and said, look, the 
people are not settling in the West, and back then the only way you 
really were able to claim the land, and our forefathers wanted to 
expand the United States, we made things like the Louisiana Purchase. 
How do we get out there, how do we claim the land as ours?
  Today, when you purchase land, you get a title. You do not have to be 
on the land. You do not have to live on the land. You do not have to be 
there 24 hours a day. You have title. In fact, you can live in New York 
City and own land in San Francisco. All you need is a title.
  In the early days of this country, that did not work. In the early 
days of the country, in fact, the paper did not mean a lot. What meant 
a lot is if you were in possession, that is where the saying 
``Possession is nine-tenths of the law,'' that is where that originated 
from; and what you needed back then is a six-shooter strapped on your 
side, and you needed to be plotted down right on that piece of ground.
  What happened is, people were not settling in the West because the 
conditions were severe. So they went back to Washington and they said, 
okay, now what do we do about this? How do we encourage them to stay? 
Somebody said, let us give them a proportion of amount of acres. If it 
takes 160 acres in Kansas, it takes 3,000 acres in the Colorado Rockies 
or Wyoming plains, maybe that is what it takes, and they decided, 
because they had just come under a lot of political pressure because 
they gave too much land to the railroad barons to build the railroads, 
that maybe they could not give that kind of land away.

                              {time}  2130

  So what they decided to do was to go ahead and keep this land in the 
government's name, but allow people to use it. And that is called the 
concept of multiple use. Lands of many uses. People my age grew up 
under the concept. When you went into a national forest, there was 
always a sign at the entrance to the national forest that said, for 
example, ``Welcome to the White River National Forest, a land of many 
uses.''
  Now today, we have seen some fairly radical environmental 
organizations, Earth First, Greenpeace, the national Sierra Club, some 
of these other groups; and their number one target is to eliminate the 
concept of multiple use. They, in essence, want people off public 
lands. They want agriculture off public lands.
  Out here in the West we have to use public lands. My family, my 
wife's family are fifth-generation family ranchers on the same ranch, 
but they have to use public lands. They have their own holdings, but 
they need public lands. These organizations want them off public lands, 
and they take some very radical approaches to push us in the West off 
those lands.
  So keep in mind that in some of these States, for example in Kansas, 
when you have a disagreement with regard to a land use policy, you go 
down to the local courthouse and you talk with the county commissioners 
and you talk with your planning and zoning commission. Here, on 
government lands, because it is under public ownership, you end up 
having to come to Washington, D.C. Our planning and zoning office is 
located in Washington, D.C. So that is one element we need to think 
about when we talk about forest management.
  What else do we need to talk about with regard to forest management? 
We need to talk about where the water is situated in the country. Here 
in Washington I think we have had 28 straight days of rain. In the 
East, a lot of times your big problem is getting rid of water. Seventy-
three percent of the water or moisture in this country falls in the 
East. So your problem is getting rid of it. In the West, we have 
exactly the opposite problem; we are very arid.
  Take a look at this entire section, which includes the Rocky 
Mountains, the State of California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, 
and Oklahoma. Take a look at this big chunk in red. That entire chunk, 
which is almost twice the size of what I would call the East, let us 
just call this the East, where the 73 number is, this gets 14 percent 
of the water. That means that the forests out here in the West have a 
different moisture content than the forests in the East. Fire is a much 
bigger hazard out here in the West because of the simple fact we do not 
get near the moisture that the country receives in the East.

[[Page 13549]]

  Now, because of the moisture in the East, on a lot of occasions the 
bigger problem here is insect infestation. So we wanted to put a bill 
together that addressed not just the problems of the West. And by the 
way, very bipartisan. We had Democratic leadership against us but we 
had a lot of Democrats, Main Street Democrats that live out here in the 
rural areas. The majority of the rural Democrats supported us strongly 
on this bill. So we wanted to put a bill that addressed the infestation 
by bugs in the East, and of course we have a lot of that in the West as 
well but probably not to the extent that you do in the East, and we 
wanted to address the fire issues that we see in the West.
  Remember, we have two elements: one, public lands; and, two, the 
water content. In the West, we have a lot of water problems because we 
do not have that moisture.
  Now let me talk about the third element, and that is management of 
these public lands. We created Federal agencies to run these lands. One 
of the agencies that we created was the U.S. Forest Service. And we 
said to the U.S. Forest Service, we want you people in those green 
uniforms and green hats to become experts on the management of the 
forests. Now, the jobs in the U.S. Forest Service do not pay a lot of 
money. Those people that work for our U.S. Forest Service or any of 
these land agencies, they do it because they love it. They love the 
land. They are so, so dedicated to their jobs. The same with the Bureau 
of Land Management, and the same with U.S. Fish and Wildlife. But 
tonight I am talking about the Forest Service. These men and women out 
there in the Forest Service are proud to wear that green hat and that 
green uniform.
  What has happened is that these people grow up loving the forest, 
they go to school and get educated on the forest, they work in the 
forest every working day, and, in fact, a lot of them go into the 
forest when they are not working. A lot of them live in the forest. 
They know that forest. They know what is good for that forest. They 
love that forest. They care about that forest. But you know what has 
happened? In the 1970s, some of the groups, like Earth First, the 
Sierra Club, the Greenpeace-type of people, they decided they wanted to 
end this concept of multiple use.
  Now, remember what I talked about, the tool of multiple use. They 
wanted to end this concept of multiple use. But they knew that every 
time they got in an argument or a debate or a discussion of the issues 
with forest rangers, they lost. Every time. Why? Because the Forest 
Service, based on their experience, based on their education, based on 
the science would beat them. Greenpeace and Earth First could never 
succeed in their arguments because the Forest Service was not managing 
these forests based on emotion; they managed based on science. So that 
would defeat the purpose of the Sierra Club and Earth First and 
Greenpeace from getting rid of multiple use.
  So somehow, somehow they had to shift the management of forests from 
science to get management determined by emotion. Well, they knew that 
the Forest Service was not going to manage these forests based on 
emotion. But what is the greatest body in the country that manages its 
business, in large part, by emotion? It is the United States Congress. 
So in the 1970s, they were very successful, and in the 1980s, 
Greenpeace and Earth First and those other groups, at moving management 
away from the Forest Service and putting management into the hands of 
the United States Congress. They were very successful over this period 
of time of moving the argument to emotion.
  Now, I can tell you that when you talk about forest management, you 
can win the emotional argument on a 15- second ad. All you need to do 
is park a bulldozer in front of a grove of Aspen trees and put a fawn 
or a deer out there and say that we are destroying our forests, and you 
have won the argument. Because people love our forests. People love our 
wildlife. I love the wildlife. I grew up in the forest. This is my kind 
of life. Washington is a workstation for me. My home is in the Colorado 
mountains. So they could win on that.
  So what happened is, gradually over this period of time we found the 
United States Congress managing these forests. And I would venture to 
say to my colleagues that not one of us on this floor, I would guess 
not one of us on this floor probably has a degree in forest management. 
We have degrees in political science. I am a lawyer. I have a degree in 
business. My background is really more business than anything else. I 
am not a forest ranger. Even though I chair the Subcommittee on Forests 
and Forest Health, I am not a forest expert.
  So what am I doing with the day-to-day management of our forests when 
we have very qualified men and women out there in the field that have 
been educated in the area, that love their jobs, that do know how to 
manage those forests? And what has the result been? The result has been 
that last year we suffered huge bug infestations. If you care about the 
old growth trees, if you care about the wildlife, if you care about the 
endangered species, if you care much about the forests, then I will 
tell you something, you probably sat up in your chair last year when 
you saw those horrible fires and what they did.
  This is the result of fire. This is all stuff that burned, fell to 
the ground and washed down. Do you know what this sits in right here? 
There is a boat, and right here is all this waste, this forest refuge. 
There used to be trees; there used to be wildlife. It was very fertile 
wildlife territory. It was absolutely beautiful scenery. It was, to an 
extent, a forest that had some health to it. The biggest killer of 
endangered species in this Nation are wild fires. Now, we had the fire 
because that forest was not allowed to be properly managed. That is now 
sitting in the water supply. That is sitting in the water supply. 
Colorado's Hayman Fire dumped loads of mud and soot into Denver's 
largest supply of drinking water.
  That is what one of Denver's water supplies looks like right now. 
This water behind it looks like a chocolate malt, and it will cost the 
citizens of Denver tens of millions of dollars to clean up their water 
supply. So it destroys wildlife, fire does, as does bug infestation. It 
destroys watersheds. It destroys the timber. I mean there is nothing 
good about wildfires.
  Now, controlled fires are an element of helping manage a forest. So 
there are situations where fire, properly managed, is good. But these 
kinds of fires, they were not managed. They are horrible. We lost 20-
some firefighters last year fighting these very kinds of fires. Good 
forest management does not mean we will avoid those fires, but it means 
we will mitigate them. Good forest management cannot stop lightning. We 
will have lightning, and we will have careless campfires.
  By the way, most of these fires were not started by humans, but by 
lightning. But the fact is we can control those fires through good 
forest management. And the bill I drafted, as I said earlier, with the 
assistance of the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), who I thank, the 
bill we drafted was called the Forest Health Bill; and that bill was a 
long time coming. We negotiated on both sides of the aisle. We had lots 
of help from some Democrats. We had lots of help from some of the 
Republicans. We put together, with the chairmen of the subcommittees, 
we put together an outstanding bill.
  This bill allows the management of our forests to go back to the 
Forest Service; and it allows the Forest Service, for example, to start 
thinning. Right now we have killed our forests with love. We have 
babied them. We have spoiled these forests. We have eliminated, in the 
State of Colorado, for example, because of the emotional argument, we 
have virtually eliminated all timber companies out of Colorado. We have 
a couple mom and pop shops. We have a matchstick company down in Cortez 
which, I think, employs 40 or 50 people; but we really do not have much 
timber in Colorado.
  So what happens to that wood? It grows and it grows, like rabbits, 
and lots and lots of rabbits, and more and more rabbits. We have acres 
of public land that historically we supported and

[[Page 13550]]

would have on a typical acre 60 trees. They now have 600 trees on those 
acres. But because the U.S. Congress and because our society has 
allowed our forest management to be taken away from the Forest Service 
and to be given to politicians like myself, to the U.S. Congress, these 
forests now are in more danger than they have ever been in the history 
of this country.
  The great sequoias, those sequoias are at a higher risk than they 
have ever been in recorded history. Our wildlife risk is higher than it 
has ever been because of wildfire and bug infestation. Our wildlife 
habitat is in the greatest amount of danger in our history because of 
the fact that we are not allowing our Forest Service to go in and 
manage these lands.
  My bill allows them to an extent, in a demonstration project of 20-
some million acres, it allows the Forest Service to begin to do what 
they wanted to do all along, and that is manage the forest with a 
balanced perspective that is good for all of us; to manage those 
forests in such a way that our wildlife actually is better off, not 
just that there is a mitigation but an improvement, an addition to the 
wildlife habitat out there.
  You know, people are not an excluded species out there. In the West, 
we have a right to live out there, and people need to be thought of. In 
properly managed forests, we do not see watersheds that look like 
chocolate malts; we do not see the devastation of flooding because the 
forest burnt down. Our forest management can be improved. I am very 
optimistic about the future, but only, only if we allow my bill to go 
forward, which allows the Forest Service to get their hands back on the 
product they know best.
  Now, let me show you what happens when we allow the Forest Service to 
go in. And let me step back a second and show you what Greenpeace and 
Earth First and the Sierra Club and national parties did, these 
national organizations, or world organizations, did when they took the 
management from the Forest Service. The Forest Service would try and 
thin out an area. For example, they would go into an area that has like 
600 trees to an acre and cut those trees down, different sizes, because 
different sizes are healthy for the forest, different ages, different 
sizes, et cetera. What they tried to do was to put some of that out 
there. And time after time after time they were met with paralysis. 
Paralysis from litigation and the courts and, frankly, paralysis by 
analysis with the U.S. Congress trying to manage these forests.

                              {time}  2145

  Mr. Speaker, so what my bill does is it protects, it enhances and 
protects public input on the management of these forests. But it says 
you are not going to be able to use the courts in an abusive fashion to 
continue to delay these projects year after year until the beetles come 
and start an infestation. By the way, after they eat the dead trees, 
they move to the live trees.
  My bill also says you are not going to accomplish your goal, 
Greenpeace, of kicking people off public lands by forcing paralysis by 
analysis by letting the U.S. Congress manage these forests by emotion.
  That is why my bill passed with strong bipartisan support. 
Republicans and Democrats voted for the bill.
  Let me show Members an example of what happens when we allow the 
Forest Service to do their job. This burned-out area, the Forest 
Service was not allowed to go in there and treat it for one reason or 
another, an environmental injunction, lawsuit, paralysis by the court, 
or because Congress has tied the forest rangers up. Here they were 
allowed to treat the area.
  Do Members know where that fire stopped? It stopped on a line no 
wider than a yard, exactly where it stopped is where the forest was 
treated and the treated forest met the untreated forest. And the fire 
came up and, boom, that is where it stopped. That is pretty good 
science.
  Let me give another example. This is down in the Four Corners, Mesa 
Verde National Park, the ``green table'' they call it down in Four 
Corners. Right here, this area, they were allowed to treat that area, 
the park management, U.S. Park Service, and they are doing a tremendous 
job with our parks. They were allowed to treat this area. The area they 
were not allowed to treat is all of the burned-out area.
  Last year at the Mesa Verde National Park we had a horrific fire. 
Guess what happened. The treated area was saved; the untreated area 
burned, and it burned so hot that it did not fertilize the ground, it 
sterilized the ground. So the possibility of new growth will not be 
seen for generations. There will be grass and things, but juniper trees 
and pinion trees and those types of things, we are not going to see 
that in my lifetime. My grandchildren will not see it in their 
lifetime, probably, and yet 2 years ago, we had it. We had it to pass 
on to other generations. This area was there; it would not take 200 
years to replace it. Those 300-year-old trees were there, but we were 
not allowed to go in and treat them. What happened, we lost it all. We 
lost all of the untreated area.
  So, in conclusion, let me add one other thing about my bill. This is 
an urban area. Take a look at this poster. This does not just apply to 
those who live out in the country, out in the sticks, some might say. 
It does not apply to just us, this applies to those in communities. 
This is bugs that killed these trees. Go down I-70 in Colorado by Vail, 
there is beetle kill all along the highway. Once a beetle lands on a 
tree, it is like malignant cancer. It is gone. It is over.
  Do you think the Sierra Club or Greenpeace or Earth First would 
cooperate one iota for us to go out there and get ahold of this and 
manage these forests? It does not happen. My bill talks about urban 
interface and watersheds and bug infestation. My bill talks about 
wildlife habitat.
  My bill protects public input, and says, let us manage our forests. 
They are a diamond, a wonderful asset of the people of this country. 
Those public lands should be protected, but we do not protect them by 
ignoring them, any more than you protect your child by not managing 
your child. Some people might say, give your child whatever they want, 
spoil them, do not discipline them, do not manage them, do not reach 
any kind of balance, what time they have to come in at night. What 
product do you get? Usually a pretty rotten person as a result of that 
kind of management.
  We are saying we can reach a balance. Let the Forest Service, let the 
parks, let the BLM do what they are best at doing. Congress does not 
need to manage day to day these public lands. Of course, we have 
oversight on public policy, but we should not be having the courts run 
those forests, and we should not let the United States Congress run the 
forests. We should let the forest rangers, the BLM agents, the range 
riders, let them manage those assets for us.
  We are so narrow-minded on some of these things, and we have been 
persuaded through emotion, not through science, but through emotion to 
change these management techniques, and have we ever paid the price. 
This was a very expensive lesson last year with all of those fires, and 
those many fire fighters' lives we lost.
  It is a very expensive lesson not to cut down a tree with beetles in 
it and stop the infestation. We talk about it, and in the first 
paragraph of a Greenpeace press release or an Earth First or Sierra 
Club, they always talk about clear-cutting and timber companies. They 
figure out every negative word they can to stop us from managing it.
  This is not about timber, this is about preserving wildlife and 
watersheds, protecting urban interface. This is about letting the 
Forest Service manage forest property. All of us, all of us win. Do you 
know how big winners all of us would have been if we would have allowed 
the Park Service to go ahead and treat this area?
  Tell me one loser by not protecting this area. Had we protected this 
area, I do not care if you are a member of Greenpeace or the other 
radical organizations, Earth First and so on, you would have benefited 
had we been able to preserve these 300-500-year-old pinion trees for 
many generations. They

[[Page 13551]]

will not be replaced for 300 years, and it is because of the fact that 
we took management away from the people who know what to do with it; 
and we have consolidated it in the radical environmental organizations 
and, frankly, in the halls of the United States Congress.
  I hope that the Senate sees what we saw in that bill, that is, the 
Senate, as we did, on a bipartisan basis passes the Healthy Forest 
Initiative. That is my bill. I know about it. I had lots of Democratic 
support. I had Democratic cosponsors. This is not a Republican bill 
being shoved down somebody's throat or a Democratic bill being shoved 
down somebody's throat. This is a team effort to manage those forests, 
and I hope the Senate sees as we did and passes that legislation before 
the fire season and the bug season gets too much further down the road.

                          ____________________