[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 19585-19587]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         FIGHTING FOREST FIRES

  Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, on the floor of the House of 
Representatives this morning, they are debating a supplemental 
appropriations bill that deals with some serious issues that are 
happening under the heading of disasters across this country. The 
appropriations bill does not designate any money for firefighting in 
the West. I have been told that right now the Forest Service currently 
has $352 million available for wildfire suppression, but that is only 
going to last the next 2 weeks. The latest projections, which are 
conservative, I am told, indicate the expected expenditure for fighting 
forest fires this year is $775 million.
  We have a certain amount of money set aside for prevention; that is--
if we didn't have this procedure called appeals--those accounts that 
are set aside for prevention will now be moved over to fire 
suppression. We are between a rock and a hard place.
  It occurs to me that with the support of the White House, a clean 
supplemental for fire suppression, under emergency conditions, makes a 
lot of sense. We have to provide some money for fire suppression. The 
American people are turning on their television sets every night, and 
every night our forests are afire.
  To give a rundown, they have evacuated all of Glacier National Park. 
Even some people they said would not have to evacuate--they are 
inholders in the park and have homes along Lake McDonald--they had to 
prepare their homes for fire prevention, and they left the park, for 
example, to get their groceries. Now they will not let those people 
back in. That is a local situation, and I am sure that is going to get 
ironed out.
  That is how drastic this situation is. I call upon my friends in the 
House of Representatives: Do what is right to handle the emergencies we 
now have because, if we don't, when we start running out of money, 
then--due to this extended drought, with very hot conditions right now 
in the Rocky Mountain West--we are going to have these fires far into 
the month of September. It is just not right.
  These fires are threatening our national treasures. McDonald Valley, 
Glacier National Park, is now on fire on both ends. Remember the book, 
``The Perfect Storm,'' about two storms coming together at the right 
time, and they are only 10 miles apart, that is the ``perfect storm,'' 
and we could lose that entire forest.
  I call upon my colleagues in the House to do the right thing now 
because we understand they are going to pass this bill and send it to 
the Senate. The Senate is in a vise. We either take it or we don't. If 
we don't, it will be zero dollars and the middle of September before 
any funds will flow into these areas that desperately need the money.
  I don't know who is giving advice on this issue. I don't know who is 
doing the thinking on this issue. But I will tell you right now, it is 
wrong-headed to do it as the apparatus is set up to get it done now. It 
is just wrong-headed. I feel powerless to do anything, especially for 
the forests in my State of Montana, and that is not a very good 
feeling.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, before the Senator leaves the floor, I 
wish to make a comment.
  First, I was present when Senator Stevens, the chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee, spoke, which was prior to Senator Burns. He 
heard him, he talked to him, and then he spoke.
  I wish to talk a minute about an issue that is dear to the Senator 
and Senator Bingaman, who sits here, and myself. We continue to have 
meetings in our Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the 
Agriculture Committee of the Senate trying to analyze why it is we are 
unable to address the issue of thinning our forests and getting rid of 
blighted areas in large manner rather than taking so long and sitting 
by and watching the forests of America deteriorate to the point that 
they become tinderboxes. They are so filled with overgrowth that fires 
are inevitable. And when fires happen, very big trees burn because the 
bottom is totally filled with too many trees, too much brush, too many 
of the branches and leaves that have fallen. Then thousands of acres 
are blighted and dried and nobody is doing anything about it.
  Then comes a fire. Then we come along and we say: Let's put up extra 
money to put out these fires, so-called disaster money. Then groups 
across America begin to run advertisements, have meetings and say: What 
is the matter with Congress? We can't get our forests thinned. We can't 
get them fixed. We cannot get the kind of reform that will get work 
done.
  We have arguments that break along environmental and nonenvironmental 
lines. We can solve those, perhaps, in the next month or two.
  But let me say to the U.S. House, I submit to you the real problem we 
are having in getting any kind of real cleanup of the forests--that is, 
preventive work done on American forests, be it BLM forests that belong 
to Interior or forests that belong to the Department of Agriculture and 
the National Forest Service--is because there isn't any money to do it.
  The question is, why isn't there any money? We are always 
appropriating money for it. And every year there will be a bill that 
comes through here, Interior appropriations, and you find money for 
that, a lot of money for that. But guess what happens. Very shortly as 
the year starts, we have to put out fires. And then what happens? There 
is no money to put out those fires.
  The disaster money we are talking about today and that Senator 
Stevens came to the floor and told the House about, the Departments of 
our Government say: Well, we have a disaster. We have to spend the 
money.
  Surely, they do. What they do is, they take money from other aspects 
of the Government. What are those? Many of them are accounts which 
would be used for major prevention on the forests. If there isn't any 
money for that, the year will pass. The money will have been spent on 
the disaster, and we will be here talking about a supplemental that is 
too late and inadequate, and the prevention will not occur.
  It is so desperate that in our Committee on Energy and Natural 
Resources, there have been suggestions to try to set this money aside, 
to set up a new fund, a whole new way so that the prevention money is 
prevention money and nothing else. The distinguished Senator, Mr. 
Bingaman, has suggested such an effort.
  I am not sure it will work because obviously once you get a big 
forest fire going and you don't have any money to

[[Page 19586]]

put out the fire, they are going to find the money somewhere within the 
Department, unless you took it out of Interior and put it in the Army 
and said: You can't get it because it isn't even there. They are going 
to have to use the money they have and make it fungible, take it away 
from prevention and use it for disaster.
  Somehow or another we have to stop that. While I am not today able to 
say to the House what they are and aren't doing because I am not privy 
to what Chairman Stevens is, it seems to me that something like this is 
occurring early in the season in this supplemental that the House is 
talking about. Before we even get seriously into the season, we are 
having more of this: Well, we are having to put out disasters. We will 
find the money. And if we didn't put up enough, use other money. And 
yes, there will be a whole blighted area somewhere in Alaska or 
northern New Mexico that is supposed to get money for prevention and 
cleanup, and they will be out of money.
  Essentially, this is not simple fun and games. This is serious 
business. We sit around and watch the forests of America change so that 
they no longer look like, behave like, or are like they used to be. Our 
people know it. We know it. They are filled to the brim with too much 
growth, too much underbrush. They are not even the forests of old. You 
can't take your children for a nice walk in the forest in most American 
forests because you can't even walk in them.
  I went up into northern New Mexico to the Jemez area and surrounding 
where I remember, as a youngster, we used to go. There were huge 
cottonwood trees, wide open, full of pine needles. And believe it or 
not, it was filled with beautiful growth, such as mushrooms and things 
that are very pretty. You find you can't even walk, much less see if 
there is any vegetation, because we haven't had any prevention. We 
haven't had any maintenance on those forests.
  That is minuscule, because we are minuscule in New Mexico compared to 
the West Coast--Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. I suspect we are talking 
about the wrong things in this bill over in the House. We are talking 
about putting money in the wrong place and not facing up to the reality 
that there are two very distinct needs. And you cannot continue to rob 
one to pay for the other unless you quickly meet up before the year is 
out and replenish all of the money in the Departments that are 
operational, that are ongoing maintenance and operation of the BLM and 
the Forest Service of America.
  I urge the House to do that and be careful not to rob those accounts 
so much by not appropriating sufficient money for the disaster straight 
out and leave that other money to be used for what it is intended.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let my compliment my colleague on his 
statement and also our colleague from Montana.
  This is a very serious issue, one we have had many hearings on, one 
very recently. The problem is just as Senator Domenici described it. We 
have sort of an annual event. Annually, we find out we haven't put 
enough money in these appropriations bills to fight fires. Accordingly, 
the agencies involved, in particular the Forest Service, understandably 
have to go somewhere to get that money. They go into these other 
accounts. These are the funds they should be using to do the forest 
thinning and forest health and restoration work we all know is 
essential.
  Last Saturday, I went up to Taos in our home State to see the damage 
that was done in the Taos pueblo by the Encebado fire. That was a very 
substantial fire, burning close to 6,000 acres of land, right behind 
the Taos pueblo. We got a helicopter tour with the Governor and the war 
chief and the BIA officials and others to survey all the damage that 
had been done.
  On our way back after we had surveyed the damage, which was 
extensive, we flew down what is called Lucero Canyon. That area was one 
that the Governor and the war chief pointed out and said: This is an 
area which is greatly overgrown and which we need to thin. We very much 
would like to get some Federal funds to help with this thinning 
activity because our next forest fire we fear is going to be in this 
canyon.
  It is also part of the Taos pueblo land. It is clearly also in danger 
of burning. That is one area which is one of many areas in northern New 
Mexico and throughout the West that could be singled out for high risk 
of being subject to some kind of catastrophic fire.
  As Senator Domenici said, there are two separate needs. One, we have 
to have money to fight fires when fires start. But a separate and 
equally important need is that we have to be able to use the funds we 
appropriate for thinning activities and for forest restoration 
activities. We have to be able to use that money for those purposes and 
not have it transferred for this other purpose. So I hope we can find a 
solution.
  The proposal I have made is that we essentially give the Forest 
Service authority to go to Treasury and borrow money so they don't have 
to take it from their other accounts. To the extent there is a need to 
fight fires, let them go to Treasury and get that money and then have 
that money reimbursed by Congress in a supplemental later.
  I don't think it is tenable for us to think each year, when we have 
the fire season, we are going to pass a new supplemental appropriations 
bill. We may have to do that this year. I am not arguing against doing 
that this year. But that is not a long-term solution to the problem. We 
need to recognize this problem is with us. Every year we have these 
fires and every year we come up short in funds to fight them.
  I very much hope we can solve that problem and do it in a way that 
avoids the robbing of funds from the restoration accounts, which is 
what we have been doing each year.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is that we are on the 
Energy bill. My colleagues are speaking of forests. I come from a State 
ranked 50th among the 50 States in native forest land. So I am much 
less acquainted with the challenges of America's forests, forest fires, 
and other issues than are my two colleagues. I wanted to make a comment 
about the Energy bill.
  I had come to the floor to speak about trade. My understanding from 
last evening is that we were going to be on the free trade agreement. 
My understanding is that perhaps we may still be on that later in the 
day, after the Energy bill is off the floor. Maybe that is not the 
case.
  Let me just say, as a member of the Energy Committee, I feel very 
strongly that this country needs a new energy policy, an Energy bill. I 
think it is unlikely that we will be able to finish an Energy bill by 
the end of next week. There are very significant issues that remain.
  Speaking for myself, I want this Senate to pass an Energy bill. I 
want it to be a good one, one that does all four things that are 
necessary in a good bill: One that promotes additional production of 
the sources of energy that we need; one that promotes increased 
conservation, which is a significant part of our energy needs; for a 
barrel of oil conserved is about the same as a barrel of oil produced. 
So we need production and conservation. We also need strong provisions 
dealing with efficiencies of all of the things we use day to day that 
use energy. Fourth, we need an opportunity in this legislation to 
aggressively pursue both renewable and limitless sources of energy. So 
production, conservation, efficiency, and renewable and limitless 
sources of energy are very important provisions.
  I want to mention one point with respect to an Energy bill that would 
be a balanced bill, including those four pieces. In addition to that, 
we must deal with this question of consumer protection. The reason I 
say that is, having chaired hearings in the Commerce Committee on what 
happened in the State of California and in the entire set of Western 
States some while

[[Page 19587]]

ago--a year and a half or so ago--it is quite clear to me that having 
chaired those hearings, we had wholesale cheating going on, and 
ratepayers from the Western United States were bilked of billions of 
dollars. I am saying this money was stolen and bilked from consumers. 
It happened because some companies decided to collude in ways that they 
were able to cheat the consumers.
  Regarding Enron Corporation, for example, we unearthed memoranda that 
described strategies by which they were going to bilk consumers--Get 
Shorty, Fat Boy, Death Star. They sound like movies, but they are not; 
they are strategies by which one company decided to cheat west coast 
consumers. There are many other companies also.
  The FERC, a regulatory agency, has been investigating this. They have 
come up with some hard words, tough words, but not quite as tough a set 
of actions as I would have liked. My point is, having learned what we 
did about what happened in the energy markets on the west coast, we 
need strong consumer protection provisions in the bill that is voted 
out of the full Senate to go to conference with the House. I feel 
strongly that we need to pass a bill. We will head into the winter with 
severe dislocations between supply and demand of natural gas. Natural 
gas prices will increase dramatically. They are already on the rise. 
That is going to be exacerbated in the coming months. Coming from a 
northern State where natural gas is a pretty important commodity to us 
in the cold, with our hard winter climates, this will be a very 
important issue. We are not going to be able to fix that in the Energy 
bill in the short run. But we need to tell the American people we have 
set in place policies that help resolve these issues for the long term 
and intermediate term. I hope we are able to do that.
  I ask the chairman, if I may, I had hoped to be able to make a 
presentation on the issue of trade. If there are others wishing to 
speak on energy, I will defer. If not, I would like to proceed perhaps 
to make the statement on trade, understanding that if Members with 
amendments are coming back to the floor, they could interrupt me, and I 
will relinquish the floor so they can clear the amendments. If that is 
satisfactory to the chairman, I will proceed in that manner.
  Mr. DOMENICI. How long might the Senator speak on this issue?
  Mr. DORGAN. About 20 minutes, I would guess.
  Mr. DOMENICI. We are trying to work out about 5 or 10 amendments. If 
we get them ready, we will call it to his attention on the bill before 
us. In the meantime, I am going to have no objection to his proceeding 
to discuss trade as in morning business.
  I ask the Senator if he would permit the distinguished Senator from 
Idaho, Mr. Craig, to speak for a couple of minutes on the issue we have 
just been speaking on, to wit, the House action with reference to the 
supplemental. When he yields, I will have no objection to the Senator 
from North Dakota following him, subject to the understanding that if 
we need to interrupt him, of course, doing it in an appropriate way, to 
bring in the amendments, the Senator will have no objection.
  Mr. DORGAN. That will be fine. I will relinquish the floor to my 
colleague from Idaho.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho is recognized.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for giving me a moment 
of time to address the stopgap supplemental funding bill that has just 
come back from the House. I come to the floor as frustrated as the 
chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Stevens, who spoke to 
the issue a few moments ago. Senator Domenici spoke, as did Senator 
Burns of Montana.
  It was 100 degrees in Idaho yesterday. For Idaho, that is hot. It has 
been that way for 3 weeks. We have dried up. We now have forest fires 
burning, with literally thousands of acres ablaze. We just lost two 
people in a wildfire in the middle of the week. Idaho, Montana, Nevada, 
eastern Washington, Oregon--all of us are afire at this moment.
  The supplemental money we put in for the Forest Service and for 
wildfires, which the House took out, was to replenish last year's 
accounts from which we had borrowed to fight last year's fires. The 
accounts we borrowed from were the very accounts that would allow 
people to go out on the ground for the purpose of rehabilitation, for 
doing the kinds of things necessary to begin to environmentally improve 
the land, the 7.5 million acres that burned last year in a phenomenal 
wildfire scenario.
  We are deeply into that already this year. Fires have burned 
extensively in Arizona, and as the heat has moved up the Great Basin 
States, along the Rocky Mountain ridge, of course, these fires now 
continue.
  Why the House has done this, I am not quite sure. They say there is 
plenty of money. There is not because the money was borrowed from the 
accounts of other areas within the Forest Service. That is a standard 
practice we have done in the past. But the problem is, by doing what 
the House did, we are not replenishing the accounts of last year that 
we borrowed from. We have always done that on a historical basis 
because one cannot measure or estimate how extensive a fire season will 
be, how many acres will burn, how many people will be employed. We have 
literally thousands of people in Idaho right now on the fire lines, as 
is true in other States in the West, and helicopters are flying, aerial 
bombers are flying, at this moment.
  A phenomenally large number of people are employed to stop the fires, 
protect the environment, and try to save the habitat, the wildlife and, 
in many instances, houses, private property, homes that are built up 
and within the forests of our country, up to and within the forests of 
our country. We are obviously going to have to address this in an 
emergency environment.
  I am extremely disappointed with what the House has done. I have 
talked with the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture who heads up the Forest 
Service, and the chief, and they are just a week away from having to 
again start borrowing out of the accounts that have not yet been 
replenished. So their capacity to pay back until we obviously 
appropriate is limited.
  We will continue to fight the fires. The fires will be fought. It is 
the rehabilitation, it is the restoration, that is funded by other 
accounts that will largely be denied.

                          ____________________