[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 22078-22079]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         FUNDING FOR WILDFIRES

  Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, as we are rolling along, trying to complete 
our work on appropriations, it won't be long that we will have the 
appropriations for the Interior Department on the Senate floor. I would 
just like to bring my colleagues up to date on some of the challenges 
we will be facing and how we probably have to come up with some 
imagination to take care of some of the problems.
  We watched the weather reports from my State of Montana. Montana has 
had an unusually hot, dry summer. We have also been plagued with 
wildfires this year. In fact, the lion's share of the fires has been in 
my State. I want to speak for a moment on something I think has great 
importance--the need to provide additional funds to the Forest Service 
and the Department of the Interior to pay for the cost of fighting this 
year's wildfires.
  Nationwide, the numbers are staggering. Once again, we have suffered 
a terrible fire season. Little does America know, 27 firefighters lost 
their lives this year in the line of duty. Over 789 homes and other 
structures have been destroyed, and 2.8 million acres have burned. 
During the recent Labor Day weekend, 25,000 firefighters were working 
on fires in every State in the West.
  As in 2000, my home State of Montana has been hit by the largest 
share of the damage. In fact, for much of the summer, half of the total 
acres burning in the whole Nation were burning in Montana. So far we 
have lost 600,000 acres, and the fire continues today. Weather 
conditions, with cooler temperatures and 2.5 inches of rain this week 
reported in Big Fork, MT, have helped. But there are still 20 fires 
that have the potential of blowing up unless the moisture continues.
  During the August break, I saw the devastating impact of these fires 
on our parks, forests, and communities firsthand. The fires were so bad 
that portions of Glacier National Park and Yellowstone Park were closed 
to the public for many days, as were many national forest lands and, 
this time, wildlife refuge lands. The impact of these fires is 
catastrophic, not only on the land but also on the people.
  During July and August, hundreds of residents were evacuated as 80 
fires burned out of control throughout Montana. Roughly 125 structures 
were destroyed, and that included 23 homes.
  Fighting these fires is expensive. The Forest Service has been 
spending as much as $20 million a day on firefighting alone. Total 
expenditures this fiscal year will approach $1 billion. That is 
taxpayer money. In order to pay for these extraordinary costs, the 
Forest Service has been forced to borrow $595 million from other 
nonfire accounts. The Department of the Interior has borrowed $100 
million already and is expected to borrow at least $50 million more 
before the fire season is over. Putting it in a conservative manner, 
the two agencies together will borrow $850 million from other accounts 
to fight fires this fiscal year.
  Prior to the August recess, the President and the administration 
submitted a supplemental request for $289 million for fire suppression. 
My colleagues may recall, I was angry when the House ultimately sent us 
a supplemental that did not include these funds. In my view, it was 
highly irresponsible since the fire season was well under way and we 
knew those funds would be needed.
  At this stage, it may be just as well that the House omitted these 
funds. The pending supplemental request is now totally inadequate in 
light of what has transpired over the last month. If we were to approve 
only the pending administration request, we would leave the Forest 
Service and the Department of the Interior with a combined shortfall in 
other programs of between $550 and $600 million.
  What would be the impact of this? In a word--substantial. The issue 
is not whether fires will or won't be fought when necessary. Both 
agencies will continue to protect life, property, and the important 
natural resources wherever possible. The issue is what won't get done 
if we fail to repay the accounts that have been raided.
  Last year, we were in a similar situation. Both the Forest Service 
and the Interior borrowed heavily from nonfire accounts. This caused 
both agencies to stop work on certain things until those amounts were 
repaid and that account replenished. In the end, we only repaid about 
60 cents on every dollar borrowed, which was the amount proposed by the 
administration in its supplemental request.
  The impacts of this shortfall were very real, but the agencies 
managed to keep most programs above water by managing carryover, 
canceling defunct projects, and reducing the scope of projects. But as 
a result of last year's shortfall, this low-hanging fruit is gone.
  If we do not act soon to repay in full--and that is my intent, to 
repay in full the amounts borrowed during the fiscal year 2003--the 
impacts will be far greater. A wide variety of programs will be deeply 
affected--from endangered species monitoring to facilities 
construction, from land acquisition to recreation management, from the 
processing of grazing permits to the sale of timber. Failing to repay 
the amounts borrowed will affect all of these things. It amounts to a 
de facto rescission of funds appropriated by Congress just 6 months 
ago.
  To my colleagues from over the Nation, I would say this is not just a 
western problem simply because that is where most of the fires burn. It 
is a problem for every State in the Union because the funds are 
effectively being borrowed from every State. They are being borrowed in 
many cases from projects and programs that were funded at the specific 
request of every Member in this body. If the amounts are not repaid, 
those amounts will permanently be taken from many of those same 
projects and programs again. Maybe it will come from a National

[[Page 22079]]

Park Service construction project. Maybe it will be in Massachusetts. 
Maybe it will come from land acquisition in Arizona. Maybe it will come 
out of grazing management in Colorado. More than likely, it will come 
from all that I have mentioned.
  The use of borrowing authority to fight fires is not necessarily a 
bad thing. It is a reasonable mechanism when the amounts being borrowed 
are relatively modest, when sufficient carryover funds are readily 
available, or when the borrowed amounts are ultimately repaid. But the 
borrowing has become routine. The amounts involved are massive. We no 
longer have large carryover amounts in other accounts, and we have 
habitually not repaid the full amount that was borrowed.
  It is a terrible, inefficient way to run a program.
  In the past, both the Congress and the administration have been 
guilty of playing budgetary games with fire suppression funding, but 
the current situation is only a faint reflection of that fact. Congress 
included in the fiscal year 2003 appropriations bill essentially the 
same amounts that were requested by the administration for wildlife 
fire management. That amount, in turn, was determined by using the 10-
year average cost of fire suppression. But that 10-year average no 
longer is reasonable or a reasonable benchmark for a number of reasons.
  Look at our forests. Fuel loads on the floors of our forests are 
increasing. Increasing costs of personnel and equipment are fully 
reflected in the 10-year average, and the wildland-urban interface is 
expanding, which increases the cost of fire suppression.
  I think Congress and the administration need to deal with these 
issues, particularly hazardous fuel loads. But that will not happen 
overnight, and it does not change the situation we are in today.
  To be clear, I have no interest in giving the Forest Service or the 
Department of the Interior a blank check to fight fires. We must 
continue to seek ways to reduce costs, and that is why the 
Appropriations Committee has asked the National Academy of Public 
Administration to study recent trends in firefighting costs. But while 
that academy did find some areas for improvement, it found no smoking 
gun, and there is no silver bullet.
  The system is broken, Mr. President, and the administration must work 
with us to fix it. It cannot rationally expect to produce cost 
containment in one program by starving the life out of others.
  In the short term, we must enact a supplemental that fully repays the 
amounts they borrowed during fiscal year 2003. I call on the 
administration to send us another supplemental request for these 
amounts.
  For the longer term, we have to have annual budget requests that more 
adequately reflect the current reality of suppression costs. We also 
need to take another look at borrowing authority we traditionally have 
provided these agencies.
  Unless adequate action has already been taken on the impending 
supplemental, I expect to offer amendments on this subject when the 
Interior appropriations bill comes to the floor. I hope these 
amendments will be widely supported by my colleagues.
  I appreciate this opportunity to give a little forecast of what is 
ahead on another appropriations bill because these are tremendous 
challenges.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

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