[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Pages 26834-26835]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    HEALTHY FORESTS RESTORATION ACT

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, last Thursday the Senate passed H.R. 
1904, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. I voted for the bill because 
I believe we need to take action to bring our forests back to good 
health, and there are some good provisions in the Senate-passed version 
of the bill. For example, the Senate version allows communities to 
provide recommendations on reducing the threat of unnaturally intense

[[Page 26835]]

catastrophic wildfire in community wildfire protection plans.
  In addition, two amendments that I offered were adopted by the 
Senate. The first amendment requires collaborative monitoring of the 
social and ecological effects of projects. Without this requirement, we 
will never be able to rebuild trust between rural communities and the 
agencies. The second amendment encourages the Forest Service and the 
Bureau of Land Management to hire local contractors for forest thinning 
projects in order to create jobs in forest-dependent communities.
  Even so, I continue to believe there are serious problems with this 
legislation. Most significantly, the bill fails to tackle the main 
obstacle constraining the Forest Service from improving forest health 
which is the agency's harmful policy of borrowing from proactive forest 
restoration accounts to pay for firefighting. Some of the other major 
issues raised by the Senate language include a lack of any new funding 
to reduce hazardous fuels; curtailing public participation in the 
management of public lands, including the establishment of a new so-
called ``pre-decisional'' review process; and lack of protection for 
National Monuments, roadless areas and other environmentally sensitive 
areas.
  I tried to fix these problems by offering and cosponsoring 
amendments, including one to give the Forest Service new authority to 
borrow funds directly from the Treasury when firefighting costs exceed 
available funds. Unfortunately, this amendment did not prevail. 
However, Senator Burns, Senator Nickles, and others offered to work 
with me to seek solutions to the ``fire borrowing'' problem. I accept 
their gracious offer and look forward to addressing this issue in the 
future with their cooperation and assistance.
  Other amendments that were offered by myself and others to improve 
the bill were defeated. Nonetheless, I voted for final passage of H.R. 
1904 because the Senate version was an improvement as compared to the 
one passed by the House earlier this year.

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