[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Page 4662]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               WILDFIRES

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I would like to briefly mention the topic 
of wildfires. This year, Arizona and the West face an active wildfire 
season. Already 20 percent of Arizona's pine forests have been consumed 
by wildfires over the past decade. The fire situation is made worse by 
the ongoing drought and the unhealthy state of our overgrown forests. 
That is why I want to commend the chairman for reporting a budget 
resolution that calls on Congress to address funding shortfalls in the 
Forest Service's suppression budget but also promotes wildfire 
prevention using industry-led forest thinning and forest stewardship 
contracts.
  Senator Flake, Senator Barrasso, myself, and many others have made 
the case for years that the best way to control ballooning wildfire 
costs is to thin our forests so that fires become less severe and less 
costly to fight. The budget resolution's existing provision on 
wildfires is largely based on a bill that we recently reintroduced in 
Congress, the FLAME Act Amendments of 2015, which the Budget chairman 
supported. I am pleased that our goals are reflected in this resolution 
under section 319.
  I also want to commend my colleague, Senator Wyden, who offered an 
amendment, S.A. 434, that focuses purely on suppression funding, which 
I agree should be paired with the wildfire language in the budget 
resolution. Senator Wyden and I have talked about merging some elements 
of our two proposals in order to cover both suppression and prevention. 
Our mutual goals were advanced today when Senator Wyden modified his 
amendment to state that Congress may incorporate additional criteria in 
any proposal that enables limited wildfire adjustments for the Disaster 
Relief Fund.

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