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[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 87 (Wednesday, May 24, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H5557-H5563]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                             TIMBER SALVAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Taylor] is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, we are here today to talk 
about the Presidential veto of the timber rescission or timber salvage 
amendment that is part of the rescission package that has passed this 
House, passed the Senate, has been confirmed, from the conferees, by 
the House and is waiting confirmation in the Senate.
  The President has promised to veto the entire rescission package, and 
that includes the timber salvage amendment. The salvage amendment was 
put together after considerable consultation with the Forest Service, 
with many groups; in fact, the final amendment reflected a good many 
suggestions from the White House itself, and still the White House 
wishes to veto the entire rescission package, including the timber 
amendment.
  What we are talking about with the timber amendment tonight is to 
tell people what is going to be the result of that Presidential veto. 
First of
 all, we have to look at what is happening to our forests and what is 
happening to the jobs related to forest harvesting. Our forests are 
deteriorating in health because we are not managing them along the 
lines of our best scientific knowledge in forests. We have a well-
funded special interest of environmental groups in Washington that take 
in over $600 million, and they take in that money by scaring people 
into thinking the last tree is going to be cut tomorrow or some other 
fantasy in order to bring those hundreds of millions of dollars in to 
themselves. This does not meet with true science or with what is 
actually happening in the forest.

  The forests are deteriorating because of the bad management that has 
been pushed by these organizations creating the policy over the last 
several years.
  The salvage amendment was an effort to try to return sensible 
environmentalism and sensible science back to the harvest of 
our timber. And what else is at stake? Is it better environmental 
policy for us not to harvest dead and dying wood in our forests, to 
lose tens of thousands of jobs because we do not allow that harvest, to 
make the people of our country have to use alternative resources other 
than wood? And what is the consequence of using alternative resources 
other than wood?
  We will make this podium, these chairs, this table out of either 
wood, metal or plastic. If we make them out of plastic, then we have to 
import the oil from the Middle East. We have to fight to get it out, 
many times. We spill it several times along the way. The toxicity in 
the manufacturing is greater than it is in wood manufacturing. And it 
is much harder to recycle or to dispose of when its usefulness is over.
  The same thing with metal. We dig it from the ground. A great deal of 
energy in the smelting process, and it is much harder to recycle than 
is the renewable resource of wood. Also, both of those items are finite 
resources; when they are gone, they are gone.
  The renewable resource of wood managed on a perpetual yield basis can 
take our lands, our best suited lands for timber and grow over and over 
again the multitude of products that we need for all of our home 
products, paper, many resources that otherwise we would have to use 
finite resources.
  Now, it is better for us to use the renewable resource of wood or use 
up our finite resources?
  We are today importing over one-third of the timber that we need, 
over 16 billion board feet. Often this is harvested from far more 
sensitive environmental areas than we have available to us in the 
United States.
  So by forcing these imports, we are damaging tropical rain forests in 
many cases and other more sensitive parts of land.
  What we tried to do with the timber amendment, a bipartisan amendment 
that had the support of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, the 
United Paperworkers International Union, Western Council of Industrial 
Workers, National Association of Home Builders, Realtors, Women in 
Timber and many other small business organizations. It was to craft 
language that would provide us with 59,000 more jobs during the three 
years in the timber communities. It would bring in an additional $2 
billion in payroll for timber workers in communities all over this 
country. It would provide over $450 million in additional tax revenue, 
and it would put over $423 million returned to the Treasury directly. 
Two hundred three million dollars would be shared with the counties, 
mostly going to education, which is where the counties put funds coming 
from the harvest of timber.
  It would also bring us a lower cost in fighting forest fires, which 
utilized $1 billion in Federal cost in 1994 and cost us 32 lives in 
this country fighting fire.
  The President plans to veto this bill, the entire rescission bill and 
the timber salvage provision. That would put people back to work, 
reduce expenditures on forest fires, and improve forest health.
  Included also was section 318 timber. Many people have said that the 
timber salvage bill is not needed because the Government has a process 
now for harvesting salvaged timber. It does. But it has been used in 
such a way by many organizations through the appeals 
[[Page H5558]] process, through delaying processes, that they render 
the harvest in salvaging of timber useless. If timber in the Northwest, 
in the Southeast, the Southwest, is not utilized within 6 to 24 months, 
then it usually is lost as far as any practical use and the ability to 
salvage it.
  So it must be done quickly. Appeals and other actions by special 
interests in this country delay it for years.
  For instance, the section 318 timber, it is in Washington and Oregon, 
this area has already met all the environmental requirements. This is 
green timber but it has not yet been released. It has been waiting 
since 1990, over 5 years. And this meets all the environmental 
requirements, and it meets, it has already been approved to move, but 
it has been held up for over 5 years while people in Washington and 
Oregon are without jobs.
  I think the salvage bill itself provides an opportunity to review 
environmental laws. It requires the secretary of agriculture to see 
that those laws are followed; if he feels that a tract can be salvaged 
following the Environmental Species Act and the Forest Acts and some 
other group disagrees with him, they have the right to appeal. They 
cannot have endless appeals. They must appeal directly to a federal 
judge, a district court judge and they have 45 days in which the judge 
will hear the evidence and then make a ruling, and then that is the 
end.
  If he feels the environment is endangered, then he can declare the 
sale unacceptable. If he thinks there is no environmental damage to be 
done, he can declare the sale to move ahead, and that is the end of the 
appeals process.

                              {time}  1900

  The Forest Service itself then puts together, through professionals, 
the sale, and puts it out to the highest bidder. There is no forest 
giveaway, there is a sale to the highest bidder for the timber to be 
utilized.
  Mr. Speaker, the fact that this legislation brings in revenue, puts 
people back to work, uses our best science, and gives full protection 
for environmental laws should mean that the President should not veto 
this legislation, but should pass it.
  Mr. Speaker, I will yield to some of the people affected by this. I 
yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Doolittle].
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. 
I wish to acknowledge the gentleman's leadership on this salvage issue 
as a member of the Committee on Appropriations and a member of the 
conference committee. He is to be commended for the work that he has 
done.
  Mr. Speaker, this will definitely result in a vast improvement for 
the quality of our forest health, which is so desperately needed in 
many parts of my district. In many parts of California and the Sierras, 
the percentages range up to one-third of dead and dying trees. A third 
of the Sierras in parts are dead and dying trees.
  I believe the gentleman is the only licensed forester in the United 
States Congress, so the gentleman has an expertise that no one else 
really does, not to the degree that the gentleman does. He understands 
what happens when we have a forest fire, and the environmental damage 
that that does when it burns so hot. He understands that if we do not 
take this dead and dying timber while it still has commercial value, 
then the taxpayer is burdened by shelling out money out of, I guess, 
the general fund to go remove these trees. There is nothing to be 
regained in terms of repaying the Treasury.
  Is that your understanding?
  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. This is true, and not only that. I 
doubt if we could get that money expended, and the wood would not go to 
create jobs, in most cases, if it was harvested that way.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. Yes, because it has a no value. So at that point they 
are just doing something to improve the health.
  I would comment, we have had a highly slanted, unfair, biased report 
called the Green Scissors
 Report, which is a coalition of, I believe, Earth First and the 
National Taxpayers Union and Citizens Against Government Waste, which 
is, I think, just shocking in terms of the distortion that is in that 
report. One of the things they attack is so-called below-cost timber 
sales.

  What I find interesting is that many of these self-professed groups 
that profess to protect the environment drag out the appeals process as 
long as they can, so they make sure that timber has no commercial 
value, and then, when money is spent to get rid of that timber to 
protect the health of the forest, I believe that counts against the 
overall tree program, and so it is bootstrapping. They make sure that 
it does not recover the costs, and then they try and show ``Look what 
pork barrel scandal support of industry we have here, because the 
taxpayer money is going to support the timber industry,'' when in 
reality, their own actions have guaranteed that result.
  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman 
from Washington [Mr. Metcalf], whose State is also involved in this, if 
he would talk to us about the impact in his area.
  (Mr. METCALF asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. METCALF. Mr. Speaker, the President will soon have on his desk 
legislation that would make good use of a valuable natural resources. 
However, without the President's signature, this resource will rot 
away.
  Tonight I will tell Members the story of just one tree, one in 
thousands in western Washington State. The Forest Service estimates 
that over $20 billion board feet of dead, dying, or downed timber is 
now in our forests. This tree on this picture and many others like it 
blew down in a windstorm on the Olympic Peninsula.
  This is not an uncommon occurrence in this Washington State coast. 
While this tree grew in a region that is perfect for its growth, the 
unique combination of heavy rainfall, wet soil, and high winds caused 
trees like this giant 500-year-old growth Douglas fir tree to blow 
down. Thousands of these blown-down trees are lying on the forest floor 
right now.
  However, this tree had a chance to be different. Mr. Jim Carlson, in 
the picture, tried to purchase this tree from the Forest Service, to be 
cut up in his sawmill and sold to the public. His sawmill used to 
employ about 100 people. The Quinault Ranger District refused to sell 
this tree to him. Mr. Carlson later came back to the Forest Service and 
asked to buy the tree, pay money for it, the lumber to be used in the 
construction of an interpretive building that he wanted to build on 
this ranch as part of an economic diversification project. This would 
have allowed Mr. Carlson to get into the tourism business which, as 
long as we are going to put him out of the timber business, seems to me 
about the least we could do.
  The request was also denied, in spite of the fact that provisions for 
this type of sale were contained in the Grays Harbor Federal Sustained 
Yield Unit Agreement.
  The taxpayers are the big losers in this story, though. This tree 
contained, just look at this tree, it contained 21,000 board feet of 
lumber. The sale of this tree by the Federal Government to Mr. Carlson 
would have brought the taxpayers, would have brought the Federal 
Government, $10,000 to $20,000. Mr. Carlson would have been able to 
manufacture that lumber from this one tree and sell it for 
approximately $60,000 on the retail market. That is the value of that 
one tree.
  Mr. Speaker, the sad end for this tree came in a
   perfectly legal, though terribly wasteful manner. An out of-work 
timber worker, armed with a firewood permit and a chain saw, cut up 
this grand old giant for $5 a cord and paid about $115, $115 to the 
taxpayers of this Nation, instead of the $10,000 to $20,000 that that 
tree was worth when it fell.

  The rest of the story, as Paul Harvey likes to say, is that this past 
year this timber worker had his home sold on the steps of the county 
courthouse, because he could not pay $932 in back taxes, while the 
Quinault Ranger District that would not sell him the tree for lumber 
did not have enough money to purchase the diesel fuel to run their road 
grader.
  The extreme environmentalists oppose harvesting downed or diseased 
timber. For those who feel good to have that fine timber rot on the 
forest floor, for those people, I remind them that 15 billion board 
feet that lies there now will rot. There are no roads to get 
[[Page H5559]] to it. It is not accessible, and it will rot.
  I feel good about the 6 billion board feet that we can salvage. The 
environmentalists claim these trees are necessary for the nutrients 
they provide to the forest floor. However, if we check with the 
forestry scientists, they will tell us that 90 percent of the nutrient 
value is found in the crown of the tree. That is what stays in the 
forest when you take out the lumber. It stays in the crown of the tree, 
while 80 percent of the fiber is found in he trunk. That 80 percent 
that we need, and which can be put to good use, contains less than 10 
percent of the nutrient value.
  It is possible, therefore, Mr. Speaker, to have the majority of the 
fiber we seek from these trees and at the same time leave the majority 
of nutrients behind. With a sensible salvage policy, we can have our 
cake and eat it too, and at a profit to the Federal Government.
  Mr. Speaker, there are thousands of trees just like this one in the 
Pacific Northwest. When in full operation, Mr. Carlson could have run 
his mill with only 150 trees like this each year. He would employ 60 
direct, full-time workers, with a payroll of over $1 million, from a 
yearly sales total of $7.5 million to $9 million. He would pay $200,000 
to $400,000 per year in corporate income tax, he would pay $1 million 
to $2 million in Forest Service stumpage fees. That is what the Federal 
Government gets directly.
  His employees would pay personal income tax of over $1 million. They 
would have complete company-paid medical care for themselves and their 
families. In addition, Mr. Carlson would employ up to 40 other people 
in subcontractor positions. These would include the loggers and those 
people that would help get the logs out of the forest.
  To the State of Washington alone, this legislation would mean 7,500 
man-years of direct, indirect, and induced employment. These are jobs 
we desperately need, as well as making wise use of a resource that 
would otherwise go to waste.
  Sadly, if these giants are not harvested within 2 years of being 
blown down, or fire or disease-damaged, they are of no value as timber. 
They begain to deteriorate within 2 years. Thus, they are of no value 
to us as taxpayers. This is part of the emergency situation we face in 
our forests.
  Unless the President signs this important legislation, giant trees 
like that will rot back into the forest floor from which they sprang. 
It is my hope that he can see the common sense in this legislation, and 
make the best use of our forest resources.
  The forest communities all over the Pacific
   Northwest are dying. Our people are dying, in economic terms. This 
salvage timber opportunity is here now, and it is something that we 
deeply need in the State of Washington. We can wait no longer for 
consideration and meaningful action addressing this situation. We 
desperately need President Clinton to help by signing the bill which 
authorizes the timber salvage.

  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
his comments. Of course, he has given an exact case, something very 
close to home, where individual lives are being impacted by a policy 
that does not realize science, and does not realize the reality of 
forest management, but is trying to pander to an elite group of special 
interests in Washington.
  Mr. Speaker, I would say to the President of the United States that 
if he is serious about helping working people, and if he is serious 
about providing a balanced budget and providing resources to carry out 
a number of programs that he would like to see in that budget, then we 
have an opportunity here to restore hundreds of millions of dollars to 
the taxpayers, to the budget, and to put tens of thousands of people 
back to work.
  I was mentioning a moment ago that we have section 318 timber that 
has been approved. If the President signs this bill, we will get the 
benefit of 8,942 instant jobs, in addition to the ones in the salvage 
bill, because part of the timber salvage amendment includes three 
phases. It includes the timber salvage portion, it includes the section 
318 timber that has been approved and been waiting 5 years now, past 
all regulations, been waiting 5 years to be put on the market, and the 
option 9 that the President himself recommended.
  With the 318 money we will put 8,942 people to work immediately, $313 
million in additional payroll funds for timber workers, $47 million in 
additional tax revenue, $184 million returned to the Treasury, and $61 
million to be shared with the counties for whatever uses they need and 
see fit.
  Good-paying jobs are not government-trained jobs, they are reality, 
they are what is needed in the marketplace. We have 151 job training 
programs, yet here we could put tens of thousands of people back to 
work without the taxpayer training.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Herger], 
who also has a personal experience. He has a personal experience of 
what is going on in the mismanagement of forests in California.
  Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, 
and for all of his hard work. I believe he is the only certified 
forester in the House of Representatives. I thank him for his 
leadership in this area.
  Mr. Speaker, when the President threatened to veto the 1995 
Supplemental Appropriations and Rescission Bill, H.R. 1158, he stated, 
among other things, that he ``really objected to the timber salvage 
provision of the bill.'' I was quite surprised to hear this, 
particularly in light of what the amendment stands for in terms of 
wildfire prevention, forest health, jobs, and the preservation of rural 
schools all over the country.
  What I would like to do for the next few minutes, Mr. Speaker, is 
outline just what the President means when he says he objects to the 
amendment. That is, where his priorities lie, and what that means to 
the rural communities in my district in northern California and in 
other regions throughout the country.
                              {time}  1915

  Apparently the President is objecting to wildfire prevention and 
forest health.
  Mr. Speaker, last year nearly 4 million acres of forestland 
nationwide and some 375,000 acres in my district alone were consumed by 
wildfire. This was due primarily to the excessive buildup of natural 
fuels, that is, dead and dying trees in our forests.
  Mr. Speaker, of the 8 national forests in my northern California 
congressional district, I have areas where as much as 50 to 80 percent 
of the trees are dead and dying due to disease, insect infestation 
caused primarily because of 7 out of 9 years of severe drought. In 
fact, tree mortality in my district is so severe that the California 
State Board of Forestry has declared much of the area as a zone of 
infestation.
  When these dead and dying trees ignite, they burn with such intensity 
that virtually everything in the forest, live trees, riparian habitat, 
owl nesting sites and even the soil is consumed. This kind of wildfire 
brings the health of the forest to its lowest ebb. Nature is unable to 
repair itself for years, even if man does everything within his power 
to help. Wildfire also does not discriminate between animal and human 
habitat.
  Last year the city of Loyalton, for example, in my district was 
threatened to be burned to the ground 3 times by the same fire. Each 
time the town was spared by changing winds. Next year the families who 
live in Loyalton may not be so fortunate.
  Our salvage amendment offered the President the tools to protect our 
forests and forest communities from this kind of catastrophe, but 
apparently the President finds this proposition objectionable. 
Apparently the President would rather see our forests and the towns 
adjacent to them, the Loyaltons in States throughout the country, blow 
up in fire storms than remove the dead and dying trees that cause this 
kind of disaster.
  The President apparently also objects to putting unemployed people 
back to work. Mr. Speaker, since 1987, 51 mills have closed in northern 
California due to drastic decreases in Federal timber sales and the 
listing of the Northern Spotted Owl. Forty-two of these mills have 
closed since the beginning of 1990. Twenty-nine are in my district.
  These closures have literally devastated many small timber-dependent 
communities. Thousands of
 workers have been dislocated, causing unemployment to exceed 20 
percent in some [[Page H5560]] areas. Welfare rolls have ballooned and 
domestic violence has risen sharply. It has simply been a social 
travesty.

  When the President held his Western Forest Health Summit in 1992, he 
promised to help these people. What has he done since then? Since he 
made his highly touted promises to the people of northern California, 
Forest Service timber sales in the region have fallen to approximately 
half of their 1992 levels and to approximately one-third of their 
historic levels.
  Year 1995 looks even more bleak for the timber communities. Of the 20 
timber purchasers which currently have outstanding timber contracts in 
the Klamath and Sierra Provinces of northern California, only 7 of 
these 20 will have outstanding contracts at the end of 1995. The bottom 
line is, the industry is being bled dry.
  How ironic it is to consider that at the same time we have a 
desperate need to remove the dead and dying timber from our forests, we 
also have a work force in desperate need of jobs. Mr. Speaker, common 
sense says that we have the wherewithal to kill two birds with one 
stone, to save our forests and put a number of people back to work. But 
again, Mr. Speaker, the President apparently finds this objectionable. 
The fact is that he is turning his back on the promises he made in 1992 
and to the people to whom he made them.
  Finally, the President apparently also objects to infusing money for 
schools and roads into depressed rural communities which have not the 
money for either. Mr. Speaker, 25 percent of the receipts of all 
Federal timber sales are returned directly to counties to fund schools 
and road construction. Any county school superintendent in northern 
California would tell you of the devastating impact reduced timber 
sales have had on the schools in his or her district.
  Plumas County, for example, has had its annual school budget cut by 
as much as $5.3 million from its 1992 levels. Siskiyou County has lost 
over $1.7 million annually since 1992. These drastic cuts to school 
budgets which are very small to begin with, Mr. Speaker, have forced 
school boards to eliminate some of the most basic scholastic programs 
which most school districts take for granted.
  Our salvage amendment would give county school districts and road 
funds an infusion of a projected
 $380 million. This money would also help restore basic programs in 
rural schools. But, again, Mr. Speaker, the President apparently finds 
this proposition objectionable. Apparently his ``people first'' 
philosophy does not include children in poor rural communities.

  So what does the President not object to? If he objects to fire 
prevention, job creation, and the preservation of rural schools, what 
does he not object to? He apparently does not object to continuing what 
he began the day he took office, an all-out war on the West spurred on 
by environmental extremists and special interest groups, a 
preservationist war that apparently he will continue waging until our 
forests are locked up completely and the enemy, the people who have 
lived and managed them for generations, have been vanquished.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Taylor] 
for his leadership in having this special order and bringing this to 
the attention of not only the Members of the Congress but to the 
American people.
  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. I appreciate the gentleman's commitment 
to his constituency and the people of this country and his willingness 
to tell them the truth about what is happening in your district, and it 
is happening in districts all over the United States.
  I would like to ask the gentleman a question. The President when he 
indicated that he would veto this bill, he made a statement, and I am 
quoting from it. He says, ``I object to this amendment which would 
basically direct us to make timber sales to large companies.''
  The people who harvest the timber out in your area, are those the 
major companies, the Weyerhausers and the other larger corporations? In 
our area, it is mostly mom-and-pop outfits, they hire maybe under 100 
people, they are people in the community, and most of those folks are 
right there in the community. These are not large companies. These are 
basic community small businesses.
  Is that the case in your area?
  Mr. HERGER. That is absolutely the case in our area. Again there is 
probably not any other industry that has as many small business type 
family organizations than in the timber business, that business which 
provides our Nation with our paper
 products, provides us with the wood products to be able to build our 
homes, to be able to have affordable homes, essential needs. Yet as the 
gentleman mentioned, these are primarily done by family small 
businesses.

  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. I would suggest that the President get 
away from the elite environment that he is surrounded by at the White 
House and go out and talk to these folks and see how many businesses 
are involved.
  Major timber companies that have millions of acres of land do not 
need this to produce their forest products, but small businesses do. 
They are being devastated to the point of tens of thousands of jobs all 
over this country.
  I think the gentleman brought our another point, homebuilding. The 
average cost of a home has gone up over $7,000 just over what has 
happened in the Pacific Northwest, and expected to go higher. We are 
using today metal studs for construction purposes as well as other 
metal components instead of the renewable resource of wood.
  How can you possibly be an environmentalist and want to use a finite 
product that is hard to recycle, hard on the environment when it is 
brought in and smelted and produced as opposed to a renewable resource 
like wood, easily recyclable and can be used over and grown over and 
over again?
  Mr. HERGER. I thank again the gentleman for bringing this out. Again 
we are talking about a renewable resource. As I mentioned earlier in my 
talk, I have some eight national forests, all or parts of them in my 
district. Of that part, during the time when we were under historic 
levels and were harvesting, approximately 75 percent were off-limits to 
any type of harvesting at all. They were in preserves, they were in 
national parks, in wilderness areas. So we really had about 25 percent 
of the pie that could be harvested, and through our California laws 
could not be harvested any more rapidly than they were growing back.
  At this point, even that 25 percent has been locked up. Maybe there 
is about 5 percent or even less that we are able to harvest. Again, we 
are talking about a renewable resource. These steel studs that you are 
referring to or even in our grocery store, the plastic. Plastic is not 
renewable. Steel studs are not renewable. But yet our forest products
 are renewable. Again, it is a tragedy to our environment to see this 
happening, that not only are our forests rotting and burning but our 
communities are being deprived of their very livelihoods. Again, this 
is a tragedy, and I thank the gentleman for bringing this out.

  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. The gentleman makes another good point. 
We are not talking about any harvest in national parks. We are not 
talking about harvesting in wilderness areas or wild and scenic river 
areas. As you say, 75 percent of the national forests even are off-
limits from this harvest. Only about 25 percent of the area which is 
already being used and harvested from a commercial standpoint, or at 
least eligible--it is not being harvested now--for harvesting will be 
impacted. A very small part, one-third, of this Nation's public lands 
that the Government owns today.
  I would also remind, and I think the gentleman pointed out a moment 
ago, management of the forest and thinning of the forest is important 
for forest health, whether it is down wood or standing wood. There was 
a wire today, a green wire that came out that pointed out that aspen 
trees in New Mexico and Arizona are on a rapid decline.
  It points out that in 1962, there were 486,000 acres and it is down 
to 263,000 acres now, a 46 percent decrease of aspen, and the primary 
reason is the aspen, and I am quoting from it, needs open spaces to 
grow. They need to clear the forests so the younger trees can grow out, 
and that can be done, according to this green wire, in several ways. 
One is by wood harvest. That is important in managing today's forest. 
If you are going to have a wealthy forest, it has to be managed, and 
harvest is part of that management. [[Page H5561]] 
  I would go back and talk again about what the President said in his 
statement. He went on in addition to saying this was made up of large 
timber companies, we were directing the cuts in sales to large timber 
companies, and that is entirely false. I would say it is close to 99 
percent of these companies that are going to be harvesting, that will 
be winning bids on forest sales, come from small family firms and would 
be classified as small businesses under all the definitions of small 
business.
  He also mentioned there would be a subsidy to the taxpayer. The 
Congressional Budget Office saw no subsidy, the taxpayer was not 
subsidizing these sales. In fact, they saw tens of millions of dollars 
coming into the treasury, and I think we quoted from those figures a 
moment ago.
  Then he went on to say that this legislation would essentially throw 
out all environmental laws, and that is ridiculous. If he would talk to 
his own chief of the U.S. Forest Service, he would tell them that the 
environmental laws are not being thrown out, that the Secretary is 
required to follow a number of the environmental laws. If there was no 
requirement for following them, there would be no reason for an appeal, 
and there is an appeal process.
  I would go to the last segment in the salvage amendment, and, that 
is, that was inserted by the Senate. It was option 9 timber harvest.
                              {time}  1930

  The President himself went to the Pacific Northwest directly after 
his election and promised the people that he would start seeing that 
the forests there were being harvested. Now he cut the harvest down to 
approximately 20 percent of what it would be or what it had been in the 
past, but even that is not happening. The extreme elements who are 
influencing the administration are seeing that is not happening. Of the 
1.2 billion board feet that were selected for harvest under Option 9, 
almost none of that timber has been cut since the plan was selected by 
the administration.
  It was tested in district court, was upheld in district court in 
December, and the conference language would require that it now proceed 
and it would insulate it from further judicial review so that we do not 
have to subject the tens of thousands of employees to endless appeals 
on this process.
  In real terms if we restore and bring the Option 9 procedures ahead, 
it would restore almost 19,000 jobs for timber workers in the 
communities in the so-called spotted owl areas, it would add $664 
million in additional payroll for timber workers, it would add $54 
million in additional tax revenue, and $360 million would be returned 
to the Treasury; $120 million would go to the counties to be shared as 
we mentioned a moment ago primarily for education.
  Even the Forest Service estimates that if we do not proceed it may be 
years and years before option 9 can move ahead, and that in effect is 
the President denying the people even that part of his promise that he 
made in the Pacific Northwest.
  We have a section that is called the 4-D areas, a provision that 
legitimizes future action for the administration's 4-D section on 
Endangered Species Act rulings for relief of small landowners which was 
also included by the conferees. When the administration finishes its 4-
D rules, millions of small landowners will be out from under the ESA 
restrictions on timber harvesting. It would free up hundreds of 
thousands of board feet of new timber by small property landowners.
  The acceptance of this provision was basically a good-faith attempt 
to show that Congress is willing to work with the administration's plan 
to utilize section 4-D of the ESA to provide relief for small 
landowners.
  In other words, the President has made many representations. What we 
are trying to do is to bring those representations to fruition. 
Certainly the President can support that.
  The President's veto means that the administration's commitment to 
provide relief in timber communities will not happen. The President's 
veto threat and comments on the timber provisions in the rescission 
bill is proof that his campaign pledge to put people first has been 
breached.
  The number of jobs in the entire rescission bill, including the 
salvage portion, 318 and option 9, would create over 88,000 jobs; in 
other words, it would put that many people who have been unemployed 
this period of time back in their jobs all across this country. Instead 
of that, the President is willing rather to see that the forests rot or 
burn than to see that good silviculture, good management, forest health 
management is put in place.
  I would remind him that his promise was to help bring economic 
activity back to the area. His veto of this legislation will kill that 
entirely. His signing of that bill will give 88,000 people across this 
country and primary in the Pacific Northwest immediate employment.
  There are numerous opportunities for us to evaluate this bill. The 
Congress had hearings, the Committee on Agriculture and Committee on 
Resources had joint hearings before they requested that I sponsor this 
amendment in the Committee on Appropriations. We had debate in the 
Committee on Appropriations, we had debate upon the floor. There were 
277 members of Congress who supported this bill; it was opposed by 149. 
It passed with almost two-thirds of this Congress' support. It passed 
in the Senate. It came back and was approved, the conference language 
in the House was approved overwhelmingly, as it will be in the Senate. 
And so, this is the people through their representatives speaking for 
what is needed in this country and what they want.
  The President is vetoing it because he is being asked by a group of 
ill-informed special interests in Washington not to do it.
  If you read the Wall Street Journal of 2 weeks ago last Friday you 
will see why. The environmental organizations in this town, the special 
interest to which I refer that take in the $600 million and lavish it 
out to political special interests, were polled as to their support. 
The report said they were basically left-leaning, 93 percent who 
support the President of the United States, voted for President Clinton 
in the 1992 election. And he now is reaching out to pander to that very 
elite special interest and forget 88,000 honest taxpaying citizens who 
can be put back to work immediately.
  I would remind them of one other statement that was made by the 
group, an environmental group who spoke positively about the 
President's threat to veto, and I am quoting the Oregon-based 
Headwaters organization, and it said ``By preventing these clear cuts, 
President Clinton today saved the marble murrelet from extinction.'' 
Now that defies sensibility. We are talking about dead timber, we are 
talking about timber that in many cases has already blown over on the 
ground, we are talking about timber that has been burned, we are 
talking about timber that is insect-infested. Clearcutting dead and 
dying timber is ridiculous, and how you could have saved anything, the 
marbled murrelet from taking out salvaging dead timber remains to be 
seen.
  I yield to the gentleman from California, Mr. Riggs, whose district 
also is impacted by this legislation, who has real people who are 
suffering because of the policies of this administration and because of 
the veto threat of this administration.
  Mr. RIGGS. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I commend him for 
his extraordinary leadership in helping to steer this very important 
piece of legislation properly called the emergency timber salvage 
amendment through the House and making sure it survived the House and 
Senate conference committee.
  I want to tell the gentleman that I am dismayed to put it mildly that 
the President might specifically point to our emergency timber salvage 
amendment as grounds for vetoing the emergency supplemental 
appropriations and rescissions package, first of all because the bill 
as the gentleman well knows appropriates Federal assistance, Federal 
aid for disaster victims in California, many of whom live in my 
congressional district and were victims of last winter's severe 
flooding, but also because, frankly, we need to ensure a greater supply 
to timber, and what better source than the dead and dying trees on 
Federal forest lands for the independent mills in the north part of my 
congressional district, which are [[Page H5562]] very much a part of 
that regional economy, and the independent
 mills, frankly, are almost the backbone of our regional economy and 
have been beset by any number of pressures in recent years, not least 
of which is in my view an overregulation of our Federal forest lands 
and a moving away from utilizing those forest lands to produce a 
resource that the mills can then use to turn into products and to 
create and to save jobs.

  Let me point out to the gentleman what I am sure he has already 
mentioned here tonight, and that is our amendment is vitally needed for 
fire-supression purposes and the health of the forests. Our amendment 
would save lives and save, frankly, the Federal Government millions of 
dollars in fire-suppression costs that have been spent combating these 
raging wildfires that have burned out of control particularly in the 
western United States in recent years.
  Second, it would generate revenues for the Federal Treasury by again 
allowing the salvage harvesting of these dead and dying trees on 
Federal forest lands. Our amendment, which the gentleman was able to 
incorporate into the appropriations bill when it left the full 
committee, was actually one of the revenue-positive aspects of that 
piece of legislation, and was one of the measures that were used to pay 
if you will for the expenditures in the bill, not least of which again 
was Federal disaster assistance for emergency victims in California.
  Second, I would like to point out, as again I am sure the gentleman 
has stressed here tonight, that our amendment is designed at taking 
some of these dead and dying and diseased trees out of Federal forest 
lands at a rate, frankly, that is far below the annual mortality rate 
on Federal forest lands, so what we have proposed here is a very 
reasonable amendment, one that is good for the environment, again good 
for forest health purposes, it is good forestry technique or 
silvicultural technique in that it allows the selective thinning of our 
forest lands targeting dead and dying trees, thinning those forest 
lands and managing those forest lands for again forest-health and fire-
suppression purposes.
  I must say I am perplexed by the President's position on this 
particular issue. It seems like his administration has been, frankly, 
talking on both sides of this issue. In fact the very day before the 
President mentioned in his veto threat our emergency timber salvage 
amendment as grounds for a potential Presidential veto I has been 
assured by our former colleague and the new Secretary of Agriculture, 
Dan Glickman from Kansas, that he as the Agriculture Secretary intended 
to do all that he could as a key representative of the administration 
to ensure that we began selling more timber off of our Federal forest 
lands, and as the gentleman pointed out in his opening remarks when he 
was kind enough to introduce me and yield ti me to me, my congressional 
district, the First Congressional District of northwest California, is 
home to all or part of four Federal forest lands. Our economy, our 
regional economy in northwest California is very much resource-
dependent. We have traditionally relied upon the forest products 
industry as the primary source of steady, good-paying, industrial-type 
jobs, and, frankly, I would hope that the administration will 
reconsider their position, allow us to begin extracting that resource 
off of Federal forest lands for the benefit of our economies and the 
benefit of our local communities in our congressional district, in your 
congressional district, and in many congressional districts across the 
country.
  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. Would the gentleman
   perhaps consider this question: If the President signs this 
rescission package, he will put 88,000 people back to work, and these 
are good, high-paying jobs, that is why we have at least three or four 
union endorsements here, we have the National Home Builders, we have 
many organizations endorsing this.

  At a time when unemployment is relatively high across the country and 
especially high in the Pacific Northwest and other areas that would be 
impacted greatest by this, why would the President not sign a bill that 
would put 88,000 people back to work, would improve the forests' 
health, would actually by his own Forest Service admission, would 
really create a healthier forest? Why would he not do that?
  Mr. RIGGS. If the gentleman would yield, I would be the last one to 
speculate for the administration on this particular question, and I 
know that the gentleman's question is somewhat rhetorical in nature. 
But he makes a very, very good point.
  First of all we are talking about jobs that are not easily replaced 
in the local economies of resource-dependent communities. And I cannot 
fathom his motivation, except for the possibility that the President is 
afraid of frankly antagonizing a core constituency in the national 
Democratic Party, and that is the more militant environmental element 
which has made professional environmental activism a movement in 
America in recent years. They are the forces, the entrenched forces of 
the status quo on this particular issue. They are the ones that are 
frankly saying let those dead and dying trees rot on the forest floor 
rather than use those trees as a resource to produce a value-added 
product and again ensure good paying jobs in the forest products 
industry and the communities that depend on that industry as the 
primary source of their economic livelihood and economic well-being.
  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. A little while ago I mentioned the 
study that was published in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks 
ago pointed out this special interest in Washington of the 
environmental movement, and this is to be distinguished from genuine, 
honest, working people out there that are concerned about the 
environment. I have three children, I am concerned about the 
environment.

                              {time}  1945

  Many people across the country are concerned. I am talking a special 
interest here that takes in over $600 million by frightening people and 
does not come close to putting out the truth of what is happening. It 
is an organization that, according to the Journal report, is very far 
left. It voted 93 percent for Mr. Clinton in 1992. I know it is a 
special interest group that backs him.
  But pandering to that group at the expense of these tens of thousands 
of wage earners out in that part of the country and doing it against 
the recommendations that he made himself, promises he made himself, 
with option 9 and other promises to get these people back to work, I 
cannot understand why he is picking this very left-wing group over this 
large part of America's working people, labor unions that want to go 
back to work, members, others, and I am just confused as to why this 
administration would pander to this small, elite group as opposed to 
mainstream America, why he would fly in the face of nearly two-thirds 
of the House of Representatives.
  This was a bipartisan effort.
  To get two-thirds, we had over 70 Democrats who voted and worked hard 
for the bill. The gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks] was 
particularly helpful to get the bill passed; the gentleman from Texas 
[Mr. Wilson], others were involved in this, as well as the gentleman 
from California [Mr. Riggs], and it is all of us who are looking to 
help these working men and women get their jobs back, high-paying jobs 
in most cases, to get them back in the mainstream economy, and here the 
President is threatening to do that, to veto it. He is threatening 
because of the pressure from a group that does not know a sourwood from 
a white pine.
  I had one of them testifying in the Committee on Interior the other 
day who testified he was an environmental educator. After he told me 
all the things that were happening in the forest, the world was coming 
to an end, I tried to ascertain his qualifications. I found out he did 
not have a degree in anything, and his practical knowledge was void. I 
asked him what portion of the country was owned by the Federal 
Government. It is about a third. He did not have a clue. I asked him 
how many acres were in the U.S. Forest Service system. It is 191 
million acres. He did not know. I asked him how much of that 191 
million acres could be harvested today. He said it all could. Less than 
25 percent of it can be harvested today.
  What I am saying is, with that kind of misinformation, the President 
would do well to listen to the working men and women in California and 
Washington and Oregon and other parts of this [[Page H5563]] country as 
opposed to listening to a very elite special interest group that is 
giving him very bad information.
  Mr. RIGGS. If the gentleman will yield, I think the gentleman makes 
an excellent point, and I would simply add that again the hard-core 
professional environmental element, which again has become, giving, I 
guess, the devil its due, a well-organized and well-funded movement in 
this country in recent years, having lost this debate through a fair 
and open process at the full Committee on Appropriations level when the 
bill was marked up, in fact, when the gentleman's amendment was voted 
on on an up-or-down basis, having lost the debate out here on this 
House floor when we debated at some length the merits of the 
gentleman's emergency timber salvage amendment, then employs a back-
door mechanism, goes to the White House and convinces the certain 
figures in the President's administration that he really ought to veto 
this bill, which, as the gentleman pointed out, passed the House with 
strong bipartisan support, and I want to say that the President, 
frankly, is not, in my just intuitive sense here, he is not heeding his 
instinct. He is not doing what I think, frankly, he knows is the right 
thing.
  I mean, after all, this is a President who campaigned on a promise of 
putting people first. Well, I want to point out to the President that 
the independent timber mills of this country have launched a new 
campaign called Putting Family Businesses First, so if the President 
met his campaign rhetoric, if he really does believe in putting people 
and families first, he can begin by reconsidering his threat to veto 
the gentleman's outstanding emergency timber salvage amendment.
  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. That falls in line with the President's 
declaration that these are large companies. These are not large 
companies. These are small, family-size businesses.

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