Date: 2003-05-20
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself 5 minutes. Already today we have heard a lot of heated exchange on the subject of fire policy. Our Republican colleagues will make impassioned speeches about the need to pass this legislation to protect communities. The President has implored the Congress to act. And without question Democrats and Republicans agree that this is a critically important issue to so many of our western communities. to the health of our forests. to the safety of those communities and to those who are engaged in firefighting during the fire year in the western United States. But there is a big difference between these pieces of legislation. There is a big difference between talking about catastrophic wildfires and really helping communities that are at risk. There is a world of difference between wildfire legislation put forth by my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle and. the alternative that we are proposing on this side of the aisle. That really comes down to an issue about the priorities of these communities. Yes. we have drawn an area around these communities of a half mile which we have slated for fire treatment. and if we treated all those communities we would use up all of the money that is in the budget for the treatment of those fires. those where we engage in catastrophic fires. not necessarily the largest fires that take place in the western United States or in the United States. including Alaska. where huge fires rage very far from communities. far from where people live. Those are destructive fires in many ways. but they are not the catastrophic fires where we engage in the intensity of firefighting. the risk of human life. and the risk to property. So we think in our legislation that we have made a decision that we will concentrate the resources on that. we will do it in a bill that is essentially noncontroversial. that addresses the problem. that can go to work right away. can create the Jobs in the community that are necessary to provide for the health of our forests and the safety of our communities. It is very clear. I think. when we look at both bills. Westerners understand the difference between smoke and fire. and I would suggest that the Republican bill is a lot of smoke if we are talking about protecting those communities. I think it is important to understand what are the distinctions in the bill. We provide direct aid to local communities to treat private lands and public lands because they are intermingled. To suggest you are going to do one without the other is to put the other at risk. In fact. we find that there is not the aid to local communities in the Republican bill. Our provisions are noncontroversial and willspeed up the thinning projects. I think when my colleagues read the legislation presented by the committees. they will see. as we have already heard comments from so many organizations that are deeply concerned about the due process provisions of this law. that will make it much more difficult. certainly delay its consideration in the Senate. We create the new jobs quickly. providing that aid for the treatment on public and private lands. and we target the resources to those communities that are at risk and to the watersheds in those communities that are at risk. That is what we should be doing. That is what we should .be doing. And we should especially be doing that when we consider the budget request3 of this administration. which requested less money in this budget for hazardous fuel treatment than in the previous year. The Department of the Interior requested stable funding in this year. The fact of the matter is. in total. what we see is there is less money to treat fewer acres. That is why we had to set some priorities. Yes. we would like to think that we could secondguess nature. that we could go out to where lightning Is going to strike. treat that area this year. and we would not have a fire there next year. But the fact of the matter is. in the urbansuburban interface. where communities have moved into the forest. where there is a risk. where there is a different urgency about fighting a fire because of properties and threats to. communities where we put people most at risk in fighting those fires. that is where we ought to have the priority. That is really what this legislation does. It makes a decision that the Congress. living within the budget constraints. and I hope the Committee on Appropriations will add additional money to this. but living within those constraints. let us treat those lands where we have the most critical need on this. The suggestion in the Republican bill is that if we just cut down enough big trees. enough big valuable trees that are not the problem with fire. therefore we can pay for the treatment of more lands. In California. it is suggested that we could cut down many of the areas of the giant sequoia monuments. where we are preserving some of the oldest trees on the face of the earth. that we could cut down these trees and pay for treatment in Southern California or Northern California. That is a Faustian bargain the public does not want. We have heard much discussion here about how fires used to creep along the forestlands. The suggestion we have to cut down the biggest trees so fires will once again creep along the forestlands is a mistake. What we need In many instances. and what many communities can do on a priority basis. is mechanical treatment and controlled burns to get rid of that understudy of brush that then allows those fires to jump into the crowns. But that is not what the Republican legislation does. It does not put the priority in the protection of those communities.