Posted on 07/18/2002 7:06:37 AM PDT by madfly
Appropriators Try to Blackmail Flake, Shadegg to Vote For Bad Bill
Washington, D.C. – Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents the state’s First District, today blasted the House Appropriations Committee for accusing him, and other members of Arizona’s congressional delegation, of working to slash funds to help Arizona and other western states cope with the devastating wildfire season.
The Interior Appropriations bill, written by the House Appropriations Committee, has a price tag of nearly $20 billion. The bill is $775 million more than President Bush’s request and is more than $900 million more than the same bill cost last year. President Bush has asked that Congress show fiscal restraint, but unfortunately, it seems not all members of Congress got the message.
When conservatives, like Congressman Flake and Congressman Shadegg, raised concerns over the price of the bill, the appropriators put in an additional $700 million directed specifically to Arizona and other western states.
Congressman Flake said that while the federal government has the responsibility to provide states and local governments with the necessary funds to address the fire's devastation, this money is emergency spending and ought to be part of an emergency supplemental bill. By attaching the money to a regular appropriation bill, this fire money cannot be spent until fiscal year 2003. The committee's tactics are clearly aimed at trying to buy the votes of members from fire-ravaged states.
President Bush and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have pledged to help Arizona and Colorado recoup some of the costs caused by the wildfire's damage.
“It is absolutely disgusting to me that these appropriators are trying to blackmail us into voting for bad legislation using fire money,” said Flake. “There are hundreds of thousands of acres of forest burned to the ground in my home state and these appropriators are trying to use that to twist my arm. It’s simply appalling.”
Congressman Flake will continue to oppose the Interior Appropriations bill as long as it is over the president’s request.
I wonder how many wayward Pubbies voted against it.
AMENDMENT OFFERED BY MR. SHADEGG
Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Shadegg:
At the end of the bill, before the short title, insert the following new section:
SEC. . The Regional Forester for a National Forest System Region may exempt a specific project involving the removal of trees with a diameter of 12 inches or less on land owned or managed by the Forest Service in that Region from the applicability of the citizen suit authority contained in section 11(g) of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1540(g)) if the Regional Forester finds (and certifies these findings to the Chief of the Forest Service and Congress) that, on the basis of the best scientific information available, (1) a wildfire in the area of the project is likely to cause extreme harm to the forest ecosystem and destroy human life and dwellings and (2) the project is necessary to prevent these occurrences.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman reserves a point of order.
Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is designed to address a problem with the Endangered Species Act and the fires that are raging across the West at the present time. Right now citizens' suits are being brought to prevent the clearing of these forests by thinning out the dead wood and thinning out the smaller trees. As a result of the fact that we are not doing this removal of smaller trees, we are encouraging crown fires which destroy entire areas.
In my State of Arizona, we have just had a fire that has destroyed 500,000 areas. If you look at areas that have been treated, it appears as though the fire never even went through those areas. If you look at areas where they were not treated, there has been absolute, total devastation. This simply says that a regional forest ranger could make a determination that a wildfire in the area of the project to thin out the fire load was likely to cause extreme harm to the forest ecosystem and destroy human life and dwellings and that the project was necessary to prevent these occurrences. Once that finding had been made and had been certified to the United States Congress, then the thinning could occur without there being a citizen lawsuit to block the thinning from occurring.
Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Utah to discuss the issue as well.
Mr. HANSEN. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Chairman, let me point out as the chairman of the Committee on Resources, one of the biggest problems we have in America and the West at this particular time is called fuel load. Fuel load is when we have dead trees and we have all kinds of trash and no one is allowing prescription, to go in and take these out on prescribed fires. We have case after case all over America where forests are burning to the ground. Last year I went with staff and we went to about four Western States. You have got fuel load up to your armpits. All you need is one strike of lightning and you have got a fire. Never have we had fires like this. Last year I asked all of the forest supervisors, are we going to have more fires? They said, ``Count on it. You'll never have as many fires as you have.''
Why is this? It is because we cannot go in and we cannot seem to find a position that we can clear it out like we have since 1905. In one committee we had one of the large environmental groups there. She said, ``We don't believe in this. We shouldn't do it that way. It's not nature's way.''
I think this amendment is an excellent amendment. Somebody has got to wake up, be honest, and have guts enough to look some of these guys in the face and say, we have to clean the forests or we are going to burn the West down, and we are well on the way to doing it.
Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt).
Mr. NETHERCUTT. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the gentleman's amendment and in opposition to the point of order.
The gentleman's amendment allows the management of the forest by thinning and protection of life and health of the forest by local control, that is, the Forest Service regional forester. I think it is a commonsense amendment, I cannot imagine anybody would be against it, and so I support the gentleman's amendment.
Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, it seems to me this is, in fact, a commonsense amendment. It does not say that you can never bring such a lawsuit. It is limited to certain circumstances where they are cutting small diameter trees, trees of less than 12 inches. It would not allow commercial logging. It simply allows a reasonable thinning of the forest to stop the kind of devastating crown fires that have destroyed Arizona recently and have stricken California and Colorado and
many other States. It is, I believe, an absolute essential requirement that we allow this thinning to occur so that we do not burn our forests down. When you look at the language of the amendment, which requires a rather extreme certification that the wildfire is likely to cause extreme harm to the forest ecosystem, destroy human life and dwellings, and that the project is necessary to prevent these occurrences, I believe it is a very, very reasonable amendment. It is designed to protect our forests and strike a balance, because this would not block a citizen lawsuit if they wanted to thin larger trees. It would not block a citizen lawsuit under other circumstances where these certifications were not made. It is a middle ground that I think makes a great deal of sense. [Page: H4850] GPO's PDFI would urge that the point of order be withdrawn so that the Members can at least look at this policy. Our forests are burning to the ground. We lost over 460 homes of people that live in those forests in Arizona in the absence of being able to strike a reasonable policy, and I think this does. This requires a certification. It requires that the certification be that there be extreme harm and that it is going to destroy human life and dwellings and that the thinning project is necessary. In Arizona, the environmental groups have agreed that they support thinning so long as it does not go to large-diameter, old-growth trees. Indeed they have rushed to say we are willing to support this kind of policy as long as it is limited.
I was urged not to put a diameter limit in this because I was told, look, if you put a diameter limit in it, we may need to cut some larger trees. I said, no, I want a bright line so that those who oppose allowing timber harvesting to go forward under this policy will not be able to see this as a ruse. It is not a ruse. It is a genuine effort by us to strike a reasoned policy that will allow thinning to go forward without extended legal battles where the thinning is not a commercial logging effort but is, rather, necessary to save the forest and to prevent these kind of crown fires.
The evidence is absolutely clear that these crown fires take off and occur only when there is the underlying load, fuel load, which has not been removed. In the strongest possible terms, it seems to me that this is a reasonable compromise which I would urge upon this Congress and upon our colleagues that they withdraw the point of order.
POINT OF ORDER
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I insist upon my point of order. I make a point of order against the amendment because it proposes to change existing law and imposes new duties and constitutes legislation on an appropriation bill and therefore violates clause 2 of rule XXI. The rule states, in pertinent part, ``No amendment to a general appropriation bill shall be in order if changing existing law.'' The amendment imposes additional duties.
We just recently were talking about this issue of fuel load which is a very sensitive issue to those of us in the West. We are seeing the West burn up. It is a very important thing. I remember yesterday when some people were talking about the idea of show us where you can save money. The new director of BLM is a lady by the name of Kathleen Clark. Kathleen Clark is a very bright lady. She was head of the natural resources department in the State of Utah. She has had all kinds of experience. We had her before the committee of which I chair of Natural Resources. She made an interesting statement. She said that she spends almost 50 percent of her budget fighting lawsuits put in by extreme environmental people. That was very interesting to us.
Then we turned and asked the question also to Dale Bosworth, the new chief of the Forest Service. His is not that high, but it is pretty high. We are sitting here worried about the lands of America. What are we going to do to take care of this thing? How are we going to clean this forest? How are we going to get rid of this fuel load? So all this money we are putting up, we are turning around and paying it to attorneys. Around here, attorneys' retirement plans are a pretty big deal, it seems like. I have never seen such a waste of money, especially when they get on this rule 28. Win, lose or draw, they get paid 350 bucks an hour. I think that is really excessive. If we are going to take care of the forests, if we are going to take care of the public lands, if we are going to take care of these areas, somebody in Judiciary, this committee and others have got to have courage enough to start reining these people in. We can hardly go out spending all of this money that these CATs yesterday were talking about taking out. Look how much you could put into taking care of the forest if you did not do it this way. The judges, in effect, have taken over the public lands of America. Hardly qualified in my mind as I read many of their decisions to come up and explain what they feel is right in public lands.
I wish I had an hour, and on a special order I may do this, talking about some of the dumbest decisions I have ever read in my life where these people are telling us how to run the public lands of America.
Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
This is a straightforward amendment about prioritization. I have, as I indicated last night in my remarks, the greatest admiration both for the chairman of the overall committee and for the chairman of the subcommittee. I have worked with him since I got here. I know that in the process of drafting this bill they had to make many hard choices, but I believe that one of them has been misallocated.
The bill currently provides $23 million less for the Bureau of Land Management's budget for wildfire management than the current year allows. We have reduced the amount of money to fight wildfires. At the same time, we have increased the amount of money to acquire land to $49 million. I would suggest that this is a misprioritization of our resources.
In an age when we have seen outrageous fires across the West, in my State, as I mentioned a moment ago, we have lost half a million acres to wildfire, we are seeing a situation where we are reducing the amount of money to fight wildfires; but we are increasing the amount of money to buy land. It seems to me clearly imprudent to follow that course of conduct.
Now, the acquisition of land would mean that we are going to buy more land in the western United States, because the BLM operates exclusively in the western United States. What that means is that this $49 million that is in the bill currently to acquire more land will be used to buy even more Federal land.
I would suggest that that is a serious problem, that we do not need to acquire more land; but most importantly, we certainly do not need to acquire more Federal land in the eastern United States.
In my State of Arizona, there is no shortage of public land. The Federal Government owns 29 percent of all of the land in the United States, and 92 percent of that land is in the 12 Western States. In my State of Arizona, 83 percent of Arizona's landmass is owned by one level of the government or other, leaving only 17 percent of our land in public ownership. There are only 32 States that have higher percentages of public ownership than Arizona, and that is Alaska, which is 90 percent public owned, and Nevada, which is 87 percent publicly owned. I might add Utah is 79 percent publicly owned.
In contrast, the number of eastern States like Connecticut is only four-tenths Federal. New York is 1.4 percent Federal. We do not need at this moment in our history, with a war on and a battle over domestic terrorism, to be acquiring more Federal land, but we particularly do not need to do so at the expense of wildfire fighting. That should be obvious to anyone who has read the papers in the last month.
It may be true that we need to acquire some land, and my amendment does not take out all of the monies in this legislation to acquire additional land. Some $13 million is left in this legislation to buy more land. But it does say that we are going to transfer a portion of that $49 million to buy more land, leaving $13 million there, a portion of that $49 million to buy more land we are going to transfer over to fight wildfires. I would suggest that it is absolutely irrational to oppose this amendment.
Right now, again, I want to make this point, that there is an over-$23 million cut in the current bill for wildfire fighting. That is obviously an error. In this bill itself, there is a supplemental for this year of $700 million to add for firefighting this year. If it was not enough last year, and it clearly was not enough, and it was the Dicks amendment which added $700 million for wildfire fighting this year, how can it be rational to cut wildfire fighting next year by $23 million over the figure from this year, before we add the $700 million? It simply does not make any sense.
Nobody can stand here today and say that there is a dramatically smaller chance of wildfires next year. Nobody has that kind of crystal ball. Indeed, what we are told, Arizona is in one of the worst droughts in its history; the entire West is in one of the worst droughts in its history. The entire West is burning up from heat. Temperatures are way up in Washington, hotter than they are in my State of Arizona. And that is part of a long-term drought.
It is very obvious to me that we are going to need money to fight wildfires next year. I am simply saying that it does not make sense, when we are having to add in this very piece of legislation $700 million additional dollars to fight wildfires in the current fiscal year, that we would, at the same time, reduce the amount of money that we are allocating to fight wildfires in the coming year. Who can explain that? There is no reason to believe the drought is going to end; there is no reason to believe that the cost of fighting fires is going to go down. What we are doing is creating a situation where we will have to be back here on this floor the next time a devastating wildfire occurs finding more money for next year's budget because we simply underfunded it.
With all due respect to the members of the committee, I think they made a conscientious effort, but we ought to make priorities. It is literally irrational to spend all of this money for additional firefighting efforts this year, $700 million under the Dicks amendment, and cut $23 million next year. I simply say we restore that by taking that money from land acquisition.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
" She said that she spends almost 50 percent of her budget fighting lawsuits put in by extreme environmental people."
Sick.
Thanks for the ping, madfly.
Here is an analysis of Bush's agency priorities in his submitted 2003 budget
"The judges, in effect, have taken over the public lands of America. Hardly qualified in my mind as I read many of their decisions to come up and explain what they feel is right in public lands. I wish I had an hour, and on a special order I may do this, talking about some of the dumbest decisions I have ever read in my life where these people are telling us how to run the public lands of America."
The farm bill might have something to do with that. What ever you may think of giving money to farmers, this bill had a lot of money in it for land aquisition.
Sure we can. It won't burn twice.
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