Statement by Rep. Cynthia McKinney on the
Introduction of the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act
October 31, 1997
Today we are introducing a bill to end one of the most environmentally and fiscally irresponsible federal programs in existence -- the timber sale program on our National Forests. For decades, the U.S. Forest Service has allowed the timber industry to dominate these forests, while American families are left with stumps, mud slides and polluted drinking water.
Ninety-five percent of the great forests that once covered this country -- our natural heritage -- has been lost to logging. The cost to our families, our resources and our economy is high.
Timber sales on our public lands have a devastating effect on our environment. If commercial logging continues at the current rate, there will be nothing left for our kids and grandkids. The pollution of our water, the destruction of recreational facilities and the devastation caused by floods and mudslides are permanent.
With the help of Congress, the timber industry has cleverly disguised their abuse of public lands. They use euphemisms like "meadow enhancement," "linear wildlife opening," "cross-country ski trail enhancement," and "vista enhancement" to describe their dirty deed. And the list goes on and on. Because they know that the American people oppose logging on our public lands. In a recent poll, 96% of Americans agree that no commercial logging should be permitted on federal public lands. But the timber barons always manage to get their cut and dupe the people at the same time.
Last year, American taxpayers underwrote the timber industry by $791 million. You’d think that with all that money going around, we -- the American people -- would get something in return. However, Forest Service figures show that in 1996 not one dollar from timber receipts were returned to the federal treasury. While the timber company fat cats get fatter, the rest of us pay the price.
We’ve already seen how the Forest Service is encouraged to deceive the public. Federally subsidized and unaccountable, the program breeds corruption and encourages abuse. By allowing perfectly healthy trees to be earmarked ‘salvage’ -- just to make a quick buck -the Forest Service has demonstrated that they are as irresponsible and dishonest as the timber companies who have laid waste to our natural treasures.
The National Forest Protection and Restoration Act will end the federal government’s timber sale program and begin the task of saving our public forests. This is both ecologically and economically beneficial. Recreation and tourism activities create 31 times the number of jobs and generate 38 times more income than logging.
This bill would phase out commercial logging in several stages:
First, the bill would immediately prohibit the Forest Service and other federal agencies from offering new timber sales;
Second, existing timber sales -- those that have already been sold to logging companies -will have 2 years during which they could be logged under their existing contracts. After 2 years, however, such timber sales would be canceled, and logging operations would not be permitted to continue.
Third, our most ecologically sensitive lands would be immediately protected -- the bill would immediately make our remaining pristine forests off limits to further logging and road construction.
Finally, this bill would seek to mitigate the damage done by one of the worst environmental laws Congress has ever enacted: the so-called Timber Salvage Rider. Vice-President Gore has called the Rider "the biggest mistake" of the Administration. While this egregious act officially expired last December, thousands of acres of healthy, green old-growth forests are still slated to be clear-cut, immune from citizen oversight or the enforcement of environmental law. Our bill would immediately cancel these "rider sales."
This bill would eliminate the multi-million dollar annual subsidy to the timber industry, saving taxpayers over $300 million annually.
The bill would end the abuse of the Forest Service’s off-budget, revolving accounts. The monies in these logging funds -- namely the Salvage and K-V funds -- would be redirected towards worker retraining programs; continued payments to counties at current levels of "revenue sharing" through 2003; and would establish a $30 million federal grant program for developing environmentally sound wood alternatives, providing employment for many Americans.
The bill initiates a scientifically-based ecological restoration program for federal public forests.
The Secretary of Interior is directed to appoint regional committees of independent scientists to help develop regional Natural Heritage Restoration Plans for each region. These Plans will be carried out by a Natural Heritage Restoration Corps to be established by the departments of Agriculture and Interior for the purpose of doing the work of restoring logged areas -- activities such as replanting of native tree species, prescribed burning, stabilizing soils, obliterating old logging roads and stream restoration projects.
The Forest Service should be in the business of protecting our natural resources on our behalf -- not selling it off behind our backs. It’s time to stop doling out millions of dollars in corporate welfare to underwrite the timber industry. It’s time to break the cycle of devastation of our natural resources. It’s time to place the interests of our families and valuable resources over and above those of corporate special interests. Simply put, it’s time to take the federal government out of the logging business.
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Iowa Republican Congressman Jim Leach’s Statement
at the Introduction of the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act (NFPRA)
Rep. Cynthia McKinney: Simply put, it’s time to take the federal government out of the logging business ... and I am pleased now to introduce Congressman Leach, Chairman of the Banking Committee, my colleague on the House International Relations committee, my co-sponsor on this very important legislation, and more important than any other thing, my friend.
Rep. Jim Leach: First, on behalf of everyone here, let me thank Cynthia. I think Cynthia McKinney’s leadership has been extraordinary on this issue. I also want to thank the Sierra Club for its long-standing interest in these issues. Let me just, and I’ll be very brief, say that I think this approach brings sincerity to United States policy and good sense to the taxpayer pocketbook. And let me say what I mean by sincerity. This country, and many in it, for a long time, have expressed a great deal of interest in the rainforest in South America - proper interest - but it strikes me as a little bit hollow to express interest for another country’s preservation of its forests if we don’t preserve our own. And so I think, to be sincere with our own positions, we’re going to have to be sincere with our own policies. Secondly, in terms of good sense, there’s a perspective that is just a businessman’s perspective, and that is that the United States government is the only property owner I know of which, in effect, pays private parties to deplete it’s resources. The norm in a free market system is that renters, not owners, pay rent and unless and until we have a system in which the U.S. taxpayer gets a fair deal, I think it ought to be taken off the $791 million annual hook. And so I would just stress that we as a country have an obligation to be good stewards of our land, but we as members of Congress have an obligation to be fair and reasonable to the taxpayer and that means to do common sense things and it’s not common sense to pay others to despoil our own resources. Thank you.
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Statement by Chad Hanson - Sierra Club Director
at the NFPRA Bill Introduction Press Conference, October 31, 1997
I’m Chad Hanson. I’m one of the National Directors of the Sierra Club. I got involved in protecting National Forest in 1989 after I, with my older brother, hiked the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. It’s a wilderness trail that runs through the National Forests from the Mexican border and runs through California, Oregon and Washington.
I had no idea that logging was allowed on National Forests. I thought they were protected like National Parks. I think a lot of Americans think this. But I found out the hard way that that’s not true. From northern California all the way up through the western Cascades all the way up to Canada, I walked through clear-cut after clear-cut. Beautiful wonderful forest is still there, there is still hope for recovery, but the extent of the devastation is incomprehensible. You can literally stand on a ridge top in National Forests in the western United States, and other places in this country, look 360 degrees around you and not see a single standing tree. Places where they have tried to replant, time and time again, the trees are dead, the topsoil has washed away, it’s destroyed salmon spawning habitat . the devastation is absolutely shocking.
Species are heading towards extinction in various places all around the country: northern spotted owl and salmon species in the pacific northwest, the goshawk in the southwest, the grizzly bear in the northern rockies, and neotropical migratory songbirds in the southeast.
It is time to stop the logging program on National Forests. Its time to turn the corner and protect what we have left and allow these forests to recover.
David Brower recently said something on this issue. He said, "So much has been lost, we have an obligation to stop further destruction. And if we can’t stop it, then go home, look your children in the eyes and tell them you’re sorry for all the beautiful places that they’ll never know." Fortunately we do not have to have that conversation with our children. There is hope for recovery. We can stop it. We have a right to stop it, we have an obligation to, and it merely takes the courage to say "enough is enough, there’s still hope." It’s time to stop logging on National Forests. Thank you.
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Statement by Anna Aurilio - U.S. PIRG at the NFPRA
Bill Introduction Press Conference, October 31, 1997
Hi. Good morning, my name is Anna Aurilio. I work with U.S. PIRG. We’re the National lobbying office for the State Public Interest Research Groups. We’re non-profit, non-partisan, environmental and consumer watch dog groups active across the country. We’re very pleased to be joining Congresswoman McKinney, Congressman Leach, Sierra Club and other groups in calling for an end to corporate welfare for the timber industry.
The PIRGs call the timber sales program polluter pork. The timber industry brings home the bacon, taxpayers get fried. Now, it depends on who’s estimates you look at, but we loose hundreds of millions of dollars every single year in these outrageous handouts. What’s happening here? This program is flattening our forests and our pocketbooks. According to the General Accounting Office, the timber sales program lost nearly a billion dollars, that’s losses, net losses to the taxpayer, nearly a billion dollars from 1992 through 1994. And some people even say the Forest Service books can’t even be audited. They should be called the "timber service", not the Forest Service. So why do these programs perpetuate? Why do we still have this outrageous giveaway? People around the country don’t want their tax dollars being wasted on these programs. They don’t want their water quality and their salmon habitat destroyed while we’re loosing money and getting ripped off by the timber industry. I mean, Congress and the Clinton Administration already reformed welfare programs that affect millions of people. Yet millionaire timber industry executives remain on the federal dole. The Chairman of Louisiana Pacific took home $15 million over three years. Why should another penny of our tax dollars go to him? So again, why are these abuses continuing to go on? Why couldn’t we win a vote just to curb one of the abuses, the timber roads building program this year, in a fight lead by Congressman Kennedy and Porter, and joined by Congresswoman McKinney and Leach and Senator Bryan in the Senate. Why? Why couldn’t we win that. Why hasn’t the President vetoed the Interior Bill that would give the logging companies an unlimited subsidy if they choose to take it. Well maybe it has to do with campaign contributions. The timber industry poured nearly $9 million over the last 6 years into campaign coffers. And it appears that their contributions have paid off so far. It’s time to end corporate welfare for the timber industry and stop flattening our forests and our pocket books. Thank you.
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Statement by Jeff Debonis -
Founder of the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics
at the NFPRA Bill Introduction Press Conference, October 31, 1997
Hi, my name is Jeff Debonis. I’m a former timber sale administrator and a Forest Service employee. I worked for the agency for about 13 years from 1978 to 1991 and I worked all in the timber sale program. I sold sales, I put them up and I administered the sales for the timber industry.
In 1989, I became so disgusted with what I saw as the ‘get-the-cut-out’ mentality of the Forest Service and its lack of responsible stewardship of our National Forests in following environmental laws, I started a dissident group of employees called AFSEEE, the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. At that time I felt that if enough employees within the agency wanted to reform the agency, that the agency could be reformed internally. I now believe that that is a lost cause. I think there are a lot of employees who want to do the right thing and they can’t.
We need this legislation. Not only do the taxpayers need this legislation but employees, reform minded employees who want to do the environmentally right thing in the Forest Service, need this legislation.
The last Chief of the Forest Service was a wildlife biologist, a known reformer, Jack Ward Thomas. He failed miserably trying to reign in the ‘get-the-cut-out’ mentality of the Forest Service. Our current Chief, Mike Dombeck, again a man of integrity who wants to do the right thing, a fisheries biologist, is failing so far in trying to reign in the Forest Service’s ‘get-the-cut-out’ mentality. The Forest Service has literally been inundated with the timber industry’s culture. It’s a cancer that grows within the agency that cannot be removed without some kind of strong legislation. The employees within the Forest Service who know the right thing to do need this kind of strong backing. We’re very supportive of the legislation and we are very grateful that it is being introduced.
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McKinney: I would like to thank Congressman Filner, Stark, McDermott, Gutierrez, Lewis of Georgia, Brown of California, Dixon, and Waxman for agreeing to be original co-sponsor along with us. And now Congressman Leach and I are going to actually sign the legislation.
(McKinney and Leach sign the legislations)
McKinney: We’ll drop it in the hopper and you guys can go to work now.
Questions and Answers follow:
ABC News Radio: Given what Ms. Aurilio has just said about campaign donation and fights that have been waged and have been lost, what are the prospects for this. Nothing has changed as far as the campaign donations are concerned. They’re still there, still coming in. Have you gotten any indication, either from the administration or from the leadership, also Congressman Leach, that this faces any better fate than other attempts?
Rep. McKinney: First of all, I would just say that we know the majority of the American public stands behind this legislation, so we have the power of the people on our side. And if there is anybody who can talk about the power of the people versus the power of special interests, I think I and my campaign for reelection is testimony to the power of the people. So we have that going in and that’s the strongest power of all in this democracy of ours. But Representative Leach here, represents the leadership so I’ll let him talk about the leadership.
Rep. Leach: Well I don’t exactly represent the leadership, but let me stress to you there are issues of campaign reform that, hopefully, this Congress will deal with. Whether they have ramifications for this issue, I don’t know. We’ll wait and see, but clearly this is not unrelated to the kind of issue that relates to campaign reform. And I am very hopeful that this Congress, because of public pressure, will vote on campaign reform.
Your second issue is, will it go anywhere this year. I would be very skeptical. On the other hand, lot’s of legislation takes time to build up and to build up public support that comes to be reflected in Congressional support and, after all, this is a public body. The final point that I would make is that there are elements in the United States Congress that are concerned about the environment. There are elements of the United States Congress, in both political parties, that are concerned about corporate welfare, and to the degree that this is a corporate welfare issue as well as an environmental issue, you’ve got a philosophical basis of concern.
Finally, I would say something that both Cynthia and I have to be very concerned about. There are east-west division in the United States Congress and I just would underscore that it is a myth that the west is united on this issue. That is, many westerners who live closest to these lands, also are offended by the despoilation of these lands, and it’s been framed in this Congress that the west demands it’s fair crack and its fair share of a government tilt. This is a government tilt, but it is not necessarily a government tilt to the west. It is a government tilt to some in the west where I believe the majority of the west are on the other side.
Follow-up Question: So probably nothing this year on this legislation, but maybe ... ?
Rep. Leach: Well I think serious legislation that relates to long-term issues often takes a while to generate and to develop a groundswell of support. Now here I would add to Cynthia’s perspective only this: She has called upon groups to keep going. Well, the fact of the matter is, in America we organize less by political party, increasingly, and more by communities of interest. The groups that are supporting this are communities of interest. I think those communities of interest are growing, and people in public life that ignore communities of interest and that stick to party perspectives make great errors.
Question: What percentage of American logging happens on federal lands?
Rep. McKinney: 4%. About 4%.
Rep. Leach: Let me just say from a practical perspective, that’s an astonishingly significant statistic because it says, for all the cost, we are dealing with a small percentage of the total market and it’s a percentage of the market that does add to the totality of the market but it also skews the market and it often skews the market to those of the most despoiling kind. And let me explain that. If you are in the business of logging and you own your own land, you have a vested interest in taking care of it. If you’re going to rent somebody else’s land you’re not near as careful.