Larry Craig

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, there is no question that what the Senator from Iowa has talked about, the limitations that are built within the legislative process, are there. He is the reigning member of a full committee that has a forestry subcommittee. I am chairman of another forestry subcommittee. We are going to monitor very closely this bill, if it becomes law. Probably we are 6 to 8 months away from regulation writing alone that will hit the ground and become active. So already we will probably have an operative life of only 4 years, if the amendment of the Senator from Iowa were to become law. Our job is oversight. The Senator's job is oversight. Because this is a controversial issue, it is incumbent upon us to make sure we monitor it closely. Many of our forest experts across the country who look at the magnitude of the problem of forest health today are going to suggest that even if we can reach our cap limits within 5 years, the public and the resource will cry out that we continue for years to come in a thinning and cleaning process. So I would hope our colleagues would join in sustaining the bipartisan compromise that is reflected in the legislation that is before us this evening. Before I close, and because this appears to be the last amendment, I want to make one more comment in the way of an article that was written in the San Jose Mercury News by Paul Rogers and Josh Susong. It appeared, apparently, today. Let me read, very briefly, the first page of this article. I will ask that the entire article be put in the Record. The dateline is: Lake Arrowhead, CA: The oil industry had the Exxon Valdez. Nuclear power had Three Mile Island. Wednesday, with flames menacing one of Southern California's most beloved mountain resorts, Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains risked becoming forestry's equivalent--a disaster so overwhelming it could change U.S. environmental policy for decades to come. The area, filled with overgrown, diseased and dying trees, has gained a reputation in recent years as one of the worst examples of forest mismanagement in the West. If much of Lake Arrowhead or nearby Big Bear Lake ends up burning, fire experts said it could prompt rapid changes, including congressional orders for much more logging to thin the nation's overgrown forests. . . . Well, we are already responding. This article is actually behind, and we are responding with the kind of bipartisan compromise that is before us tonight. But the article goes on to say: Flames destroyed more than 300 homes near Lake Arrowhead Wednesday-- That is yesterday-- with no end in sight. Forests there would have burned naturally every 20 years, said [a Forest Service expert]. . . . Areas that historically had 50 trees per acre now have 500 [trees per acre]. Well, the article goes on and on, but here is something that it talked about. And, of course, we have not seen the evening news tonight because fires are still burning in the Lake Arrowhead, San Bernardino forest areas. It says: Fire crews worked desperately to stop the advance as it moved toward 44,000 homes, 2,000 businesses and 80,000 outbuildings--property with an assessed value of $8 billion. ``This may be a landmark event. This fire could take out 20,000 homes in the next day or two,'' said . . . a professor of earth sciences at the University of California-Riverside. And the article goes on and on. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record.

Mr. CRAIG. As I told Senator Bingaman, I agree that this is a serious issue and I have been working hard on resolving the problem myself. I appreciate the concerns of Senator Baucus and McCain and thank them for not offering their amendment. This issue will be my top priority once we finish the healthy forests bill. I pledge to work with Senator Baucus, Senator McCain and the Chairmen and Ranking Members of all the relevant committees to find a workable solution.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for privileges of the floor be extended to George Bain, a Forest Service Fellow on my staff, for the duration of the Healthy Forests debate.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that George Matejko and Ron Hooper, both congressional fellows in Senator Burns' office, be granted the privilege of the floor during the consideration of H.R. 1904.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, before the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee sits down, I would be more than happy to include the protection of all the old growth in the Federal forests of Iowa in this bill, if it existed. Or maybe we could put a prohibition against wildfires in Iowa on public lands in this bill. And that is something we could accomplish because those two issues--the old growth, which I am sure the State of Iowa wished it had, and wildfires, which I know they would not want--do not exist in Iowa because no Federal forest lands exist there. In my State of Idaho, in the great State of Oregon, and in the Great Basin, West, as much as 60 and 70 percent of our lands within our State borders are public lands and are subject to this legislation. That is why I am on the Senate floor. That is why my colleague from Missouri is on the Senate floor. That is why my colleague from California is on the Senate floor because it is the heart and soul of our States. Be it our water quality or our wildlife habitat or our environment in general, our forested lands make up that dynamic symphony of lands of which our States are proud, and we want to protect them. To suggest this bill does not is not a fact. Let me give a point the Senator from Iowa just made. He said you could log in 1,000-acre increments across the landscape. Not true. Nowhere in the bill does it exist. Let's go back to California today where fires are burning. Let's go to Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino forest where there is a complex of dead and dying trees of about 400,000 acres. You could log 1,000 acres there, and then if you chose to do another 1,000 acres near it, you get into the cumulative effect beyond the categorical exclusion and you have to do a NEPA process. That is what this legislation says. That is what the Senator from Iowa did not suggest. He cannot suggest something that does not exist. Yes, it is true you do 1,000-acre logging increments, but when you get to a cumulative effect beyond the categorical exclusion, NEPA takes over. Therefore, you do the full public process that he admires and I admire because we believe the public ought to have a right to participate, but not ad nauseam through lawsuit after lawsuit for the purpose of delaying activity on the ground when there is bug kill and fuel loading and the public is at risk and the resources are at risk. That is what this debate must be about. He implied that you could road on forever because this bill does not prohibit roading. You can't road today unless you go through a full NEPA process. It is not to suggest if you prohibit roading here or you do not prohibit it, therefore, roading will exist. That is not true. It does not exist today in current law. So do not imply that it does. That is a false accusation, in my opinion. There are a good many other areas we will debate at length, I am sure, as the amendments come up. I am going to step out of my State of Idaho, which I know best, and step into California for a moment because California is at issue and it is in play. My colleague from Oregon, who his other colleague from Oregon said was brave in taking the stand he is taking, is a brave soul, but he is also a person who recognizes the balance of good management on our public lands that protects water quality and wildlife habitat. He is the one who argued staunchly that we protect old growth. I didn't think it was necessary, but I agreed with him. He and I have worked together very closely on what we believe to be balanced public forest policies for a good number of years, but what is not in balance is a policy that allows forests to burn at will simply because we deny the right of limited management to reduce fuel loading, to stop bug kill, and to slow the dead and dying trees. So let us go to San Bernardino National Forest in southern California where fires are raging as we speak. We know that forest, because of environmental interests and because of the increase of the public living in that forest, in the 1970s stopped any form of logging. In the mid 1970s, it stopped. That became an inactively managed forest. About 2 years ago, it was recognized as a forest that was in critical condition. The fuel loading was so great, the bug kill was so great, that the intermittent State lands within the San Bernardino forests were declared a state of emergency by the Governor of California, but it is almost impossible to save them if they are surrounded by lands where nothing is going on, where the bug kill is great, and where a fire is clearly a situation that creates a high risk. We have known, and I have said on this floor for over 2 years, that the San Bernardino National Forest was the perfect firestorm waiting to happen, and yet we talked on and on in a formally inactive way not to do anything about it. It is now burning. That is a phenomenal tragedy that we could have done at least something about, but we chose inactive management on the San Bernardino nearly three decades ago. Let me speak for a few moments about why and what is different in California today than 50 years ago. If one listens today to news commentators covering the fires in California, they will say that that area burned about 50 years ago, and it probably did. It is a Mediterranean-type climate. It is largely a scrub oak climate except when one gets up in the San Bernardinos where one begins to get conifers and it did probably burn. Maybe it has burned every 50 or 60 years for the last thousands of years, but what was different today than 50 years ago is that there are now people living in the canyons, in the valleys, and in the suburbs that did not exist 50 years ago in that area. So the landscape is dramatically different and the risk is substantially higher, but we have done little about it. We have not insisted that there be firebreaks, that there be thinning, that there be a way to protect the urban/wildland interface. H.R. 1904 begins to address that, at least on the Federal forested lands. If those firebreaks had been present, if that scrub oak had been pulled back 100 or 200 yards from those homes, grass had been planted, foliage had been kept down, it would not have been 1,500 homes burned now; it would have been considerably fewer. We all know that. That is a fact. The world of the forest has changed dramatically in the last 50 years. The Senator from Iowa is right. Wherever there was a piece of private property within a Federal forested area, a home was built. Why? Because it is a very desirable place to live. We all love to live within the forested landscapes of our country, but if we do not treat them properly, it is like living inside a kindling box. It is like living near a fire that is ready to burn. All one has to do is drop a match, because the fuel loading that has gone on in these forested landscapes over the last 30 years is dramatic. Why? Because we put fire out. We got awfully good at eliminating fire and we did not replace the natural ecosystem's activities of fire with manmade activity. It is quite simple. Along came the environmental movement in the 1960s. Along came the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Act in the mid-1970s, and we began progressively to slow our activities on the public lands that were offsetting nature's activities in some instances and the fuel load began to build. In the mid 1980s, a group of forest scientists from all over the United States met in Sun Valley, ID, to explore the health of our national forests. They concluded that our forests in the Great Basin West were sick, dead, and dying, and that if we did not develop some form of activity to emulate fire, to thin and clean, we would someday in the near future begin to experience dramatic wildfires that would change the character of the landscape of the West. They were right. We did not listen. We could not listen. Why? Because there was a louder voice out there saying: Do nothing, do nothing, stay away; the only way to treat the public lands is to withdraw man from the lands, unless he or she tramples lightly upon them. We did just that, and all of our policies have driven us in that direction. During the Clinton years, we reduced logging on public lands by nearly 80 percent. We did not change any laws, just reused the regulations, headed in another direction with a different philosophy. Aside from that, there is another interesting statistic. Instead of the average of 1\1/2\ million to 2 million acres a year in wildfires on our forested public land, we began to see 3, then 3\1/2\, then 4, then 5, then 6, and last year 7 million acres, and that graph is going straight up as more of these lands burn because the fuel load that builds on them is so great that all of our forested public lands have become like a kindling box, ready to burn with the touch of a match. It started in California last Saturday. It could have been manmade in this instance--it probably was--and, of course, we know the end result. It is not over yet. It has destroyed millions of acres of property and human life. Now, this is dramatic. Guess what is about to start in California. The Senator from California is in the Chamber and she can tell us better than anybody else. But when the Santa Ana winds quit, when those great air patterns that sweep down out of the West shift and change the cycling of the wind and it reverses the sweep down off the mountains, it starts coming in off the ocean, and rains begin. This 500,000 acres of now denuded land, with no vegetation on it, will be subject to the winter rains. What we are going to be hearing, almost as dramatic as the fires were, will be the mud slides and the erosion and the land movements that are going to occur in California simply within the next month or two or three. Can we not understand that? Cannot environmental organizations understand that there has to be a little bit of a balance, that somehow there is a way to ebb and flow, for us to exist, to protect our environment and at the same time balance it in a way that does not in the end destroy it? In the year 2000, in Idaho, we lost 1 million acres to wildfire. That winter and the next spring, great slides of mud, rock, and debris flowed down out of the canyons and some of them into the beautiful pristine Salmon River that is a great fish habitat, a great salmon habitat. In some instances, it probably damaged it. In one instance, there was a great alluvial flow of debris out into the river that was not swept away, and this last year when the waters hit it, the water diverted across the river and knocked out a highway and knocked out a road and put more silt into the river, all a product of the fire of the year 2000. So fires have lots of consequences. We ought to try to manage our forests in a way that somehow diminishes the overall ability of those forests to burn, to protect our wildlife habitat, our water quality, our scenic beauty, and our recreational opportunities. That, in part, is what this bill is about. This is no major dramatic step forward. This is no assault on the environment. This is a positive but relatively small step in the areas we have so designated to suggest we adjust the appeals process ever so slightly, that we adjust the NEPA process ever so slightly, that we establish funding priorities in the wildland/urban interface, that we recognize and protect old-growth, and that we create a judicial review process that is streamlined so those who would chose no action cannot lock up reasonable, responsible action in the courts of our country. That is what H.R. 1904 is all about. My colleague from Oregon is still on the floor. He, I, and a good many others, my colleague from Idaho, Mike Crapo, who chairs the forestry subcommittee in Agriculture--I chair the subcommittee in Energy and Natural Resources, the Senator from Oregon is the ranking member of that forestry subcommittee--have spent years and years on this issue, try to find a balance, working with environmental groups--outreach. Let me thank the Senator from California, who is on the floor, who has demonstrated phenomenal leadership in this area. She has taken the time to understand the ecosystems and the health of the Sierras and she knows some form of limited action has to occur to save this beautiful landscape. That is what this legislation is all about. Yet some would paint it as dramatic and sweeping and destructive. It is simply not that at all. It is a small step forward in our effort to bring reasonable balance and management only in those areas designated as fire prone, as loaded with fuel, and the urban/wildland interface dominantly, and in sick and dying areas where the bugs have ravaged it and it is simply standing there dead, waiting for Mother Nature to take her course. That is what H.R. 1904 is all about. Don't let anyone paint this in any other dramatic fashion or form, for if they were to do so, it would simply be untrue. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. I thank the Senator from California. She has been a full cooperative partner in working in a bipartisan way. She has outlined many of the provisions in the bill that have been worked out between the Agriculture Committee, the chairman, Mike Crapo, Senator Domenici, Blanche Lincoln, and a good many others. It was a collaborative, bipartisan effort. I agree that this is a bill that should be on the floor as we speak. It should not be amended. There are a lot of other bills that will come and other issues that can be addressed. But California is facing its worst nightmare as we speak in the form of fire. The reality of what the Senator spoke to in the San Bernardino Forest in the Greater Lake Arrowhead area is truly a firestorm of great proportions, and we hope the winds will die down and shift and they will come in off the ocean and bring moisture and lift the dewpoint and lower the fires. That isn't happening as we speak. Quite the opposite is happening, as we play out the Santa Ana and get through this season. But in the meantime, the destruction is now almost immeasurable. You see it on the faces of the people being interviewed. Maybe America finally recognized it when San Diego could not play football in their home stadium. They had to move to Phoenix because they are using the parking lot as a staging area. Maybe America scratched its head a little and said: What is wrong with this? Should this be happening? No, it should not be--at least to the extent that it is. The Senator from California is right that procedure can help lessen the impact of the kind of fire scenario we are seeing. She and I have teamed up with our leadership and said let's debate this bill now on the Senate floor and throughout the balance of the week, after we finish foreign operations. We can do that. It should not take but a full day of debate. A lot of issues ought to be talked about on this bill, and then we ought to pass it so America can see that the Congress of the United States is responsive when California is at risk to the proportion that it is today. I thank the Senator.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank Chairman McConnell for the hard work he has put into the Fiscal Year 2004 Foreign Operations and Related Agencies Appropriations bill. It is a challenging process, and he has done an excellent job balancing competing interests within the confines of a limited budget allocation. I wish to engage in a colloquy with the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee regarding the development of a reforestation program in Afghanistan. In this appropriations bill, with the adoption of an amendment the chairman and ranking member and I have worked on, $5 million is to further a reforestation program in Afghanistan. I recently traveled to the Middle East with the chairman and witnessed first hand the devastating conditions of the natural landscape in Afghanistan. As the chairman of Public Lands and Forestry Subcommittee, it saddens me to see the degradation that has occurred to the natural landscape of this country. Years of war and poverty have put a great strain on the ecosystems of this country. It is time to put an end to the denuding of the hillsides and turn them back to their brilliant shades of green. I would like to see this funding be used to develop a reforestation program for the country. I think it is important to cultivate the native species to replenish and rejuvenate the area to provide additional opportunities for recreation, wildlife, and business development. The intent of this provision is that the expertise and skill of land grant universities, such as the University of Idaho, should be used to assist in developing this program. I also feel that this is an area in which the private sector could lend their assistant with both the development of the program and the reforestation of the country. Again, there are also leading edge forest products companies in my State like Potlatch Corporation and Boise Cascade who also have expertise of their own and a long time working relationship with the university. This is an opportunity, through active management, to change the fate of the natural landscape of Afghanistan.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I come to the Chamber to express my profound sorrow to the families in southern California who have lost their homes and some who have lost their loved ones during this conflagration of fire. I extend my sympathy to the millions of citizens in southern California who have lost part of their rural refuge to these massive wildfires. Thirteen fires are burning an estimated 600,000 acres of brush and trees, and over 1,900 structures, as of this morning, have been burned. The fire has put thousands of others at risk and, of course, land and mud slides will come with the winter rains. More than 50,000 people have been evacuated as we speak. Over $20 million has been spent thus far on fire suppression. Yesterday our President declared Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura Counties as major disaster areas and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts. The Old Fire, which started Saturday morning and by Sunday had merged with the Grand Prix Fire, had grown to over 52,000 acres in only a matter of a few hours. It is expected now, as we speak, to consume Lake Arrowhead today. Many firefighters on the ground are describing this fire as Armageddon. For communities such as Lake Arrowhead, that have been suffering through the third year of western bark beetle epidemic, the fire was their worst nightmare. Now it has come true. In the San Bernardino greater forest area around Lake Arrowhead, over 90,000 acres are now dead. They are simply kindling, standing, waiting for the wave of fire that is now striking that forest. If the U.S. Forest Service had had a streamlined NEPA and appeals process that recognized the importance of dealing with insects, disease, and damage from windstorms and ice storms, and fire, the Forest Service might have had the opportunity to cut fuel breaks between the live forests and the wildland and the urban interface. Sadly, the Senate has been fiddling around with H.R. 1904, and now southern California is ablaze. Not all of H.R. 1904 would have been directed to the California problem, but now that we are into the standing timber areas of San Bernardino, and we have watched that forest die through bug infestation, unable to do anything about it, here is where it could have helped. The wildland urban interface, where firebreaks could have been built, where the fire could have come down from the trees and onto the ground, many homes could have been saved. If the Forest Service didn't approach every project as a one-size- fits-all NEPA process, they might have been able to thin the forest out a little, which would have increased the intensity and strength of the western bark beetle epidemic and perhaps reduce this risk of conflagration. If a viable forest products industry still existed in the area, one which closed its doors in the mid-1980s due to the Forest Service's failure to manage and thin the forest through the removal of trees, some of this pain and suffering might have been avoided. While it is the Forest Service's duty to manage the lands entrusted to them, we in the Congress also must take some blame. It seems that we have forgotten to provide the leadership the agency needs to understand our expectation of them. This is not new. Many of us have stood on this floor and many experts have spoken on the issue of forest health for a decade--whether it is the lower Sierras or the San Bernardino or the forests of Idaho or all of the Great Basin region of the West. We have 190 million acres now of dead and dying forests. The great tragedy is that California, with the Santa Ana winds that come this time of year, set up the perfect scenario, and now the great tragedy is hitting. This Congress has to deal with the issue. Senator Feinstein has been on the Senate floor working with it. She and I have worked together with the appropriate committees--the Agriculture Committee, and my colleague, Mike Crapo, Senator Cochran, Senator Domenici--we have all come together to try to solve this problem. We have a solution and it is H.R. 1904, and it is a positive step forward. It is now time for this Senate to debate this bill, vote it up or down. I see my colleague from California on the floor. I turn to her and most sincerely say, Mr. President, I express great sadness and sorrow for the tragedy now underway in her State. I wish it was over. But the firestorm that is sweeping across southern California today will only die with the winds and when we begin a positive effort at restoring the health of our natural lands and forested areas.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I stand here as cosponsor of the first- degree amendment and offered the second-degree amendment to modify it slightly. But I certainly join with my colleague from North Dakota on this issue, as do many of our colleagues, in recognizing the critical need for change in our current policy. I, along with other Senators, including Senator Dorgan, have for about 4 years here in the Senate Chamber worked to change our trade relationship with Cuba, a trade relationship that is now bringing literally hundreds of millions of new dollars a year to our shores from Cuba for agricultural foodstuffs trade and medical supplies, all of it done largely in cash, and certainly no credit from the United States taxpayer because it is not allowed. What we are offering today is a very clean amendment, which passed in the House, to significantly disallow OFAC, which is the Office on Foreign Assets Control, from utilizing resources for the purpose of enforcement of the Cuba travel ban. What I think is important this morning is for my colleagues to understand what the mission of OFAC is. The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on U.S. foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, and those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. OFAC acts under Presidential wartime and national emergency powers as well as authority granted by specific legislation to impose controls on transactions and freezes foreign assets under U.S. jurisdiction. Many of the transactions are based on United Nations resolutions or United Nations or other international mandates which are multilateral in scope and involve close cooperation with allied governments. That is a very substantial mission during a very critical time in our country when we are seeking out not only on our shores but other shores around the world terrorists and those who traffic in narcotics. Yet 10 percent of OFAC's budget is used to track down little old grandmas from the west coast who, through a Canadian travel agency, choose to bike in Cuba. Ten percent of their budget is on United States citizens who seek to travel in Cuba--probably 99.999 percent of them for recreational and vacation purposes only. You talk about the wise expenditure of money. You talk about the appropriate allocation of public resources for the purpose of tracking down terrorists and narcotics traffickers. OFAC, get your mission straight. What are you doing? Why are you spending all of your money, or at least 10 percent of your money in that category? We suggest it is not a wise expenditure of money. And the amendment would disallow them spending their money for these purposes. My colleague has talked about the reality we face with the island of Cuba off our shores. For over 40 years, the United States Government has placed an embargo on Cuba and prohibited Americans from traveling to the island. For about 35 of those years, I supported them aggressively and openly--at least in my years here in Congress--up until a few years ago when it was obvious that the embargo wasn't working anymore, or that it was working very poorly, or that it was penalizing our producers from access to an available cash market. I am talking about agricultural goods and medical supplies. I began to work to change that. That policy did change, and now in a very smooth way there is work and there are negotiations with Cuba on those issues. I am from Idaho. Ernest Hemingway once made his home in Idaho as well as in Cuba. Ernest Hemingway died in Idaho. His legacy remains there. Our State is very proud of this citizen and his great literary legacy. Yet when professors from the University of Idaho chose to go Cuba for an exchange, to find out more about Ernest Hemingway and his works, OFAC said: No; well, maybe; well, possibly. Finally, after we intervened, they said OK. Upstanding citizens of the State of Idaho and professors at the university were denied the right to go there, to the home of Ernest Hemingway where many of his works still remain. In fact, I understand the home has been preserved and is kind of a time capsule of Ernest Hemingway and his work because when he left Cuba and came back to the States and began to reside in Ketchum, ID, he literally packed a bag and walked away, and much is still there, including a notebook lying open on his desk with a pen and some of his personal handwritings visible in the notebook. The Cuban Government didn't touch it; they left it alone. None of us agrees with Fidel Castro. That is really not the issue here. The issue is, Is our policy working or are we suggesting that OFAC is not spending its money at a critical time in our Nation's history for the purpose of tracking down terrorism or for the purpose of the interdiction of narcotics traffickers? In 40 years, you want to assess policy. We live in a dynamic world and times change. It is now time, in my opinion, to assess that policy with Cuba. I have worked very closely with Cuban Americans in this country. We have made sure that we have worked with them to get it right when it comes to agricultural foodstuffs and medical supplies. We have worked closely with them on this issue. The Cuban community is split. I don't disagree with their feelings and concerns as they relate to the issue of travel to Cuba. But many Cuban Americans who are United States citizens now want to go to Cuba to visit and see what their homeland was once like because Cuba itself, I am told, is a time capsule of the 1950s. Much of the Cuban attitude and certainly their fiscal policies have stopped that country from growing and expanding. Exchange, opening the door, turning on the lights, and allowing our citizens the opportunity to travel there is the right way to change a country. Historically, even during the coldest times of the cold war and except in the rarest of circumstances did we deny or totally embargo the ability of U.S. citizens to travel to Communist countries because we believed it critical that we engage and stay engaged and continue dialog. If Ronald Reagan were able to be involved in this debate today, my guess is that he might suggest it was that dialog and that openness and that recognition on the part of the Soviet Union that they could no longer continue in the direction they were going because we were simply overpowering them both militarily and economically, and the Soviet Union crumbled. The Wall came tumbling down, and the rest is history. Most of us on this floor have had the wonderful opportunity to witness that history. It was not isolation, it was engagement that changed and wrote that history. I am suggesting that this simple move--this very clear move to allow travel--to disallow our Government's aggressive enforcement and to disallow this agency's spending of 10 percent of their resources for this purpose is a step in that direction. I hope our colleagues will join the Senator from North Dakota, myself, others--and the Presiding Officer is a cosponsor--in this vote and that we begin to work with the administration to change that relationship as it relates to engagement with the Cuban Government and with the island of Cuba and, most importantly, its citizens. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I send a second-degree amendment to the desk.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. CRAIG. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. I thank the Senator from Oregon for his explanation and his evaluation of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, H.R. 1904, that we want to get before the Senate. He is so right in all of his comments. We have worked together in a very bipartisan way. I come to the floor today as a frustrated Senator over the current situation. I chair the forestry subcommittee of Energy. My colleague from Oregon is the ranking member. Yet the ranking member of the full Energy Committee came to the floor and objected to proceeding on this legislation. I am frustrated as to why the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, would object now that we have crafted this bipartisan balance. I am perplexed, when you evaluate the record of full bipartisan participation, why we will not allow this to go forward under the normal course. On June 26, the Agriculture Committee held a full hearing on H.R. 1904. Many of our colleagues attended. I am not a member of the Agriculture Committee, but I attended that hearing. Those Members critically in need of this legislation for our states and our forests attended that hearing. Then the Energy Committee the Senator from New Mexico is on, on July 22, held hearings on this issue and on the impact of fires, insects, and disease on our forests. The committee also considered S. 1314, the Collaborative Forest Health Act. Senator Bingaman's bill, H.R. 1904, the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, was also considered at that time. There has been full consideration in both the Agriculture Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee of this legislation. Two Senators who have engaged in the hearings full time, Senator Wyden of Oregon and Senator Feinstein of California, worked in a very bipartisan way with the chairman of the full Agriculture Committee, Senator Cochran, who I understand will speak in a few moments. Why, therefore, is there an objection? More importantly, why are we now calling for hearings on an amendment? I don't know that has ever been done once a bill is marked up and left the full committee. Are we going to revert backward now, and every time an amendment is offered, some Senator is going to stand up and say: you cannot go further; you have to have a hearing on that amendment? The Senator from New Mexico and others know exactly what is in this legislation. We have worked extremely hard to bring all parties into it. The staff of the Senator from New Mexico was involved in some of the negotiations and then decided not to attend the rest of them as they went forward. It has not been a private process. It has been most open and most public with the Senators from the Republican side and the Senators from the Democrat side and their staffs working collaboratively and cooperatively together to get where we are today. We heard a very clear explanation from the Senator from Oregon of the kind of process we went through and the product we have produced. Is this now the handbook of the environmental community playing its card? I hope not. I hope that is not the process in the end. It is almost like the forest vernacular of the appeals process. You stay involved just long enough and just before the decision comes about, you ask for an appeal. No more appeals. The process has worked its will. All parties have been involved. All amendments have been worked. Now it is time to come to the Senate and debate it and if the Senator from New Mexico has amendments, offer them up. Let's debate them. Let's talk about them. What is so critically important for the health of America's forests is that we move forward with a process that begins to allow an active management approach we think this legislation has very skillfully crafted. We still have to work out our differences between the House and the Senate. I am supportive of the Senate bill. I will work in a conference, if I am a part of that conference, to try to get the Senate's bill to work its will and to become part of our forest management law. That is what is critical. That is what is important. Clearly, it is time we move forward. It is now not time to stall. There would be all kinds of reasons to argue if these bills had never had hearings, if these bills had never been allowed to be amended in committee, if these bills had never been allowed to do a full markup, but all of that has happened. Why are we in the fifth inning in an appeals approach suggesting we hold more hearings on an amendment that can be effectively debated on the floor of the Senate? It is a critical issue for my State and for the public forests of this country. I hope in a bipartisan way we can bring this legislation to the floor, have a thorough debate and an amendment process, and move it on.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, as a Senator frustrated by this situation, I rise today to respond to comments made by my colleague from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, regarding the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, H.R. 1904. As he chose to address the entire Senate, I too am following his lead in addressing the entire Senate. I appreciate Mr. Bingaman's attention to this issue and look forward to future discussions with him on this issue. However, I am perplexed and troubled by some of my colleague's statements and feel it is important to include some additional information for the Record. First, on June 26, the Agriculture Committee held a hearing on H.R. 1904 and many of our colleagues, including myself, took the time to attend the hearing, listen to the testimony, and participate in the discussions. Mr. Bingaman could have done the same, but chose not to. In the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, we then held a hearing on July 22. The purpose of this hearing was to examine the impacts of fires, insects and disease on forest lands. And we looked at processes for implementing hazardous fuels reduction projects more expeditiously. The committee also considered S. 1314, the Collaborative Forest Health Act, Mr. Bingaman's bill; H.R. 1904 the Healthy Forest Restoration Act; as well as other related legislation that addresses these issues. During that hearing, Senator Bingaman hardly even mentioned his bill and had very few questions about H.R. 1904. In Mr. Bingaman's statement to the Senate, he brought up having concerns about many of the issues covered at the hearing. If he had so many questions, I have to wonder why he waited until now to ask them? Two Senators who did engage at the hearing, Senator Wyden and Senator Feinstein, asked probing questions that helped the bipartisan group, hosted by Mr. Cochran, find a commonsense solution. Second, Mr. Bingaman's staff was invited to the table, at the point discussions of the major issues began in earnest and were never excluded from being a part of the discussions that developed the compromise amendment. In fact, his staff attended several of the negotiations sessions, but chose to stop being a part of the discussions. At that time in the discussions, all the major issues related to Title I--old growth, judicial review, large tree retention--were still in flux and any contributions they would have made could have been a fruitful part of the discussion. But, again, they chose not to participate. In addition, his staff attended the all-staff briefing once the compromise amendment was agreed to by the bipartisan group of Senators participating in the discussions and Mr. Bingaman's staff was very active in that briefing. And it is my understanding that they asked many of the questions and received answers for the issues Mr. Bingaman now is questioning. It is one thing to disagree about the approach we have taken and offer amendments to modify that approach and another to foster needless delay. If any of my colleagues would like a personal briefing on the compromise amendment, and the process in which it was developed, I am certain that the cosponsors of this amendment would join me in sitting down with anyone who would like to be a part of this discussion. While Senator Bingaman has supported active management and wants to be a part of the solution, it would appear that he is taking a play out of the environmentalist's handbook and is delaying the process through stalling, such as asking for a hearing on the amendment. I believe the Senate should not get into the habit of holding hearings on amendments because a Senator chose not to participate in the process. Again, this is a move the radical environmental community uses time and time again to prevent hazardous fuel reduction projects from going forward. In the vernacular of forest appeals, Mr. Bingaman has stayed involved just enough to meet the standing requirements, he has held his water till the appeal period is just about over and now he is launching his appeal. The question now is, what now? The environmental community usually files a lawsuit when they don't see the results they wanted. Will Senator Bingaman try to filibuster this important legislation? Or will he step forward to offer amendments to make the modifications he believes need to be made. There have been two unanimous consent requests offered that included the opportunity to offer amendments on the very issues that the Senator brought up today. Yet he has objected both times. A third unanimous consent request that is even more broad was offered this morning. It is time to move on and proceed to a debate on the floor of the Senate. This is important legislation that needs to be signed into law so that we can start to address the hazardous fuels problems that are threatening our communities. This legislation will result in a more public, expedited, process for moving hazardous fuels projects through the NEPA process. It provides for the development of a new and improved predecisional protest process for projects authorized under this bill. The new process will replace the highly contentious, time consuming, appeals process that currently delays many forest health projects. It directs that all preliminary injunctions be reviewed every 60 days, with the opportunity for the parties to update the judges on changes in conditions so the court may respond to those changes if needed, something that Senators Wyden and Feinstein desired. Finally, it reminds the courts that when weighing the equities that they should balance the impact to the ecosystem of the short and long- term effects of undertaking the project against the short and long-term effects of not undertaking the project. I am sure there are communities in New Mexico that would welcome this balancing of the harms. It is time for the Senate to take action on this issue. I ask my colleagues to join me in bringing this legislation up for consideration.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I and my colleague need to be off the floor by 10:30 a.m. Will the Chair alert me when 5 minutes have passed?

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I am here this morning to talk about the reality of U.S. prosperity and how it is so closely tied to a reliable, affordable energy supply. The U.S. economy has suffered for the last 3 years because of severe energy price fluctuations. Energy supplies have often been barely adequate and, in most instances, in high demand. I believe failure to enact an Energy bill will have dire consequences on all Americans, especially our economy, our workforce, and those who are building the American dream. There is a growing sense of urgency amongst American manufacturers, small businesses, and others that they simply cannot remain competitive unless we have enough reasonably priced energy to meet their demands at a time when certain costs in our energy sector are skyrocketing, and that, in my opinion, has been a major factor in contributing to the prolonging of a recession. Rising fuel costs helped cause the deepening of the recession in the past four recessions we have recorded: In the 1970s, in the early 1980s, in 1990 and 1991, and now the 2000 recession. When we look backward, when we talk with economists who study this issue, all of them will tie it to a spike in energy prices and the cost of energy rippling across the economy. Abundant, affordable energy stimulates economic growth. Fluctuating energy prices have cost America many jobs in the last 3 years. The manufacturing sector has experienced over the past 2 years consecutive job losses, having lost over 2 million jobs. The National Manufacturing Association said that it has been caused in significant part to energy price spikes in 2000. During the winter of 2000 and 2001, natural gas prices skyrocketed. Curtailments became common in the Northeast and in the upper Midwest. Skyrocketing natural gas prices of last winter went even higher than 2 years ago. Now many companies that have tried to secure this gas are shutting down simply because they can't afford to blend it into their stream. They can't afford the costs, and their product produced by it becomes noncompetitive. As a result, significant job loss has occurred. The U.S. chemical, plastics, and fertilizer industries have been among the hardest hit, largely due to their dependency on affordable natural gas in the face of fierce international competition. Electric utilities continue to build natural gas generation. Houses continue to be built and are plugged into the gas lines. The Energy bill we are working on will both save jobs and create jobs by bringing affordable natural gas out of Alaska. The Presiding Officer certainly knows about this. Some 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas can be brought to the lower 48 States. That and the construction of that pipeline could well create over 400,000 jobs. Federal royalties could flow from it at $48 billion, a new Federal revenue to reduce our deficit and again create jobs. The Energy bill we are completing in conference calls for the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development in new energy technologies. This investment creates new jobs in engineering, math, chemistry, physics, science, and all related fields are tied into this kind of investment, this kind of development. The bill increases America's stake in nuclear energy, encouraging the construction of a Federal advanced nuclear reactor for the production of electricity and hydrogen and new technology, driving that industry forward and, once again, allowing America to lead the world in this kind of technology, this kind of advancement: Clean, manageable, safe forms of electrical production. Our bill will facilitate the expansion and the modernization of our national electrical grid. It will create additional opportunities for investments in pipelines and transmission lines and encourage the private investment in electricity transmission--all this creating more jobs. The Energy bill will provide $2 billion in investment and clean coal technology, creating engineering and research jobs. The investment also protects existing coal mining jobs and processing jobs to ensure the longevity of the American coal industry. We protect jobs in the gas and oil industry by encouraging deep well exploration of oil and natural gas at a time when domestic oil production is dropping and that level of production is flat.

Mr. CRAIG. I will proceed for 1 more minute. By stimulating our production of oil and gas, we not only produce the energy necessary to fuel our economy, we not only protect tens of thousands of jobs, but we will create abundant new jobs. Lastly, we had Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who spoke before the Energy Committee, both of the House and the Senate, and he said: It is essential that we do not lose sight of the policies needed to ensure long-term economic growth. One of the most important objectives of these policies should be an assured availability of energy . . . Developments in energy markets will remain central in determining the longer run health of our nation's economy. We all understand that. Now is the opportunity and the time to finalize a national energy policy, to pass it out of the Congress and put it on our President's desk. It is our future. It is one of the greatest job creators on which the Senate will ever vote. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Yes.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from New Mexico be granted 2 minutes, not to be taken from my time. I think it is critical that he speak to the issue of the energy conference.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I had hoped that today I would be on the floor debating with my colleagues the issue of Healthy Forests and H.R. 1904. When the chairman of the Agriculture Committee brought the bill to the floor today asking unanimous consent to move forward, there was an objection heard from the other side. I must tell you it is phenomenally frustrating to me that we have worked on this issue in a totally bipartisan mode since the day it came from the House and, yet, there is still objection from the other side on this issue. The bill brought to the floor today, chaired and lead-sponsored by the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Senator Cochran, has Senator Daschle, Senator Domenici, Senator Wyden, my colleague from Idaho, Senator Crapo, who chairs the Forestry Subcommittee on Agriculture, Senators Feinstein, Lincoln, Burns, Johnson, McCain, and Craig, who chairs the Forestry Subcommittee in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, together on this issue. Yet the other side is saying no. Is it because the fire season is over? Is it because of the rains starting to hit the forests of the Great Basin West, and the smoke clouds that filled the air of the West this summer are depleted? Is that why there is objection now to this legislation? I and others have been on this floor for the last 3 years pleading with the Congress of the United States, and especially this body, to craft a forest health bill that allows us to begin some active management of our forests, to change the character of our forests, and to improve their health. The House acted this year. The bill came to the Agriculture Committee. My colleague from Idaho, Senator Crapo, chaired the subcommittee, and the work began under the leadership of Senator Cochran. They produced a very good bill. We looked at it in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. It is not that our committee has not seen it. You darn right we have seen it; for 3 years, this issue has been before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and my forestry subcommittee. Now the ranking member, Senator Wyden of Oregon, and I--myself chairing--have agreed this is the bill that ought to come to the floor. Yet we are still being told that, no, somehow it hasn't been vetted enough and somehow there is no understanding of this issue. There is a lot of understanding of this issue. There is a fundamental disagreement between those who want the forests left alone to burn, to let Mother Nature take her course, and those of us who have said the economies of the West, the watersheds of the West, the wildlife of the West, and of all of our public land forests deserve a policy of active management so our forests can return to a state of good health, so our watersheds can produce clear and valuable water for our urban environments, and so the wildlife can flourish; they deserve that. Yet it is being denied by a select few who would see it in an entirely different way. The President began to speak out on this issue a couple of years ago. He stood in the ashes hip deep in Oregon, where fires ravaged nearly a million acres, and said that somehow this country has to change its policy. Guess what. Eighty-seven percent of Americans in a recent poll agree that something is wrong in our national forests. It looks something like this: 79 percent of the folks in the West say: Got to fix it. In the Midwest, 82 percent say: Got a problem, ought to fix it. In the South, 84 percent say--and this is the area the chairman of the Agriculture Committee is from--got a problem in our public forests, ought to fix it. And the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Senator Cochran, set out to do that, along with the Senator from Idaho, Mr. Crapo, and myself. This is a national issue today. It is not an issue of the elitist or the select few of the environmental community who say nothing should happen on our public lands; that they should be a preserve only managed by Mother Nature. We have seen what Mother Nature has done in the last 5 years. She has burned 3 million to 5 million acres a year. She has destroyed watersheds. She has destroyed wildlife. In many instances, she has destroyed thousands of homes, and she has cost Americans their lives. Many Americans have died in the last few years just trying to fight these unusually hot and devastatingly damaging wildfires that have swept the West. Here are the facts. The American public understands these fires are destroying our forests. They understand that we need to do more thinning. Eighty-three percent of the wildland firefighters have told this Congress and the public that the most important step we can take to increase their safety--is to thin these forests. Because the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society and other radical environmental groups want no timber harvesting in our Federal forests, we are destroying 6 to 7 million acres of land each year--6 to 7 million acres of wildlife habitat are being destroyed each year. The bipartisan amendment that was reached as a compromise with 13 of my colleagues responds to the needs of the American public. It responds to those who are concerned about the loss of wildlife habitat. It responds to the wildland firefighters who tell us we need to increase the number of acres thinned each year. And, most importantly it responds to the needs of our forests. We have seen communities destroyed by fire and important wildlife habitats destroyed. Yet we, in this Senate, fiddle. I am tired of our fiddling around. We all know that this body must address this issue. We all know the that the bipartisan amendment is a good one that is fair and balanced and good for our forests. Last year, all we asked for was an up-or-down vote on our amendment, but the minority would not allow that. This year, a few Members seem to be saying no debate, no vote, and yes to the destruction of or forests. This simply has to stop.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, that is the issue before us today. It is an issue that this Senate ought to debate. I plead with my colleagues on the other side to work with us to get this bill to the floor for purposes of debate and passage.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of myself and Senators Durbin, Crapo, Feingold, Sununu, and Bingaman, to introduce the Security and Freedom Ensured Act of 2003, which we call the SAFE Act. This bill is aimed at addressing some specific concerns that have been raised about the USA PATRIOT Act. We believe this is a measured, reasonable, and appropriate response that would ensure the liberties of law-abiding individuals are protected in our Nation's fight against terrorism, without in any way impeding that fight. Let me say at the outset that I voted in favor of the USA PATRIOT Act. I believed then, and still do, that it was the right thing to do in the wake of the terrible and unprecedented attacks on our Nation on September 11, 2001. I would also like to express my gratitude to those brave men and women who put their lives on the line every day to protect the American people from further attacks by would-be terrorists and criminals. The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security should be commended for the dramatic progress they are making in detecting, pursuing, and stopping those who pose a threat to our Nation and our people. Even so, the USA PATRIOT Act is not a perfect law, and it is no criticism of those who are so ably waging the war against terrorism to suggest that it may be in order to amend some aspects of that law. The SAFE Act is intended to do just that: make some commonsense changes that help to safeguard our freedoms, without sacrificing our security. It focuses on areas of activity that have been particularly controversial: delayed notice warrants, which are also referred to as ``sneak and peek'' warrants; wiretaps that do not require specificity as to either person or place; the impact of the new law on libraries; and nationwide search warrants. Our bill would amend, not eliminate these tools or repeal the USA PATRIOT Act in these areas. I spend a lot of time on the ground in my home State of Idaho, and regardless of the pride Idahoans have in the success of the war on terrorism, many of them continue to raise concerns about the tools being used in that war. Admittedly, a lot of misinformation has been spread about the USA PATRIOT Act, and I applaud the Administration for working to correct that misinformation. However, not all of the concerns about the law are unfounded or misguided, and I strongly believe they deserve a proper airing in Congress. Furthermore, one has only to look at the cosponsors of the SAFE Act to see that these concerns are not unique to Idahoans--they are shared by a wide regional and political spectrum. This morning, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced a series of hearings on how our anti-terrorism laws are working. As a member of that committee, I look forward to the opportunity of exploring these issues in detail and finding solutions for any problems we discover, possibly including the SAFE Act. The changes this bill makes are not numerous or sweeping, but they are significant. I hope my colleagues will agree and will support the legislation we are introducing today. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of myself and Senators Durbin, Crapo, Feingold, Sununu, and Bingaman, to introduce the Security and Freedom Ensured Act of 2003, which we call the SAFE Act. This bill is aimed at addressing some specific concerns that have been raised about the USA PATRIOT Act. We believe this is a measured, reasonable, and appropriate response that would ensure the liberties of law-abiding individuals are protected in our Nation's fight against terrorism, without in any way impeding that fight. Let me say at the outset that I voted in favor of the USA PATRIOT Act. I believed then, and still do, that it was the right thing to do in the wake of the terrible and unprecedented attacks on our Nation on September 11, 2001. I would also like to express my gratitude to those brave men and women who put their lives on the line every day to protect the American people from further attacks by would-be terrorists and criminals. The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security should be commended for the dramatic progress they are making in detecting, pursuing, and stopping those who pose a threat to our Nation and our people. Even so, the USA PATRIOT Act is not a perfect law, and it is no criticism of those who are so ably waging the war against terrorism to suggest that it may be in order to amend some aspects of that law. The SAFE Act is intended to do just that: make some commonsense changes that help to safeguard our freedoms, without sacrificing our security. It focuses on areas of activity that have been particularly controversial: delayed notice warrants, which are also referred to as ``sneak and peek'' warrants; wiretaps that do not require specificity as to either person or place; the impact of the new law on libraries; and nationwide search warrants. Our bill would amend, not eliminate these tools or repeal the USA PATRIOT Act in these areas. I spend a lot of time on the ground in my home State of Idaho, and regardless of the pride Idahoans have in the success of the war on terrorism, many of them continue to raise concerns about the tools being used in that war. Admittedly, a lot of misinformation has been spread about the USA PATRIOT Act, and I applaud the Administration for working to correct that misinformation. However, not all of the concerns about the law are unfounded or misguided, and I strongly believe they deserve a proper airing in Congress. Furthermore, one has only to look at the cosponsors of the SAFE Act to see that these concerns are not unique to Idahoans--they are shared by a wide regional and political spectrum. This morning, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced a series of hearings on how our anti-terrorism laws are working. As a member of that committee, I look forward to the opportunity of exploring these issues in detail and finding solutions for any problems we discover, possibly including the SAFE Act. The changes this bill makes are not numerous or sweeping, but they are significant. I hope my colleagues will agree and will support the legislation we are introducing today. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Will the Senator yield?