Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the other point is, we have to import about 30 percent of our saw wood timber today from Canada. And what that means is they are going out and harvesting like crazy up in Canada to supply the American market, because we are not harvesting at historic levels off of our Federal lands. I think, frankly, we had to make some reductions in timber harvesting. I am not opposed to that. What I am opposed to is that we have it down now to a level that I think is clearly sustainable, and we are going to have this amendment today that will even take it down further, which is going to drive up the price of lumber. And it is not well thought out. It cuts into road reconstruction money in the name of cutting out money for new roads, and it just misrepresents the facts. I have never seen, in my entire career, and I have seen a lot of distortions in my entire career up here, believe me, but this one, what this amendment says it does and what it actually does, there is more distance between this and anything I have seen. It is not right. I think a lot of Members here have been misled, and if they actually knew the facts they would be voting against this amendment.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. DICKS. Another point, Mr. Chairman, if we do not have roads, if we have got forest fires out there, we have got to be able to get the men and women who fight these forest fires into those woods. And the road program is much less dense than it is on the BLM lands, much less dense than it is on private lands. This is done very carefully. This is not being done by James Watt. This is being done by the Clinton-Gore-Babbit-Glickman administration. Jim Lyons, former staff member here on the Committee on Agriculture, is in charge of the Forest Service program. He is a committed environmentalist. He has said that the amendment that will be offered by Mr. Kennedy and the gentleman from Illinois, [Mr. Porter] goes too far. It will cut into the reconstruction of roads. It will cause environmental damage, and it will require 400 to 500 people in the Forest Service to be laid off. It is a meat-ax approach to dealing with this problem. Then, of course, we have some small amount of roads that are built with appropriated funds, 165 miles of reconstruction. This is going out and fixing up those roads again, and only 8 miles with appropriated funds are used for new construction. And, in fact, down here at the bottom, we have the obliteration of roads; 1,500 miles of roads in those Forest Service lands are being taken out, the ones that are no longer necessary, and they are being taken out and replaced. To my friends and colleagues who think that we are doing too much in terms of timber harvesting, let me show them what is happening in this country in terms of harvesting of timber off the Federal timberlands. This is the miles of roads. This is the historical Federal Road Program. And we used to do, here was 8,870 miles. That was in 1985. Then we went down to 6,545 miles. Here it is, in 1995, we are down to 2,868 miles. We are down to 2,652 miles, of which only 18 percent are new construction. What has happened on timber sales in this country, we used to do 10 billion board feet off the Federal timberlands. This year the administration budget request is for 3.7 billion board feet. That is over the entire country. If the Kennedy-Porter amendment is adopted, that will be reduced down to 1.7 billion board feet. What does that mean? That means what we have done in essence is create a shortage, a shortage of timber, a shortage of lumber. What that means is when people go out to build a house or build an apartment, the cost of that goes up. That is why the home builders have been urging the Congress to at least do the 3.7 billion in the Clinton administration budget, but not to cut it back to 1.7, which is the effect of this amendment. So this is a very major issue. I hope Members will be not stampeded. I know that the environmental community is making this their No. 1 priority. But please listen to the members on the committee who have had some experience, who know something about it, who know a little bit about this issue. I want Members to know that we have cut back about as far as I think we should cut back in terms of timber harvesting. As I said, in my forest at the Olympic National Forest in the State of Washington, we have gone from 250 million board feet down to 10 million. This is all done by thinning sales now. So we have taken a huge cut. But to kill the road program in my judgment is a terrible mistake.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to substitute, I was always a substitute, it seems like, for the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates], and to talk a little bit about this Interior appropriations bill. Mr. Chairman, I certainly want everyone here to know that I have enjoyed the 21 years that I have had an opportunity to work with the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Ralph Regula], who is the new chairman on this committee and has served for many years, and worked under the gentleman from Illinois, [Mr. Sid Yates] when he was chairman. We have a very good bipartisan committee that tries to work together on these important natural resource issues. Obviously, many on our side today are quite unhappy about the fact that we did not or will not get an opportunity to have an up-or-down vote on the National Endowment for the Arts, but we had a vote on the rule. We lost by one vote. Now we are going to consider this bill. I also believe that there is a lot of good that comes out of this bill. The Interior appropriations bill provides funding for the National Park Service. It does provide funding and has in the past for the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, for the Forest Service, for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, for the Bureau of Mines, for many of the energy conservation programs and alternative energy programs of the Department of Energy. So this is a very positive piece of legislation. It also provides funding, as I mentioned, for the Indian tribes in this country. We do have a trust responsibility to those tribes. It is a serious responsibility. We also fund the Fish and Wildlife Service. Of course, we have had debates on this floor over the Endangered Species Act. I would say to my colleagues here, there is probably not a congressional district in America that has been more affected by the Endangered Species Act than the Sixth District in the State of Washington. I have seen the harvest on our forests there go down by about 95 percent, maybe 98 percent, because of the requirements of protection for the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet. The President's forest plan is in place in the Northwest. We have received funding under this plan to try and do something about watershed restoration, watershed analysis, ecosystem protection and management. All of that comes out of the Interior appropriations bill. I want Members to know that I think that we have an outstanding chairman and an outstanding ranking member in the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates], and an excellent staff that has done a lot of very good and positive work on this legislation. One of the issues that will come up today is the question of forest roads. This is a very controversial issue. Last year we had a major debate on this issue on the floor of the House of Representatives. I want to tell my colleagues, I feel that I did not do as good a job on this issue last year as I needed to. We won, we prevailed, but I do not think I explained it as well as I should have explained it. I worked up a little chart here and I would like my colleagues to see it. It is a small chart. I think they will understand what it is. This program here lays out the Forest Road Program that we have for the country. Of that, of the money that is being spent this year on the Forest Road Program, there will be 2,000 miles of road reconstruction. This is going out and fixing up existing roads so they do not cause environmental problems, so that they do not cave in, so there is not siltation. They have to replace the culverts. They have to fix these roads. Then, there are only 480 miles, this is under purchase or credit, only 480 miles of new roads being built, and most of those roads are short roads into areas where there has already been timber harvesting. I will bet no one in this place knows this number, 90 percent of the roads, 90 percent of what is happening on the roads is for recreational purposes. People go in and this is the access point to go into our wilderness areas, to go into our lakes, to go into our camping areas. It is recreation. And these roads are very, very important for that purpose.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. DICKS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I had the honor of serving on the Subcommittee on Interior for 21 years, both under the chairmanship of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates] and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula]. To me this is one of the saddest days that I can remember. I believe that the National Endowment for the Arts deserves the support of the Congress and of the American people. I believe that if we go back to 1964 and we see the Endowment created and we look at the growth in funding from the private sector, it matches the growth of our Federal support for the endowment. I believe that over 100,000 grants have been made and less than 50 have been controversial. When we think of the arts, we think of controversy. I think that is an incredible record. I urge my colleagues today to support the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley] and the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates]. Let us defeat this rule. Let us send them back to the Committee on Rules and come out here with an amendment that allows us to vote up or down on the NEA. This block grant thing is nothing but a fraud, in my opinion.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. You got it, baby.

Mr. DICKS. I would urge the gentleman to come up to the room upstairs.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. And I will.

Mr. DICKS. I thank the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I have no objection to the amendment on this side. In fact, the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi] wanted to be here to speak on it, but had to be in a markup in the Committee on Appropriations. I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman yielding. We have no problem with his amendment. We have supported it enthusiastically in the past, but the chairman is correct; we have to understand there will be times when we will have to do something that might breach the amendment.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, as the gentleman well knows, it is in the supplemental appropriations. Congress has appropriated the money. They are working on the regulations. We just talked to Mr. Hamre's office, the Comptroller of the Department of Defense, and they think they will have the regulations finished by the end of July in order to get the money out.

Mr. DICKS. We will certainly follow up on that issue.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I think what the gentleman is most concerned about is getting the money released and doing it in the proper way, and we will do everything we can to help him achieve his objective.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman that we are now checking at the Defense Department about the $20 million. And the gentleman, I think, has made a very important case here.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Traficant has offered a similar provision in years past with a goal of ensuring that the intelligence community maximizes its purchase of American-made products. That is a goal I support. We have worked with the gentleman from Ohio on other occasions to preserve the spirit of his amendment in conference even though the committee is aware that the record of the intelligence community on the procurement of U.S. products is exemplary. We will do so again this year and we are pleased to accept the amendment.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant], my friend and distinguished colleague who was mentioned on the Imus show this morning.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to my colleague, the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Sanford Bishop, a new member of the committee and a person who has spent considerable time and effort on intelligence matters.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I cannot tell the gentleman that.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentlewoman on her statement. One of the things that I hope as we go through the rest of this process is that we can blend together our great respect for the all-source analyst, but also recognize that we have the finest national technical means in the world in terms of gathering intelligence. That should not be undervalued. In fact, I think what we need to do is blend these capabilities of human intelligence and our national technical means, and remember the gulf war, where we had a very major problem in the dissemination of imagery. I just made a visit to Molesworth in England and saw the improvements in dissemination of imagery to the people who are serving us so well in Bosnia. I have been to the CAOC, the all-source center in Italy, have seen the combination of all these intelligence sources, from satellites to UAV's, human, everything coming into one room, and then being made immediately available to the battlefield commander in Bosnia. So I just want the House to know that a lot of very important improvements have been made. I just want to make certain that we do not, in the rush to cut various programs, cut some of these things that are crucial both in signals and in imagery to giving us the kind of advantage that our military commanders need. This is very, very important to keep a balanced approach.