Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentlewoman's yielding to me. It is not like there is not a way for Pacific Lumber to deal with the Federal Government on this issue. They have sat down, but they have never negotiated in good faith to get a habitat conservation plan. Now, under a habitat conservation plan, they get 100 years of certainty about harvesting timber on their lands, and for that they give some protection to those species on the lands. Most of the protection for species in the Northwest will be done on Federal lands, so this is the constructive thing to do. Companies in my State of Washington, Weyerhaeuser, Plum Creek, Murray Pacific, ITT, right here, all have worked out their problems with the Federal Government and the Fish and Wildlife Service in a negotiated settlement. But, again, Pacific Lumber has refused to do that, and it is because they think that either by going to court and filing a taking suit or by coming to Congress that they can get legislation enacted that takes away their responsibility. Every other company out there is doing this. We have never done this before under the Endangered Species Act, and I think it would be a terrible precedent to set. I appreciate the gentlewoman's support of my amendment, and I hope that we can pass it here today.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman will continue to yield, the gentleman is worried, the fisherman is worried that if we take the Riggs approach, instead of being threatened, the species will be endangered and there will be even more onerous restrictions put on the fisherman. That is why he is worried, because it has an adverse effect on that whole segment of the economy if it is endangered.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, would the gentlewoman tell me where that gentleman that wrote the letter is from?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman continue to yield?

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

Mr. DICKS. I worked on a farm for two summers.

Mr. DICKS. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. If I were Mr. Hurwitz, I would be working with the Fish and Wildlife Service to do a multispecies habitat conservation plan like Murray Pacific, Simpson, Weyerhaeuser, and other people are doing in order to have a negotiated settlement of this issue so that he can get an incidental take permit and we can protect the owls and the murrelets. The only problem here for the other people, by the way, there is a notion here that when you have a designation of critical habitat, you cannot do anything on your private lands. That is not accurate. You can go in and continue to log, but you cannot go in and take one of the species. If you are going to take a species, then you have got to get a habitat conservation plan, which is completely understandable. So there is a way for Mr. Hurwitz to proceed, but he chooses not to because he wants to bring lawsuits saying that this whole process is a constitutional taking of his property. I guarantee I will work with any of the people that are here from the Congressman's district, with the people in the Fish and Wildlife Service who are doing HCP's to see if we can get them taken care of. I will be glad to work with the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs] to help the people who legitimately need help.

Mr. DICKS. This has not been cleared with us. I would have to object at this point.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, we are not there yet.

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

Mr. DICKS. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Chairman, could the gentleman from Colorado tell us what the point of order is?

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Then do not treat that as a cost of the program.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, this is where the gentleman is wrong. Let us say, instead of taking that money and putting it to the national forest fund which takes care of the payment to counties, let us say we put all of that money into the Treasury and then appropriated it for those specific purposes. Then the gentleman would say that the amount going into the Treasury, instead of being $300 million, would be roughly $1.3 billion, and then that would have been the return compared to the cost of the program. The rest of it went to legitimate government purposes. The fact that we took it out of the program and took care of those purposes without sending it to the Treasury is where I think the gentleman confuses himself. Those are legitimate government purposes.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I would just say, the fact is the program the gentleman is cutting by $30 million is the program called timber purchaser credits, where the timber companies build the roads and then they bid less for the timber to compensate themselves for the roads that have been constructed, so I would say the gentleman is cutting that program by 60 percent. That is hardly a de minimis act. He ought to be adding money to the program, not cutting it.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from California [Mr. Pombo] be allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.

Mr. DICKS. Did somebody object?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from California [Mr. Pombo] be allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. DICKS. He is taking that out of the program.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, let me just say this: The gentleman is cutting the timber purchaser credit program by 60 percent.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, I would say that at the end of the day we put $300 million in the Treasury. I think that is remarkable. I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to correct something I said. I wanted to say, and I want to make clear, it is 1.7 billion board feet reduction from 4.9 to 3.2. It will cost us hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. It is 1.7 million if we do not have these roads. We have to have the road structure in order to do these things.