Mark Hatfield

Mr. HATFIELD

Mr. HATFIELD. I thank the Chair. Amendment No. 3495, As Modified

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was rejected.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I yield back all the time of Senator McConnell at his direction, and I yield back whatever time I might have. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HATFIELD. I thank the Chair. Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.

Mr. HATFIELD. I yield.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. Let us put our staffs together, sooner rather than later, to try to work out some strategy.

Mr. HATFIELD. I would like to thank the Senator from Kansas, Mr. President, for her very astute and calmly stated remarks on a very, very tough issue. I appreciate her contribution. Mr. President, this is a unanimous-consent agreement that is cleared on both sides. I ask unanimous consent that there be 1 hour for debate on the pending McConnell amendment, to be equally divided in the usual way, and that following the conclusion or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote on or in relation to the McConnell amendment, and that no amendment be in order to the McConnell amendment.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to send an amendment to the desk that has been cleared on both sides that does not appear on the list that we have adopted.

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

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I urge its adoption.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, the Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin] has presented an amendment that deals with a mutual concern of issues. I am grateful that the Senator put together a way to deal with these issues. The only problem is that under the current parliamentary situation, this is an appropriations measure, and, as the Senator realizes, out of this rather extensive amendment, which is almost 100 pages, there is a lot of legislation in the amendment as well as earmarks relating to appropriations. I would have to, probably, raise a point of order against the amendment being considered on this vehicle. Both from the standpoint of our personal working relationship, that I treasure, and our mutual interest that we share on so many of these issues, I would not like to do that, and I would like to also assure the Senator that I am willing to cooperate and work with him to find some suitable alternative to this particular vehicle. It is fragile enough, without adding more problems to it, in terms of so much legislation. So, I just say I deeply regret the situation I am in, but in order to move this bill on through to a conference with the House and, hopefully, to the signature of the President, I wonder if the Senator would consider the possibility of postponing this action to a time when we could join together in partnership?

Mr. HATFIELD

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, first of all, I commend my colleague for her keen interest and her willingness to become involved in one of the great issues that confronts the Pacific Northwest--not only the Pacific Northwest, but the entire country, and not just for the entire country, but now something that is an issue that is worldwide. I want to just say briefly that we get ourselves oftentimes so focused on our own geographic focus of interest, we sometimes forget the impact of policies that affect the entire world. A group of us went to Siberia to see the timber situation in Siberia this last August and to review the cutting policies of that part of the world. Due to the stalemate and the gridlock in the Northwest, which has succeeded pretty much in eliminating this Northwestern part of the United States which is, worldwide, the greatest productive area for softwood timber in the world, effectively eliminating it from the area of supply for one of the great demands in our own country, housing--housing for many people: poor, middle income, rich, everybody. The only product for housing that really is a renewable product that is grown by free solar energy and that can be replaced and renewed, renewed, and renewed, as it is a thesis of our whole timber policy, is a renewable resource. Let me just say that we are, today, witnessing what I call a modern type of environmental imperialism, much the same as the 18th and 19th century imperialism of Britain and the European powers. For what we have not found available, in part due to our own policies on the home front, we are going to the rest of the world, to exploit the rest of the world--the rest of the world that has no policies in place. Siberia has a great hunger for hard cash. Let me just say that this is a reality. We have 10 small mills in the Northwest consortium, and in the 10 small mills--6 from the State of Oregon--they have gone in to make purchases of Siberian timber because of our own lack of supply. In Siberia, there is a multiplier of 15. What we can produce in the Northwest on 100,000 acres takes 1.5 million acres of timber in Siberia--1.5 million. It seems to me that we have to begin to lift our eyes to not only the environmental needs of our own area within this country, and in this country on this continent, but also the whole world. The same is happening in South America. The demand has not been met in our own country, and, as a consequence, we are looking to other markets in South America. Again, let me emphasize, even our Canadian friends have not fully implemented a national timber policy governing the way in which timber is managed in Canada. The pressure is on Canada. Our 13 Southern pine States, mostly made up of small wood lots, are stripping their lands to meet the supply. That is just one facet of what we do here and its environmental impact on the rest of the world. I think the day has come when we have to take seriously the right of the United States to go to the rest of the world and exploit and extrapolate their raw materials to feed our own need here domestically. Now, I think also that it is very important to recognize that these pictures that we see absolutely chill my blood--about the same as if I went to a slaughterhouse to watch sausage being made would chill my blood. But I still like sausage. I am a tree planter. I do not know how many people in this Chamber planted trees. I have planted 1,800 of them on 5 acres of seedlings. I do not like to see the process of providing us housing material or beautiful paneled walls in our offices, and the other myriad of ways in which we use the timber product. And I think, also, our history is very, very limited. We have had some floods in the Pacific Northwest. There are those who are trying to say those floods were tied directly to timber harvests. I think in some areas that is true. But to say that the floods were created solely, or exclusively, or in the main by this is not historically accurate. The greatest flood we had was in 1891. We were not doing much timbering in 1891 in my State, nor I do not think in the State of Washington either. We also have a short history when, in World War II, the National Government said, ``We have to have timber for the war effort, and we are not using our Federal timber. We are asking the private timber landowners to produce the timber now for the cause of the war, and we will replace it from Federal timber after the war.'' That is an important factor in this history of timber in our Pacific Northwest. A lot of people like to go around and say, ``Look how they have stripped the land of the timber.'' That was because we had locked up our own Federal land timber and, for the sake of the war effort, calling on people's patriotism to strip their land for that timber because it was faster to be gathered and cut, rather than having to wait to build roads into the Federal area. I want to now just recall something in 1989. That is not that long ago. In 1989, Mr. President, Speaker Foley, Congressman Les AuCoin, and I called a timber summit to face the problem we had at that time of a shutdown of our Federal forests for any timber harvesting. In 1989. It is very interesting because in July 1989 the Ancient Forest Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups, proposed their own short-term timber supply solution. What did the Ancient Forest Alliance propose? They proposed a 9.6 billion board feet harvest--a 9.6 billion board feet harvest in 1989 and 1990, a 2-year period. That was to take place on the Federal forest lands and the BLM lands in Oregon and Washington alone. They had other parts to their proposal, such as minimizing the fragmentation of old growth using the Forest Service definition and PNW-447, or regional guide, and protecting the spotted owl. These were all components. But can you imagine a 9.6 billion board feet proposed cut from the Ancient Forest Alliance? History changes. And this is obviously another example of change. But let us keep a continuity of that history, and let us look at all parts of that history, and let us remember that at that particular time we had just left the period when the so-called ASQ, the allowable cut, was 5.3 billion board feet annually from the Pacific North region, never having reached that level of cutting; the highest was 4.8. But that has changed, too. Now, let us be very straightforward and historically correct on this. No one should be surprised about the rider. The administration negotiated every dot and every comma in that rider, fully cognizant of its meaning and fully understanding of what it proposed to do and what it proposed not to do. It was a rider to what? An administration bill, a rescissions package. The administration, let us face it, had a higher value on getting the votes for that rescissions package than they did at that moment in negotiating a rider on timber. That is a fact, too. I was one of the negotiators. So for people to say somewhat that this is a great surprise, that all of a sudden we opened it up and here was the fine print, that is not true. Everybody that was involved in that, including the administration, understood precisely what it said in that. Now intervene the next step: A Federal district judge and a suit that he had to rule on relating to his interpretation of this rider. Now, when it is said that Senator Gorton and I found that it was not the best rider or the best effort we could have made, or whatever, it was the intervening interpretation by a Federal district judge that caused anybody and everybody who understood what the rider was and that it had gone too far. Now, let me say that the administration then began to discuss and negotiate a modification to this rider. They asked for five points. First of all, before I give the five points, what are we talking about? We are talking about contracts that had been negotiated in the past on the basis of the forest procedures, on the basis of all of the in-place regulations. Nobody has done this in the dark. All of those were fully operative and negotiated, and they were fully publicized, as all timber sales are. In other words, we moved down not to the subject of timber sale, but to the right of contract. Three points of contract: Offer, consideration, and acceptance. I learned that in my one and only year of law school. My colleague graduated; I did not. So we are talking about a legal instrument that is fully enforceable under our American jurisprudence system. Consequently, we are talking about a contract. When they say, ``Well, any substitute sale has to be agreed to by both parties,'' of course, you cannot violate a contract. Two parties had entered the contract, and if you are going to modify that contract, you have to have the two parties agree to the modification. This is not anything strange or weighted in the favor of one side or the other. It is a fundamental law of contracts. So we have these contracts, or a $150 million value of contracts, that the Federal Government entered into in good faith, and the buyer, in good faith, with consideration. OK. What were these points then? The administration said, ``Your language is too narrow, as it has been interpreted,'' and so forth. The language was, in effect, and I want to quote it: The administration has the ability to offer replacement for those areas where a marbled murrelet is known to be nesting. Oh, did we have long discussions with the White House on how do you define the presence of a marbled murrelet. They are reclusive kind of birds. If you find an eggshell, is that sufficient evidence? If you heard one fly over? So we said, ``nesting.'' And we said the replacement for those areas and those sales, if you found a marbled murrelet nesting, could then be set aside and replaced in like kind as a substitute sale. They said those were restrictions that they felt could not produce the best environmentally sound replacement policy. Two points: Expanded beyond the marbled murrelet, and do not make it replacement sale in kind. That would require an old growth, or no growth, or second growth, or whatever. So, consequently, we lifted both of those out of the rider modification. In effect, we said, for any reason that you feel it would be environmentally unsound to pursue a sale, set it aside, and you do not have to replace it in kind. Replace it in volume with a mutual agreement because there were two parties to this contract. We have no other way to do this except to legislate it and invalidate an existing contract. I do not think the Congress wants to get into that business. All right. Those were two issues that we cleared up. Then they said, ``Well, there are times when, perhaps, we do not want to have a substitute sale. We would like to have a buyout of the contract,'' which is always possible under contract, any contract. So we said, ``All right. Have a buyout.'' There is a little question as to where we are going to get the money for the buyout. But the point is, we would give them authorization for a buyout and work with the administration. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I have a little flexibility to do things of this kind, to make commitments. We will find ways to help finance an agreed financing system for the buyout. Then they said, ``Put a date of December 1996 as to when all of this has to be accomplished.'' That might rush us into premature cutting in order to meet a deadline. So it took a deadline off. The last thing they asked for was a repeal on the sufficiency language, which is a red light, a red herring, or a bell in the minds of most environmental groups. But based on history and based on the record, there were people who were filing an injunction on every single timber sale to tie up every timber sale whether it had an environmental issue or not an environmental issue. We had the woods being run by lawsuits or locked up by lawsuits. So the sufficiency language which we used in other cases, in other laws in this Congress and in this Government--wait until Superfund comes out. There will be sufficiency language in that. That is OK because that is against corporations who use the courts to stall their responsibilities to clean up. I will support it. I think it is a legitimate instrument if used carefully, and the record will show that there is plenty of evidence why sufficiency was going to have to be the implementation on this. By the way, it went clear through the court system from the district to the ninth circuit to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court sent back the ruling, the ninth circuit having invalidated section 318 when the first sufficiency language appeared, and, in effect, said, ``Leave the management of the forest to the experts,'' and unanimously overruled the district court and the ninth circuit court. Of course, the ninth circuit court has a great record of being overruled. It is probably overruled more than any other circuit at certain times. But the point is simply this. That was very legitimate. So four of the five--but listen to what we did with the four. You do not need sufficiency from the standpoint of the administration, or administering the forest, because it said for any reason you want to indicate that you do not feel a contract should be implemented, do not implement it. Have a substitution or a buyout--all power. Let me make an observation. If the administration's position now is one of surprise, or they did not realize what they were signing and they want it repealed, let them talk to their foresters, their experts, and not to the pollsters and the political counsel at the White House. This is not a forestry issue, Mr. President. This is purely a political issue. And they need to repair that base of their support in the environmental community, and this is the only way the environmentalists say it: Do it this way, our way, or we will go out there and trash it. And they have already been doing that, when this first came about. So, this is not a forestry or an environmental problem. This is a political problem being put into environmental wraps for the sake of the political election cycle we are in. They knew every inch of the way and every word of the rider, and now they are trying to get out from under it. By the same token, we have given them all the leeway, all of the flexibility necessary to cancel any sale by a buyout, or a negotiated replacement. I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. HATFIELD. I would like to add to information on the previous amendment that the subcommittee chairman, Senator Gregg, I am informed, approved of the amendment as well. Mr. President, we are now at a time when the so-called big issues, not all of them, but a goodly number of them, have been disposed of. We invite Senators who have other amendments to be considered, first of all, to consider whether they want to offer the amendments. We had 116 amendments that had been designated as of last night. I was hoping that we could reduce that considerably, and I am pleased to say that on our side, the acting majority leader, Senator Lott, has been doing yeomen work to get them reduced in number, and Senator Daschle, the Democratic leader, had indicated to me earlier this morning that, likewise on the Democratic side of the aisle, there has been an effort to try to reduce these numbers of amendments. Mr. President, the House of Representatives is expecting to pass a 1- week extension of the existing CR perhaps this afternoon. They will send that over to the Senate once they have adopted it. The Senate, in this process now, would be then privileged to have a vote on that CR or to continue work on the current vehicle, the omnibus appropriations bill. I am very hopeful that we can keep on this bill to clean it up and finish it because we have to go to the House for a conference following our action. One week is not a very long time in the consideration of this vehicle and that which we are substituting for the House-passed omnibus package. I am very hopeful that we can finish this and launch our conference with the House and by Friday midnight pass the 1-week extension that the House will probably pass today. I think that is an orderly progression of our responsibility because I am fearful that if we extend this CR for 1 week, there is no pressure to finish this bill, and that will put us into next week on this vehicle and shortening the time, we have to understand, necessary to allow for a conference with the House. I hoped we could escape any additional CR, but that is not the way the Senate has worked its will. I wish to indicate again that if Senators are serious about the amendments they have listed, I hope they will appear in the Chamber and provide the body an opportunity to discuss and to dispose one way or another of the amendments. Senator Hatch has indicated that he will be here at 1 o'clock in order to offer an amendment. I see the Senator from North Dakota in the Chamber, looking as though he is preparing to ask for recognition, and hopefully he is preparing to offer an amendment, because, very frankly, I do need a soft shoe or catchy tunes. We have about a 20-minute interval facing us that I do not want to waste until the Senator from Utah arrives on his schedule for submission of an amendment. Am I reading the actions of the Senator from North Dakota correctly?

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, is there any time remaining? No one has offered to use it. Could the Chair indicate what the time situation is?

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I oppose the amendment offered by my good friend from the State of Washington, Senator Murray. Let me say at the outset that I respect the motives and the determination of the author of this amendment. I look forward to what I have come to expect from the Senator from Washington--a well-informed and civil debate on the merits of current law and proposed changes to it. I have many questions about the Murray amendment--how it would be implemented and what is meant by many of its provisions. I would have preferred to have a hearing record or some consideration by the authorizing committees before making a decision about such a comprehensive forestry program as Senator Murray has put forward. As a member of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, I am aware that Senator Craig's forest health bill, which has been the subject of bipartisan negotiations with the White House for over a year, and which has been the subject of hearings before the committee, is ready to be placed on the Energy Committee's markup schedule. I would be interested, as this debate progresses, to know how the Murray amendment compares to Senator Craig's legislation. Regardless of my feelings about the underlying statute this amendment would repeal, I would be very reluctant as the manager of this bill to agree to such a sweeping national forest policy re-write as the one the Senator from Washington has laid before us today, particularly one drafted so quickly. I would be especially reluctant to accept such a comprehensive proposal without the full concurrence of the authorizers. Let me remind my colleagues that law that would be repealed by the Murray amendment was prepared with the full cooperation of both House and Senate authorizers. The lack of involvement of the authorizers alone would compel me to oppose this amendment. Because of my personal involvement in this issue, however, I will make more detailed objections to this amendment than those which I would normally offer in my role as the manager of this bill. Mr. President, this is a tremendously important debate. Seven short months ago, this body included the so-called salvage rider in the 1995 Rescissions Act. In the intervening months, those who have opposed this measure from the beginning have engaged in a vigorous campaign of protest, hysteria, misinformation, and civil disobedience in an effort to intimidate Congress and the Clinton Administration into reversing their support of the measure. The very small minority of Americans who advocate a no-cut, non-use policy on Federal lands lost this battle in Congress last year and now are using their anger to mislead the public that the last of our old-growth forests are about to be cut down forever, never to be replaced. This is simply not true. I represent a State that is often sharply divided on natural resource issues. These divides generally reflect the difference between the urban and the rural way of life. During the decades I have devoted to public service, I have sought to bridge the chasm that has formed between the urban and rural citizens of my State and bring some order and balance to natural resource conflicts by addressing both sides of the debate. Up until recently, the forest products industry has been the largest manufacturing sector in Oregon. In the past, my State alone has supplied our Nation with 20 percent of its softwood lumber needs. Just 5 years ago, 77,000 workers were employed directly by the forest products industry. Since that time, 21,800 of those 77,000 jobs have been lost and 212 mills have closed. Most often these mills are located in towns whose economies are based almost solely on the mills and the related businesses which deal directly with them. Many of these mills, and the towns which grew up around them, located in the heart of Federal forests at the urging of the Federal Government. Prior to World War II, our Nation's Government told the forest products industry to overcut its own private lands to provide materials for the war effort, and in exchange we would open up the Federal forest lands to sustained yield management after the war. Because of these commitments which were made over the years, I have always felt that Congress is committed to providing these communities with policies which ensure a predictable and stable supply of Federal timber to these mills. Nevertheless, meeting these commitments to mills and timber towns and protecting our environment is not the either/or choice that is presented to us by the single interest groups. I have always recognized the need to balance a strong resource based economy with appropriate environmental protections in my State. I have personally authored legislation increasing Oregon's wilderness system from 500,000 acres to 2.1 million acres--more than any other elected official in Oregon history. I have also authored legislation increasing Oregon's wild and scenic rivers system from 4 to 42--the largest in the Nation. The next highest States are Alaska with 26 and California with 10. I have also authored legislation preserving such ecologically significant areas as the Columbia River Gorge, Hells Canyon, Newberry Crater, Cascade Head, Yaquina Head, and the Oregon Dunes. In addition, in 1989, I coauthored a bill with then-Senator Adams which, for the first time, recognized that old growth forests need to be protected from further fragmentation and spotted owls need to be protected consistent with the Endangered Species Act. This provision was the so-called section 318 timber compromise, which was attached to the fiscal year 1990 Interior Appropriations Act. My commitment to Oregon's environment and to its natural resources runs very deep. I am proud to have played a role in preserving these areas for future generations, and I will work this year, my last year in the Senate, to protect several other areas of my State. While I have worked diligently to protect Oregon's environment, it was always within the context of the larger picture--that 84 communities in my State were dependent on a stable supply of wood from Federal lands and that our forests could be managed, according to the best science of the day, on a sustainable basis. Now, in listening to the rhetoric from the environmental community on the salvage provision, their true, underlying goal has finally been disrobed and can be debated. That debate is, can we manage our Federal lands at all? If you listen to the rhetoric you will hear clamoring for an end to the cutting of any green trees. Only dead and dying trees should be cut. Do not be deceived. These same extremist groups have admitted that their platform is the elimination of any and all harvesting of trees on Federal land. If my State is first to be bullied into this shortsighted program, other States will surely follow. The sad fact of this debate is that the elimination of harvesting of trees on Federal lands is happening without one affirmative statement from Congress that this is the course of action we believe is best for the Nation. Indeed, these decisions are being made by overzealous judges who feel that their job is not only to interpret the law, but to steer it in a certain direction not necessarily intended by Congress. These decisions are being made outside of the legislative process via public relations campaigns and staged media events in a hyperbolic, uninformed, and intentionally misleading manner. The Murray amendment lends credence to this approach and gives those who would lock up our forests forever the upper hand legislatively. All this without one hearing, one markup, or any time for internal debate and discussions with the Clinton administration. The modest measures contained in the law sought to be repealed by the Murray amendment are largely discretionary, will expire in December 1996 and underwent Appropriations Committee hearings, markups, floor debate and months of negotiations with the Clinton administration. If last year's modest, stopgap provision cannot be sustained in law, we will have lost any semblance of balance in our national forest policies and Congress will have once again abdicated its responsibility to play a role in setting the policies governing management of our national forests. This Senator advocated strongly for the enactment of the statute sought to be repealed by the Murray amendment, and I will energetically defend it today, as modified by the chairman's mark of the Omnibus Appropriations Act. Let me take a moment to outline the law and clarify the impetus behind its enactment. The salvage provision included in the fiscal year 1995 rescissions bill has three separate and distinct provisions. The first provides the administration with temporary expedited salvage sale authority. The second provision grants legal protections to the administration for implementation of the President's Northwest forest plan. Finally, the statute releases certain sales prepared and offered by the Federal Government from 1990 forward that have been blocked due to consultation procedures under the Endangered Species Act. Before I proceed with a more detailed outline of this law, let me highlight for my colleagues a seldom stated fact about this controversial law: Except for the provision directing the release of a relatively small number of sales that have been blocked by ESA consultation, the remainder of this law is discretionary. More specifically, the provisions of the law related to salvage and those related to the President's forest plan are toothless. The President is not required to offer a single sale or cut a single tree. Immediately after signing the Rescissions Act, the President sent a memo to his agency heads saying: Public Law 104-19 gives us the discretion to apply current environmental standards, and we will do so. I am directing you to * * * move forward expeditiously to implement these timber related provisions in an environmentally sound manner, in accordance with * * * existing environmental laws. A parade of administration officials have come before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to confirm this commitment by the President, which is fully consistent with the legislative intent of the statute, to implement the salvage program and his Northwest forest plan in complete conformity with existing environmental laws. These discretionary provisions are the very provisions the Murray amendment seeks to repeal and replace with a permanent, prescriptive, narrowly focused timber salvage program. So to repeat, the law simply provides the President with forest policy tools that can be used to expedite salvage timber sales and sales under his Northwest forest plan. Whether the President chooses to use these tools is entirely up to him. I would now like to discuss in further detail, each of the provisions of the salvage rider from the fiscal year 1995 Rescissions Act and, shortly thereafter, my concerns with the Murray amendment as proposed. The first and most significant provision in the salvage law provides the administration with temporary authority for an expedited timber salvage program. This provision will expire on December 31, 1996. An expedited salvage process is needed to harvest dead trees because they pose a significant fire risk, create additional forest health concerns and the trees deteriorate rapidly, losing over half their value in the first 2 years. In Oregon, and in Federal forests nationwide, we are in the midst of a forest health crisis. Three years ago, 50 to 70 percent of the forests in eastern Oregon's Blue Mountains area were considered dead or dying. According to the Blue Mountains Natural Resources Institute [BMNRI] in La Grande, nothing has changed in regard to fuel buildup and fire risk. In fact, the BMNRI states: The Blue Mountains is one of many areas in the interior West where accumulation of dead and dying trees continues to increase, thus confronting managers and the public with an unprecedented degree of catastrophic fire hazard. The 1994 fire season was one of the worst on record. Thirty-three lives were lost and the Government spent nearly $1 billion fighting fires. Four million acres and four billion board feet of timber burned. The salvage law came about as a means of giving our Federal land management agencies the flexibility to act swiftly to address this precarious situation for Oregon's forest ecosystems, firefighters, and rural communities. Otherwise, we may face fire seasons in the future that are as bad or worse than 1994. According to the Forest Service, nationwide we have about 18 billion board feet of standing dead and dying trees. The salvage provisions of the Rescissions Act give Federal land management agencies flexibility to address the forest health problems they believe must be addressed. Incidentally, the agencies determined that they were capable of harvesting 2 billion board feet of salvage timber nationwide for each of the 2 years the salvage provision was to be in place. For each sale, they must at least prepare an environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act and a biological evaluation under the Endangered Species Act. In addition, agencies are free to follow their existing standards and guidelines for implementing Federal environmental law for each timber sale. Without this provision, actually conducting any forest health or salvage operations would be easier said than done. Simply put, public involvement, judicial review, and administrative appeal statutes granted by Congress in existing environmental laws have been used by a small minority to block any management of public lands, even for these valuable and necessary salvage operations. These groups would rather let our dead and dying forests burn by catastrophic fire, endangering human life and long-term forest health, than harvest them to promote stability in natural forest ecosystems and communities dependent on a supply of timber from Federal lands. The second provision of the salvage law grants legal protections for the administration to implement President Clinton's Pacific Northwest forest plan. This protection is accomplished by eliminating administrative appeals and expediting judicial appeals. This is designed to give the President the freedom to implement his plan, which has been upheld in Federal court as in compliance with all environmental laws. All sales under this section have been prepared under the standards and guidelines of the President's forest plan. These provisions are so protective, the Northwest is producing about 10 percent of its historic volume levels under them. Again, the provisions here are discretionary. The President is not compelled to harvest one stick of timber if he chooses not to. The third provision releases certain sales offered or awarded since 1990 in the geographic area covered by section 318 of the fiscal year 1990 Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. By its own estimates, the Forest Service faces at least $150 million in contract liability for failure to move forward with these sales which it prepared and offered. Congress moved forward with them, in large part, in an effort to address this liability question. These delayed sales represent approximately 650 million board feet of timber affecting less than 10,000 acres of Federal forest land in Oregon and Washington. To the average homeowner, this may sound like a tremendous amount of timber over a very large area. However, in the context of Federal land management in the Pacific Northwest, 10,000 acres is a minuscule amount. To illustrate, the President's Northwest forest plan covers 24.4 million acres, 19.5 million acres of which is withdrawn entirely from commercial timber harvest. The sales released under this provision represent less than an infinitesimal one twenty- four-hundredth of the land within the jurisdiction of the President's plan. Let me also put the 650 million board feet of volume in perspective. Again, this may sound like a great deal of timber. However, throughout the 1980's, the Pacific Northwest averaged an annual harvest level of around 3.85 billion--not million--board feet. Our annual harvest levels are now about 10 percent of these 1980's levels, largely due to the significant protections of the President's forest plan. Under his plan, the President promised the people of the Pacific Northwest a first-year harvest of 2.2 billion board and an annual harvest level of 1.1 billion board feet each year thereafter. However, since that promise was made, a total of about 500 million board feet has been sold under the plan. These sales have been held up for a variety of reasons, primarily for consultations for the threatened marbled murrelet. Habitat for this sea bird has been designated as any forest land within 35 miles of the Oregon and California coasts, and 50 miles from the coast in the State of Washington. This amounts to about 4.4 million acres, two-thirds of which is Federal. These birds are very difficult to survey because they spend an estimated 90 percent of their lives at sea. While total habitat of the bird is about 2.5 million acres in the Northwest, only 10 percent of that acreage has been surveyed. Based on this scant evidence, scientists estimate that the Northwest is home to between 18,600 and 32,000 murrelets. Over 300,000 of these birds are believed to inhabit Alaska. Under the salvage provision, timber sales must go forward unless a threatened or an endangered species--murrelet--is known to be nesting within the acreage of the sale unit. In that case only, the administration is authorized and directed to provide replacement volume of like kind and value within the contract area of the existing timber sale. Under this language, the administration's ability to provide replacement timber is restricted more than I believe Congress intended. Specifically, replacement volume can only be offered when there is a murrelet problem, and finding like kind of timber within the contract area is proving to be very difficult. I met with Clinton administration officials last December to discuss these and other concerns with the salvage rider. Consistent with their specific suggestions to alter the language to reflect their concerns, Senator Gorton and I drafted and included language in the omnibus appropriations bill which gives the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management greater flexibility to modify or buy back sales on three specific counts. First, under our amendment the administration may offer replacement volume for any 318 area sale on which it feels there is an environmental problem, not just those where a murrelet is known to be nesting. The amendment would then give the agencies 45 days to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement with the purchaser regarding what that replacement volume should look like. Replacement timber can be of any kind, value, volume and location, as long as there is mutual agreement between the land management agencies and the sale purchaser. Second, our amendment gives the administration the authority not only to offer replacement volume to a timber sale purchaser but also to offer to buy out a sale. The administration has repeatedly requested this authority and has even indicated that it is able to secure $50 million from a neutral funding source to cover the costs. Finally, our amendment removes the requirement that these sales be operated by September 30, 1996. We have lifted this deadline so timber sale operators do not have to rush to cut these trees hastily before any additional environmental considerations can be taken into account. In summary, Mr. President, our amendment does everything the administration has requested aside from giving them total authority to cancel contracts unilaterally with no compensation to timber sale purchasers. I remind my colleagues that, by the Forest Service's own estimates, it is financially liable to the tune of about $150 million for canceling these contracts. The Murray amendment, by comparison, does not address the issues outlined by the administration except to relieve them from any and all responsibility to harvest these sales. This course of action is absolutely contrary to the commitments the administration made during 6 months of detailed negotiations with Congress on the fiscal year 1995 rescissions bill, which included the salvage provision. Aside from my objection to the underlying principle that the Murray amendment allows the Clinton Administration to fully back out of the commitments it made during the deliberations on the salvage provision, the amendment raises a number of additional concerns. First, the Murray amendment replaces the salvage portion of the rider, which expires at the end of 1996, with a comprehensive, long- term salvage timber harvest program. All this without one hearing in the authorizing committee, no hearings in the Appropriations Committee and no internal or external communications or debate. Under the Murray amendment, any sales which have been released as part of the salvage rider would be open to immediate administrative and judicial challenge and would be stopped instantly, even if timber is already fallen and bucked and stacked on the ground. The Government has sold about 1.8 billion board feet of salvage and billions more are in the pipeline. In addition, sales cleared under the President's Northwest forest plan would be reopened to a new round of administrative and judicial appeals. The Murray amendment's salvage program is very detailed and prescriptive. Remember, the salvage program we enacted as part of the rescissions bill gives complete discretion to the land management agencies to lay out sales in a manner consistent with existing environmental laws and standards and guidelines, as President Clinton committed to doing. The Murray amendment will allow salvage only in roaded areas. It precludes even helicopter logging in roadless areas, often where we have our most severe forest health problems. No salvage logging will be allowed in ``any area withdrawn by Federal Law for any conservation purpose.'' This is so restrictive that the language in the Forest Service's 1897 Organic Act, which allows the President to establish forest reserves, would appear to apply this restriction to the entire national forest system. The Murray amendment will also grant the President's Council on Environmental Quality 1 year to develop salvage compliance regulations. Thus, not only will sales stop in their tracks, it will take at least a year and probably much more to even begin offering sales under the new law. In the mean time, logs will lay on the ground and rot. The Government's liabilities to the purchasers who have operated many of these sales almost to completion will increase greatly, and the backlog of dead timber from the 1994 fires and the risks associated with keeping these trees on the ground will have gone unaddressed. To oversee this new salvage program, the Murray amendment creates a new interagency, multi-level bureaucracy for ESA compliance, including two interagency scientific teams and two layers of dispute resolution teams. Little guidance is given to these teams and the amendment uses so-called sufficiency language, to which the Senator from Washington strenuously objects, to restrict public input and exempt these new bureaucracies from the Federal Advisory Committee Act. On that note, the amendment has its own share of sufficiency language. As one who has used sufficiency language on several occasions because of emergency situations, I have no problem with the concept of using this language. Critics of current law have strongly criticized the use of sufficiency. The sponsor of the current amendment was on record as opposed to sufficiency language even prior to her arrival in the Senate. Overall, I have tried to be sensitive to her concerns. In fact, I worked closely with her and the Clinton Administration this last fall to develop a solution to the salmon recovery funding problem in the Columbia River Basin which did not use sufficiency language at all. The Murray salvage amendment, however, is filled with sufficiency language which overturns court rulings and exempts Federal agencies from all sorts of laws. The Murray amendment attempts to terminate all existing contracts on sales released by the salvage rider in the geographic area of covered by section 318 of the fiscal year 1990 Interior Appropriations Act. In doing so, however, the amendment terminates all remaining 318 sales, including over 300 million board feet of noncontroversial sales that were not released or affected in any way by the Rescissions Act. This opens the Government to additional millions in new and needless liability and removes much-needed timber from the pipeline of sales available for use by timber dependent communities in Oregon and Washington. I know the sponsor of the pending amendment will concede that she has had a very difficult time finding the necessary offsets to pay for what CBO has told me is a $250 million amendment. We certainly cannot be accepting lightly any proposal that will expose the government to such huge sums of liability. The Murray Amendment provides replacement volume authority, but replacement sales must be completed within one year, which is a near impossibility, unless another time line is agreed to. Buy-out authority is also provided, but funding appears to be subject to appropriations or through loan forgiveness or future bidding credits. If negotiations toward mutual agreements with timber sale purchasers are unsuccessful, the administration is provided with unilateral cancellation authority on these sales. Thus there is no reason for the administration to deal in good faith with these purchasers. This is the very reason we enacted this provision in the first place. The Administration had been sitting on these sales for 5 years. Finally, the Murray Amendment directs the Secretary of Agriculture to use road construction funds to prepare timber sales. Most of the road construction account, however, is already devoted to implementation of the President's forest plan, including timber sale preparation. Under this provision, we would literally reduce the work we are able to accomplish under the President's forest plan, as modest as it has been these past 2 years, in place of preparing alternative volume sales. This is expressly opposite of congressional intent in passing the original salvage provision on the Rescissions Act and specifying that the volume of the 318 areas sales was not to count against current allowable sales quantities under the President's forest plan. I strongly urge my colleagues to vote against the Murray amendment. It overreaches the authority of the Appropriations committee and authorizes a comprehensive, long term timber salvage program. It leaves already harvested trees on the ground to rot. It creates significant and unnecessary new areas of contract liability to the Federal Government. The language which Senator Gorton and I have included in the pending legislation addresses the concerns raised by the Clinton administration while still helping meet the original purposes of the act when it was signed into law by President Clinton after 6 months of congressional debate and negotiations. I supported the salvage rider originally, and have drafted changes to it now which I urge my colleagues to support. I believe it allows us to show that we can be reasonable in what we do in the forests and harvest trees for many uses--forest health, community stabilization, ecosystem restoration and jobs for our workers. I urge my colleagues to oppose the Murray amendment.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, the amendment has been cleared on this side, and I urge its adoption.

Mr. HATFIELD. I recognize the concerns raised by the Senator from Pennsylvania. In providing the $300 million in appropriations for the emergency fund, it was the committee's intent to provide sufficient funding to cover a range of unforeseen disaster, such as the damage that has occurred on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia. When critical highways are impacted to such a degree that they must be closed and repaired, it is important that Congress ensures the availability of funds to restore the flow of commerce and individuals who are dependent on them. I would be glad to work with the Senator from Pennsylvania to ensure that the conference report on this legislation reflects the Congress' intention that the Interstate 95 fire should be considered as a disaster by the Federal Highway Administration.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was adopted.

Mr. HATFIELD

Mr. HATFIELD. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATFIELD

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum on my time.

Mr. HATFIELD. I wonder if the Senator will yield for a question?

Mr. HATFIELD. Madam President, I think that those votes, as they are being stacked or joined, linked, probably would occur somewhere between 8 and 8:30, assuming all the time is used. I do not plan to use all the time on my side on this matter that is pending. Madam President, the Gramm amendment proposes to offset the so-called emergency supplemental the President asked for and that was approved by our committee to cover the losses and the damages, in part, that have occurred during the floods in the Northwest and other parts of the country. I am not sure that we need to have a replay of the suffering and the tragedy that has beset so many people in these types of disasters, whether it is an earthquake or a hurricane or a flood or a fire. I think that is why the budget agreement of 1990 very precisely empowered the Congress of the United States to visit these problems on an ad hoc basis and make a judgment in accordance with the needs created by these disasters and why there is no formula for that, there is no basic criteria. That is within the prerogative and the discretion of the U.S. Congress. My colleague from Texas tried to compare this to a family disaster of Johnny breaking an arm, and what would they do? I will tell you what they would do. They would go down and get that arm fixed, and they would charge it on their credit card because they did not have the money, cash in hand. They would take an attitude that this is worthy of an indebtedness because we have an emergency that has to be dealt with. Madam President, I believe that is true with the Nation as a whole and under the very concepts that set up FEMA, the Federal Emergency Act to deal with these emergencies. The Senator from Texas also said why is it we do this only for nondefense programs? Aha, we put the gulf war in an emergency declaration. Over $20 billion we were willing to march down the aisle to say, ``We support the President. We support this war for oil,'' even in spite of all the propaganda that somehow we were trying to support an emergency of a little country like Czechoslovakia being overrun by the big brutal neighbor, Hitler. So, the gulf war was an oil war, pure and simple. And we declared an emergency. Why is it that we can find it easy to declare an emergency to make war, but we find it a gnat strangling us in trying to swallow in declaring an emergency related to people in need? I suppose it is a philosophical debate to some degree. I think it is also a value and a priority debate as well. I think it is poor procedure, in addition. Bear in mind that this amendment says that we reduce appropriations in the nondefense area, both in this bill and already enacted, the legislative branch bill, the Treasury bill, the transportation bill, the agricultural bill, the energy-water bill, the foreign operations bill, all having been passed, and now we are going to go back and reduce those commitments for those programs in spite of the fact that there is a different spendout probably for each one of those accounts in most of those bills. That then is going to fall disproportionately heavily on those that have had a slower spendout in order to recoup that percentage reduction. That kind of fiscal management is irresponsible--irresponsible. It is an easy way to follow the rules about offsets, but we do not have any consideration as to the impact of that disproportionate reduction in these accounts across the board. It even undoes the action we took yesterday of adding moneys back to the Labor-HHS for educational purposes. We have to revisit that. That may not be a high priority for some. It is a very high priority for me. But it only means again that there are no sound criteria being used to recover the offset in order to say, oh, I can vote for the disaster relief for those people who drowned, have been drowning, or people whose homes have been drowning or their farms have been drowning or the levees that have broken through that need repair to prevent another storm totally eliminating communities in my State, or the Small Business Administration that had expended or obligated its funds to be replenished in this bill, to give assistance for the reconstruction and the restoration of small enterprise under our great capitalistic system. We can find lots of help for the big corporations in all sorts of tax breaks, but I do not find that there is that easy access to tax breaks for small enterprises, the small businessperson, which, after all, is the soul of the capitalistic system, not the Fortune 500. So, consequently, it seems to me that we are being again very inequitable in making these applications. Let me say that on the foreign operations, Israel--Israel, in its time of need--will also be reduced, the Israeli need that exists today that we have voted overwhelmingly to support. I have a strong feeling that we are really almost playing games with people in distress. I heard the recitation of all the times we have adopted the emergency declaration. Again, Madam President, I do not accept the sins-of-the-fathers- being-visited-upon-the-children concept. I am not saying that every one of those declarations had high support or could be validated by criteria. I can tell you, having visited farms that will take 2 years to restore in my State, at least 2 years for productivity--my colleague, Senator Wyden and I, had first-hand direct exposure to people who had been absolutely wiped out. Their milk cows stacked in piles waiting to be burned or disposed of, losses that cannot be replaced even if they had the money to do it because there is not that availability. People whose hopes were just washed away, totally washed away and; at the same time, to replace those hopes and to be able to restore those levies to protect them in the future is being threatened by this particular action at this time. Let me say, we have stretched this every way possible to find offsets for adding through the actions yesterday, and other actions, moneys to increase the level of funding. We have done it for a variety and many different accounts, fitting almost anybody here on the floor in the body, here as a total body, the needs or priorities. At the same time, the Appropriations Committee is the only committee in the U.S. Congress that has taken specific actions for budget reductions and spending reductions--$22 billion we have taken in the Appropriations Committee. We could not get the reconciliation through the President's veto but I have not seen too many subsequent actions taken by authorizing committees to deal with the problem under the current circumstance we had. There is no committee that can stand on the floor of the Senate and say they have done something specific to try to move toward a balanced budget by the year 2002, except the Appropriations Committee. We have a record. We have a unique position. Always, I will defend our action. Sure, we can say we can do more, maybe $24 billion instead of $22 billion. It is very interesting when we come to the floor we face a barrage of amendments to add back, add back, add back; and at the same time that we have offset, offset, and offset, there comes a limit to how much you can offset and make viably authentic a plan you have for funding the U.S. Government. Another thing that had made our problem difficult is we protect the defense spending. That is sacrosanct. That is jobs. That is this. That is the other things. The Russians are not coming any longer, so now perhaps Saddam Hussein is coming. I grew up at a time when Communists were behind every door, according to some politicians, to scare the people into more spending for military; or that the Russians were coming. As I have said before on this floor, the greatest enemy we face today, externally, is the viruses are coming. The viruses are coming. We better be more defensive of our people against the viruses through medical research than for the so-called hardware buildup. I can remember when we used to be able to separate people's philosophy because it was easy, oversimplified--a hawk and dove. Doves vote to lessen military spending and the hawks want increased military spending. I can remember when the Republicans controlled the Senate in 1980 and we were faced with a Reagan massive buildup of military weaponry. Do not let anybody try to sell you the proposition that caused the decline of the empire of the Soviets. I will not give them that much credit. Their system was flawed to begin with. It was doomed to failure. It was just a matter of time. Nevertheless, the point is we justified every kind of dollar at that time, build up, and up, and up and deficit go up, up, up--one of the most conservative Presidents in the United States in modern history building the greatest deficit we have had in modern history. So these labels of conservative and liberal and moderate and fiscal conservatives, all that is a very superficial kind of labeling. All I am saying is we have never found a problem to find more money to spend for military hardware, but when we come to trying to meet the needs of flood victims and people of disasters who have suffered disasters, we are, oh, so concerned about our fiscal future and our fiscal present. This is a legitimate declaration of emergency. I urge my colleagues-- I do not know in what way we will move at this time. We are checking the point of order possibility that exists and we will have to have that confirmed. If it is confirmed, I will make a point of order. Otherwise, I will move to table the amendment.

Mr. HATFIELD. As the Senator knows, we operate on an October-through- October fiscal year. What would the Senator do if an emergency occurred or disaster of some kind occurred on September 28?

Mr. HATFIELD. Yes.