Mark Hatfield

Mr. HATFIELD

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, the Senator is correct. It has now been completely cleared on both sides. I urge its adoption.

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

Mr. HATFIELD. I was asking unanimous consent to temporarily lay aside the Grassley amendment until the Senator can read it and others can read it who are interested.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the Grassley amendment temporarily.

Mr. HATFIELD. I understand. The Senator is correct. But there is a Senator who has asked to see a copy of it.

Mr. HATFIELD. I understand that a copy of that amendment is available.

Mr. HATFIELD. It is noncontroversial.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside temporarily the D'Amato amendment in order for the Senator from Iowa to offer a 60-second amendment.

Mr. HATFIELD. For how long?

Mr. HATFIELD. We are in a situation where we really have the D'Amato amendment as the pending business.

Mr. HATFIELD. Will the Senator yield for just a moment, please?

Mr. HATFIELD

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, in my State, and throughout most of our Federal forest nationwide, we are experiencing a forest health crisis of epic proportions. In 1994, 80 years of fire suppression and almost a decade of drought conditions culminated in one of the worst national fire seasons on record. Thirty-three fire fighters lost their lives and $900 million was spent fighting these fires. Fourteen of the fire fighters who died were from Prineville, OR, a small town in my home State. Congress must act swiftly to address this situation or face a 1995 fire season as bad or worse than 1994. Congress has known about the forest health and fire danger problem for a long time. In July 1992, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on forest health. At this hearing, Jack Ward Thomas, then a researcher and now Chief of the Forest Service, stated ``we should proceed with salvage as soon as possible, and as carefully as possible.'' In fact, at that 1992 hearing, the Forest Service identified 850 million board feet of timber in eastern Oregon and Washington alone that needed to be salvaged in 1992 and 1993. Only half of that volume, however, has been actually salvaged. The forest health crisis exists nationwide, but in my State it is particularly acute. Of the 5 million acres of Oregon's Blue Mountains, 50 to 75 percent contains predominantly dead or dying trees. According to the Forest Service, the land management practices of the past 80 or 100 years are the primary reasons for the poor health of Oregon's, and the Nation's, forests. Fire suppression, the single largest contributing factor, has prevented naturally occurring, low-intensity fires to clear out the understory of forest stands. This has allowed less-resilient, shade tolerant tree species such as white fir, and Douglas fir, to flourish. These trees have been prime targets for disease, insect infestation, and now wildfire. It is time to begin the healing process in our forests that Jack Ward Thomas felt was so important 3 years ago. Congress can live up to its responsibility to provide direction to the land management agencies by passing the Gorton salvage amendment. As many of my colleagues know, salvage logging is not without controversy. Although it is part of regular Forest Service practice, some seek now to block the salvage of diseased and bug infested timber as a land management option. To put their position in perspective, these same voices have publicly stated that their preferred goal is to eliminate the harvesting of any and all trees from Federal lands--even for the enhancement of forest health. This dogma is so stringent that the catastrophic loss of our natural resources through disease, insect infestation and fire is preferable to having the health of these forests restored for future generations. The radical doctrine of no use, which certain groups are now advocating, not only threatens the future health of our forests, it threatens the underlying base of political support for one of our Nation's most important environmental laws--the Endangered Species Act. I was the original sponsor of the 1972 version of the bill which eventually went on to become the Endangered Species Act. I believe the act epitomizes the respect we, as a nation, hold for our environment and our natural surroundings. While I have made it clear that I believe some fine tuning of the act needs to occur during the upcoming reauthorization debate, I worry that when moderate positions, such as the one put forth in the Gorton amendment, become polarized, fodder is given to those whose goal is to abolish or gut the act. I will do my best to prevent this from happening, but the position of some groups on this salvage amendment simply perpetuates the attitude that all environmental laws, including the ESA, have gone too far and need to be significantly altered or scrapped. These concerns are merely symptoms of a larger problem--the breakdown of our Nation's land management laws. The result of this breakdown is a problem of national significance with little ability in the law for land managers to take care of the problem in a timely manner. Unfortunately, for those of us who have been around a while, this situation is all too familiar. Almost 6 years ago, I stood here on the floor with my colleagues from the Pacific Northwest, the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate authorizing committees to announce a temporary solution to a crisis in the Pacific Northwest. This compromise was sponsored by myself and then-Senator Adams from Washington State, and was supported by every member of the Pacific Northwest delegation. It was truly an extraordinary measure, meant to address an extraordinary situation. Recognizing the temporary nature of this solution, many Members of Congress believed that larger issues loomed and needed to be addressed. Namely, that the forest management and planning laws, originally enacted in 1976, were in serious need of revision. During the course of the debate on the Hatfield-Adams amendment I entered into a colloquy with then-chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Senator Leahy, to proclaim the temporary nature of the amendment and announce our intentions to pursue a long-term solution through the review and revision of our Nation's forest management laws in the authorizing committees. Six years later, however, our forest management laws are unchanged. When the Northwest timber compromise was developed in 1989, I took the promises of my colleagues to address our Nation's long-term forest management laws very seriously, and I was determined to do my part to address this growing dilemma. In 1990, I introduced legislation, called the National Forest Plan Implementation Act, to assist with the implementation of forest plans developed as a result of the 10-year planning processes enacted by Congress in 1976. Two years later, another comprehensive bill was introduced by Senator Adams to address the long-term issue. Both of these measures were referred to the Senate Agriculture Committee where no hearings were held and they died in committee. The next year, in 1991, I was a primary cosponsor of Senator Packwood's Forest and Families Protection Act, which dealt with a number of the same issues as my 1990 bill and also addressed the issues of rural development and workers. This legislation was referred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, of which I am a member, where we were able to hold several hearings and a markup on the bill. Unfortunately, the bill never made it to the floor for consideration. My point is, Mr. President, many of us have undertaken significant efforts to live up to the commitments of 1989 to address the long-term management of our forest resources through the authorizing committees. Unfortunately for the entire Nation, the other Senate authorizing committees with jurisdiction over this issue have not felt compelled to do the same. The Gorton amendment to the rescission bill begins to address this problem by doing three things to address the emergency situation that now exists in many forests. The first is national in scope and provides our Federal land management agencies with the flexibility to conduct environmentally sensitive forest health/salvage activities. These activities will be done using the agencies' own standards and guidelines for forest and wildlife management. Second, the Gorton amendment releases 375 million board feet of timber sales in western Oregon that were previously sold to timber purchasers. Most of these sales, originally authorized by the Northwest timber compromise amendment of 1989, were determined by the record of decision for President Clinton's option 9 plan not to jeopardize the existence of any species. To ensure further protections, the Gorton amendment includes provisions prohibiting activities in timber sale units which contain any nesting threatened or endangered species. Finally, the Gorton amendment gives the Clinton administration more tools with which to implement timber sales in the geographic area covered by its option 9 plan. As a vocal critic of option 9 and the process that was used to develop it, I have some concerns about this section of the Gorton amendment. Nevertheless, I applaud the sponsor's meet its promises to get wood to the mills of the Pacific Northwest in the next 18 months. While the first portion of the Gorton amendment is national in scope, these last two sections will assist the President in meeting his commitments to the workers, families, and environment of both western and eastern Oregon and Washington. I came to the floor in 1989 to offer the Northwest timber compromise because we were witnessing what was then a crisis for the rural communities of my State. Since that time, 213 mills have closed in Oregon and Washington and over 21,800 workers have lost their forestry- related jobs. In addition, the forests in the eastern half of these two States are in the worst health in a hundred years. These national forests and communities cannot wait through another fire season like 1994 for Congress to finally meet its commitments to rewrite the Nation's forest management laws. I have every confidence that the new Republican Congress will do its best to meet that challenge, but the Gorton amendment is necessary to help us bridge that gap. It is a much needed piece of legislation for our Nation's forests and timber dependent communities. There are those whose agenda is to prevent people from managing our forests altogether. They 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 Gorton amendment says 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 support the Gorton amendment to the fiscal year 1995 rescissions bill.

Mr. HATFIELD. If the Senator will yield for just a moment, let us go back and take the precedent of section 318. Because the same arguments, the same invalid arguments are being used today that were used then. Let me quote. We went through that whole process underlying laws of NEPA, the National Forest Management Practice Act, and then we declared sufficiency. The Supreme Court ruled.

Mr. HATFIELD. Let me just go back and put this in the context, if I could. First of all, every timber sale preparation made by Jack Ward Thomas or Secretary Babbitt are required to prepare those timber sales with existing law in which the regulations on fish are there in place. Those timber sales have to be prepared within that conformity. The so-called sufficiency language takes place after the fact in order to deliver the timber sale that has been prepared under those restrictions. The Senator is absolutely wrong on this.

Mr. HATFIELD. No, I do not agree with that at all.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I would like just a moment to thank Senator Dodd and Senator Sarbanes and others for cooperating on this, and Senator D'Amato on our side as the author of the amendment. Once again, it will be a Burns amendment to the Gorton amendment, and then Senator Murray will offer an amendment as a probable substitute. So that means no second-degree amendments to the amendment of Senator Murray.

Mr. HATFIELD. The circumstances of this moment will not be changed. They merely will be postponed for an hour.

Mr. HATFIELD. I think so.

Mr. HATFIELD. I will.

Mr. HATFIELD. And there will be no second-degree amendments to the Murray amendment. In other words, in the regular form.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I am going to propound a unanimous- consent agreement. I believe that both sides will indicate support. I now ask unanimous consent to temporarily lay aside the D'Amato amendment for the consideration of an amended amendment by Senator Gorton and Senator Murray, raising an amendment to that; that there be an hour equally divided; and then we return back to the status where we are now, with the D'Amato amendment the pending business. This would incorporate an amendment by Senator Burns to the Gorton amendment, which is about a 90-second action; there would then be the hour divided equally between Senator Murray to offer an amendment, and Senator Gorton; then return again to the status where we are now. And, in the meantime, maybe we can find some way to resolve the current status.

Mr. HATFIELD

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

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

Mr. HATFIELD. I have found that under circumstances of this kind, if we can shift gears, shift the subject for a little while, an hour or two, that sometimes we cool down, in a way, in our devotion to the issue and we are more amenable to making some kind of an arrangement. I am asking for a timeout to try to talk to the parties and see if we can reach some kind of a solution. As long as we keep this rhetoric from both sides going, we dig ourselves into a deeper pit. I do not want to start saying at 3 o'clock in the morning we have finally exhausted ourselves and we are now going to sit down and talk about it. I would rather see us talk about how to resolve it now and set it aside in order to do that, so we can get the parties together. That is all I am asking.

Mr. HATFIELD. If the Senator will yield, we are going to be finalizing this bill at, perhaps, the wee hours of the morning. I am not relegating this amendment to any particular time. I am saying we are going to finish this bill if it takes all night. All I am asking now is to temporarily lay it aside, and at any time after the next amendment is adopted, this is still the pending business, so it would return. We will have to get unanimous consent to set it aside again. So the Senator is not losing any kind of advantage or parliamentary position by yielding for this purpose and to temporarily lay it aside.