George Miller

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. So, Mr. Chairman, this is an effort to try to repair. Let us understand something. The Senate is at zero. The Senate has made a determination that this practice is an outrage; that this is contrary to everything that the authorizers in these committees and the appropriators want to do. But this is something that has just grown up and kind of gone off. And now the question is are we going to enable them to continue to do this practice which is working to the detriment of taxpayers and working to the detriment of the environment? I just think that this is just fundamental. This is one of those things where, once again, we have kind of bad fiscal policy here mixed with the environment, and it ends up with bad policy for everyone. And that is why the taxpayers' organizations are supporting this amendment, that is why the environmental organizations are supporting this amendment. Because, in fact, if we can bring this back under the control of the Committee on Appropriations, if we can make these people go into the regular fund for administrative overhead, which is millions and millions and millions of dollars for the Forest Service, then we can have some accountability in this program, and we can go back to many of the areas in the gentleman's State, in my State and other Members' States that have never been properly reforested. And the cry always is, there is not money to do this. Well, apparently the money has been diverted for a whole host of reasons, most of which most Members of Congress never knew about until the joint oversight hearing, where it was exposed in the GAO reports and the Inspectors General reports. And I am just dealing with one of these funds. This is true of a whole series of these funds where they have now determined this is somehow their God-given right, to go in there and dip into costs that they want to cover that the Congress has not approved.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding once again. The gentleman was at the hearing, and I think the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) was there when they said that they could not identify how they spent $215 million. $215 million. They also went on to say that $7.8 billion in value reported with respect to assets and properties and plants and equipment was erroneous

Mr. MILLER of California. The value they placed on their property, their plant and their equipment was erroneous; they do not know if that is really what it is worth. $7.8 billion, and $215 million in expenditures, and we do not know if it is accurate or not. We have no way of knowing that. Why? Because over a period of time these funds were created, they were off budget, and they started using them as a slush fund for all of these purposes for which they no longer then had to account. And due to the work of the three committees, and they should be commended for this effort, this has now been exposed and this now has to be changed around. And because of those hearings, the Senate has made a determination that this is going to stop. This is going to stop. They are not going to use 30 percent of the money that people expect to be put on the ground to reforest our lands, to be committed to a wish list from people beyond their allotted administrative overhead. I thank gentleman for his comments.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Let me just say that in the Senate, not exactly a radical body in American politics, and very protective of Western resource policy, in their bill they are silent on this matter, and they said, ``The committee is very concerned about rapidly increasing indirect expenses, including overhead, and the related effect on the availability of funds for accomplishment of on-the-ground objectives.'' The point raised by the chairman, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula). ``As noted by the General Accounting Office.'' They go on in their language to say, ``For example, the committee is aware of a proposal to cap the ratio of indirect to total expenditures from the five trust funds of the administrative Forest Service at a level of 25 percent. Although the committee is concerned with the rapid increase from 15 to 27 percent the rates of indirect or total expenditures over the last 5 years, the committee does not propose to cap for the following reasons.'' Okay? The point is this: We are not going to get into ratifying, and they anticipate this language, we are not going to get into ratifying a practice that is just there because of sloppiness; that is just there because people do not want to live within the budget constraints that this Congress makes a determination, and they are using these funds for any old purpose they want. They are not related to K-V, and that is the point. And I thank the gentlewoman, Mr. Chairman, for getting the time so that I could put the Senate report on record.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me just say, it is suggested that somehow this is a radical amendment and somehow we are moving too far too fast in the name of trying to protect both the resources and the public treasury. Again, I refer my colleagues to the Senate report. ``Although concerned about the agency's history of poor commitment and accomplishment, the Committee is reluctant to establish caps on overhead expenses which may inhibit efforts to improve accountability. To improve accountability, it is needed.'' Later they finally say, ``The committee is concerned that a cap of 25 percent would lead to an automatic and in some cases unwarranted draw on these trust funds that would divert these needed funds from on-the- ground projects.'' That is the United States Senate. That is the Committee on Appropriations dealing with forest policy. They are concerned that the answer that has been selected by this committee is exactly contrary to what needs to be done, that once they put a cap on they are ratifying the process and the process is nowhere in law, the process is growing up because of dysfunctional behavior by the Forest Service in not being able to live within a budget. They have not been able to live within a budget because they have a honey pot over here called K-V funds and they just reach in there and grab out whatever they need when they have a little bit of a shortfall. That is why the Senate has this language in the report. That is why they have it here. Because, with all due respect, we have not broken the habit of these people. This is this next fiscal year. This is this next fiscal year. This is the money that is going to go into effect in October. And if we do not change this, these people are going to be right back in there reaching in there right up to the old armpit with the taxpayers' money because they cannot get Congress to approve of something. The Senate recognizes this. The gentleman from California (Mr. Miller) did not discover this. The Senate Committee on Appropriations discovered this, and they recognize that a cap is to ratify bad behavior. This is like giving a drunk a beer instead of a straight shot. These people are incapable of keeping their hands off of this money that is supposed to go into improving our forest and reforesting the forest after we have these timber sales. They have violated this law across the board, and all of a sudden we are supposed to believe that they repent. Well, the Senate did not believe it, and that is a pretty fairly conservative body, Republican dominated; and it is dominated by people from the Western states who have an interest in the forest practices, and they have determined that this is against the public interest and bad for the environment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield further, I thank the gentleman; and I would say I appreciate and I listened. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) is a man of his word and he is a man of honor, and he was at the hearing and he was as disturbed by this as I am now, and that is serious, and I want to just say also the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Smith) because he obviously has great pride in the Forest Service and has spent his entire public career dealing with this agency. I do not doubt their word for a moment. All I am saying is we cannot start out this year by ratifying this practice that is nowhere allowed on the books of the Congress.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) very much for yielding to me. I want to join and associate myself with her remarks and to add a couple of my own, just to say that for 24 years I have served with the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Yates) about half as long as Mr. Yates has served, and I wish to say what an incredible pleasure it has been for me as a public servant to watch him and to admire his beliefs in our public institutions. I know him as one deeply involved in the issues of this subcommittee, the Interior and natural resources issues and the arts and the cultural issues. He has witnessed many political trends and political fads and schemes of popularity and unpopularity. But I think what we have seen is that he has stood fast for a great portion for the protection of not only our free speech and our free expression, but the protection and the preservation of our culture and our history in the way that no other Member of Congress has. He embodies the very, very best, the very, very best in public service. At a time when we see so much venom and so much attack in our public arena, to have you here, Sidney, has been a gift to all of us who try to hold our profession, this institution, the American public in the highest possible regard that we can. His span of service and commitment is something that if each us every day that we walked into this Chamber, and every day we exited, if we could just recommit ourselves in his image of that public service, we would do this country a great favor. I thank the gentleman so very, very much for giving so much of his life to this country. I admire him and wish him the very, very best.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the amendment offered by the gentleman from Washington. It is a sound amendment, it is an important amendment and it is one that as he has pointed out is in opposition to the rider in this legislation that would throw overboard essentially this plan, it would terminate this plan, it would require the closing of the office and would not let us get to the final status of the EIS report. To do so is to stick our heads in the sand and to pretend that we have learned nothing in the last 25 years. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) comes from the region. He was here at the center of much of the controversy around the spotted owl where we started to learn a lesson because of piecemeal management, of uncoordinated management, of one agency not talking to the other agency, of the various departments and agencies that are responsible for land management doing their own thing, if you will, while not taking into account the impacts upstream, downstream or on other resources in the area. This effort is to remedy that situation. Why do we do that? We do that because we have learned that if we do not do this, the region will be thrown into turmoil. It will be thrown into turmoil because once again we will be warned as we were with the spotted owl of the decline of the resource base in the area. What will that do? That will then force us back into court. That will force us back into litigation. This is an effort based upon a region-wide basis, on an ecosystem-wide basis to come to grips with all of the problems that are causing the decline in the various resources in the area and their impacts on fish and wildlife, their impacts on the total environment in that area. The same effort is being made in the Everglades of California; the same effort is being made in the Central Valley, in the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta in California, because we know that what happens 100 miles upstream dramatically impacts downstream. We know now that commercial fishermen on the coast of California are impacted by the cut in the forest that is 150 miles away. We know if we cut on the steep slopes as we have been doing for many, many years, we will experience landslides, we will experience the filling in of the streams and we will experience the diminishing of the fish population. We know that now. We have learned that. Many people have said that this is over the top of the Forest Service. If you look on the front of the report, if you look on the status of the Interior Columbia Basin, on the cover is the Forest Service, is the Bureau of Land Management, is the Department of Agriculture. Why? Because all of those local land managers were brought in just as we did in the gymnasium in the Pacific Northwest where we brought together these people and we started to make them talk to one another, talk about what they needed in terms of resource management in their area, what they expected in cuts, what they could sustain, what they thought the productivity would be of the lands and make that fit and coincide with what was happening elsewhere in the region. The result of that is a greater recognition of how badly devastated this region in fact is. Because there are not many people arguing with the science of this report. Even the authors of this rider suggest that the science is valid, that it should be distributed to the local agencies on a site-specific basis and they can do what they want. What does the science tell us? It tells us that they have a road system that is in absolute disarray, that is in decline, that is not able to maintain the maintenance because of declining budgets, and there is progressive degradation of the road and the drainage structures and increases in erosion. What does it tell us about the integrity of the aquatic systems? It says if this is an important goal of this region, and there is nobody from this region that believes that the integrity of the aquatic systems is not an important goal in the Pacific Northwest, then dramatic and decisive action is required to stop further alterations and restore the areas that are already degraded. What does it say about the ecosystem integrity of this vast region of the Pacific northwest? Sixty percent of these lands are of low ecological integrity value. That is why we did the science. Because we have learned from the train wrecks and the disasters of litigation, of shutting down industries, of invoking the Endangered Species Act time and time again until a region is so bound up in controversy that you start to lose your economy, you start to lose your tourism, you start to lose the uses of these lands. This is an effort to do it right the first time, to recognize the mistakes that were made in the past. That is why this administration feels so strongly about this rider.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, we have an opportunity to do it right. One of the reasons this has been so extensive is because my colleagues on the other side, rightfully so, we were doing this in the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta in the Central Valley of California, the agencies were directed to go out and to meet and to confer and to deal with local governments, with the site managers on the public lands, on the forests and the resource agencies and to take this into account and to work with these people. That is very extensive. It is also a very expensive proposition. If we had not done that, we would have obviously been criticized, the report would have been criticized for not consulting with these individuals. Now, it would have been less expensive but we would have found another basis on which to criticize the report. But the point is that people understand that the science here is valid. I appreciate just as we did not like to hear in our region of California that we would now have to spend $1 billion correcting the past mistakes if we are in fact going to protect the San Francisco Bay and the San Francisco Delta and be able to provide for agriculture in the Central Valley. We got bad news, too. So did the people in the Everglades because of the history of terrible actions. They now have to go back and repair that. This is an opportunity to go back and to restore the environmental integrity of this region and forgo the litigation. This rider is simply Christmas in July for the attorneys.

Mr. MILLER of California. I understand that. And that is the whole budget. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) has been besieged by people all day who said the real cost of this is $350 million. He only had $26 million. We are going to do the best we can. This delegation will have to make a decision. We have a big bill and the Everglades has a big bill and other places have a big bill that are going through this. Every year we are asking for money and we are making it and we are trying to make the decisions and work in the worst areas first and we are setting those priorities. It is all a big bill. Why? Because we have made some horrible mistakes. Many of those mistakes were made out of ignorance. We did not know the science. We did not know the ramifications of those actions. Today we cannot plead ignorance. That is why this study, the EIS is so terribly important to making the kind of progress necessary in the Pacific Northwest.

Mr. MILLER of California. I would just say to the gentleman that that is not free and the science dictates that same. This study is very involved in a very, very active management program. Your solution is not necessarily any cheaper. We just happen to think that the provision of the study and the follow-on EIS is simply much better coordinated and may in fact be somewhat less expensive in the long run if these people are in fact working together as opposed to just rolling back the clock to how we used to do business, where all of these 75 different land management agencies just go back to sort of what they were doing before.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) for yielding, and I rise in support of his amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey). I think he makes an important point about this amendment. That is that due much to the activity of our committee chairman, who has the knack of getting people's attention in the bureaucracy, I think we are all very confident that this agreement is going to be reached by the end of this year. But it is a question of how we do this and whether we do it, as the gentleman said, by fiat, and whether we do it notwithstanding any other provision of law. That is a recipe for disaster. It is a recipe for a veto. It is a recipe for delay, because people now will drag their feet in these negotiations waiting to see whether or not this provision does or does not become law. Mr. Chairman, I do not believe it will become law. We have had conversations with the administration, and yet we also want these negotiations to finish by the end of the year. As was pointed out, we all acknowledge, as the chairman of our committee has told us numerous times at various octave levels, this runs with this land. They are entitled to this right-of-way. But as was also pointed out, this is an area that was early recognized by the House and the Alaskan Native Lands Conservation when they sought to make the area adjacent to this a national wildlife refuge. That was not achieved. But the special management for fish and wildlife was achieved in this forest; I believe the only forest like it with that mandate in the country. This process has been stop again, start again, stop again, start again, by both parties. All the blame is not just with the Forest Service. The other parties have been hot and cold on this relating to whether or not there is a market for coal, whether or not there is a market for timber, and that has influenced this to some extent. Mr. Chairman, the time has come to bring this issue to a closure, but the time to bring it to closure within the regular order and within the laws governing these kinds of activities. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New York for his amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I think we are toward the end of the amendments in this legislation and fortunately this is a very straightforward amendment. It is intended to prohibit the Forest Service from using appropriated funds to construct new timber roads in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. It saves money and it protects old-growth forest at the same time. The Tongass already has over 4,600 miles of permanent roads which have been built with the help of taxpayer subsidies for the timber industry. In fiscal year 1997, the Tongass timber program lost over $33 million, by far the biggest money loser in the Nation, in part because of 79 miles of new roads that were constructed. Because of the difficulty in construction and the terrain, these are some of the most expensive roads within the Forest Service. The recently revised Tongass Land Management Plan would allow construction for up to an additional 110 miles of new roads annually. While this is less than the last decade's average of 168 miles constructed annually, it represents a major impact on the environment and would require significant outlays of taxpayer dollars. Because this plan is being reviewed on appeal by the Secretary, the Forest Service has not included the Tongass in the draft proposed roads moratorium. It especially does not make sense to use appropriated funds to build new timber roads in the Tongass when the Forest Service has already been waiving local processing laws in order to allow the logs to be exported to Japan and to other countries. During 1997, the Forest Service permitted the export of over 100 million board feet of timber cut from the Tongass. Mr. Chairman, the committee's bill proposes to eliminate purchaser road credits and to reduce to $1 million direct spending to build new roads. This amendment would seek to assure that no such funds would be used to build roads in the Tongass. It is pro-taxpayer, I believe it is pro-environment, and I urge the Members to support this amendment. I would also say that this amendment is necessary because we see a sort of Soviet style economic decision in the Senate which demands that the Tongass engage in over 240 million board feet annually, an amount more than double the current demand-driven cut of 100 million. So I think that this amendment is also important for that reason because of actions being taken in the Senate. I would urge passage of this amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MILLER of California. I thank the gentleman for yielding. As he knows, I did not force the pulp mill to act in violation of criminal law and to be successfully prosecuted under criminal law so that they ended up losing their rights in the forest.

Mr. MILLER of California. The gentleman knows why the pulp mills are not there, too.

Mr. MILLER of California. There is no market.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I would answer that by asking the gentleman a question. Are there appropriated funds in this bill for roads in the Tongass?

Mr. MILLER of California. So out of the $1 million, that money can be appropriated to the Tongass?

Mr. MILLER of California. But that is $1 million nationwide.

Mr. MILLER of California. Right.