As a Congressman, I take seriously my responsibility as an investor of taxpayer money. At a time when our country is borrowing $30 for every $100 that we spend, how can we justify making an investment that recovers just $1 for every $98 that we invest? We simply cannot justify these expenses and certainly cannot justify destroying a natural wonder, like the Tongass, that has been given to us as a heritage to preserve for our children and grandchildren to enjoy as well.
I, along with Rep. Chabot (R-OH), have submitted an amendment to the FY07 Interior Appropriations bill that is being considered today on the House floor. The amendment would block massive subsidies to logging interests in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, which cost U.S. taxpayers an average of $40 million per year. Not only is this unprofitable scheme a huge waste of money, it is also extremely harmful to the Southeast Alaskan ecosystem and economy. I've included some recent editorials from the New York Times and Washington Post for your information. I hope you will join me in this fight.
Environmental Battles
The New York Times
Editorial
May 17, 2006
The annual appropriations bill for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency will hit the House floor later this week. This bill always inspires passionate debate over important questions decided in the course of an afternoon.
This year's measure contains some pleasant surprises, including a resolution acknowledging that Congress must do more about global warming. But on the whole it is a mediocre bill that could be improved by corrective amendments on the floor.
Money: The bill would cut funds for the E.P.A. and reduce a critical open-space program, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, to a $26.8 million joke (President Bush once promised to "fully fund" it at its authorized level, $900 million a year). Any effort to increase spending to meaningful levels deserves support.
Wetlands: The E.P.A. and the Army Corps of Engineers, exploiting an ambiguous internal regulation, have allowed commercial development in sensitive wetlands and streams in violation of the Clean Water Act. A bipartisan amendment will be offered that would reverse this policy and restore protection to all the waters of the United States.
Offshore Drilling: The bill would lift a 25-year-old ban on drilling for natural gas at the Outer Continental Shelf. This would be a major policy shift and should not be decided until the public has a more complete understanding of its risks and rewards. In any case, the issue should be part of a larger debate over energy policy.
National Forests: The Bush administration has stripped Tongass National Forest in Alaska of protection against clear-cutting. Now the Tongass's friends are fighting back. Representatives Steve Chabot and Robert Andrews will offer an amendment blocking the continued federal subsidies that fleece taxpayers of some $40 million annually while encouraging destructive road-building.
The House should support that amendment. In the same protective spirit, it should also kill a mischievous free-standing bill sponsored by Greg Walden of Oregon that would suspend environmental rules to accelerate logging in burned forests.
Approving these amendments -- and beating the Walden bill -- would be a good week's work.
Chopping Wood
Congress should cut subsidies and stop making special exceptions for the logging industry.
Washington Post
Editorial
May 14, 2006
AFTER A FOREST fire, is it better to cut down the remaining trees or leave them standing? Perhaps not surprisingly, neither science nor economics has come up with a definitive answer to this question: It depends on what's meant by the word "better." Something that is better for timber companies may not be better for preventing future fires -- or vice versa. And experts disagree: Many of the nation's forest scientists and firefighters believe logging and replanting recently burned forests increases the risk of another forest fire and harms wildlife. Others point to studies showing the opposite to be true.
All of which causes us to question those in the House pushing a bill that promotes more rapid logging of burned forests. It's certainly not urgent, since at the moment, some 34 percent of the timber produced in this country already comes from burned forests, and all sides agree that the Forest Service often acts responsibly in such cases. This measure would merely facilitate post-fire logging, particularly in roadless areas and other places where the rules are tougher; it would allow projects to go forward faster, with fewer environmental regulatory barriers. Given that the environmental consequences of such logging are so little understood, this change seems not only unnecessary but potentially dangerous.
But then, forest policy is rarely governed by anything resembling environmental caution or economic logic, as the looming annual fight to cut off funding for logging in Tongass National Forest is about to illustrate. In 2004 the House passed an amendment to an Interior Department spending bill blocking this massive subsidy, which costs taxpayers $40 million annually, requires road construction in a pristine forest and serves mainly to support the livelihoods of some 300 Alaskans. In 2005 that amendment was blocked on procedural grounds, but now Reps. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) and Robert E. Andrews (D-N.J.) are planning to offer it again. The House should vote in favor of the amendment, and, pending further study, against rapid logging of burned forests.
