Jeff Flake: “the committee has provided $6,371,000 to provide science that addresses problems with harvesting, transportation…”

“the committee has provided $6,371,000 to provide science that addresses problems with harvesting, transportation, manufacturing and marketing of economical forest products. For all the talk about, we are cutting too much timber and we are doing too much of this, to provide this kind of subsidy for research on how to do it just seems to me out of line. Let me just point out, some of these earmarks we have been talking about have been just a few hundred thousand dollars, not that that is small money, but this one is $6 million. If we looked since 1985, this program is the wood utilization program that received Federal funds in excess of $86 million. So it goes on and on and on. This earmark was not included in the President's request. The United States is the world's largest producer of lumber and wood products used in residential construction and in commercial wood products such as furniture and containers. The United States is also the leader in the pulp and paper business, producing about 34 percent of the world's pulp and 29 percent of the world's output in paper and paper board. The forest products industries is a strong contributor to the Nation's economy, employing close to 1.3 million people in all regions of the country, ranking among the top 10 manufacturing industries in 46 States. Why in the world do we need to be spending over $6 million a year to talk about wood utilization?…”