Jared Huffman: “I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding. Mr. Chairman, this bill that we are debating today has been touted as…”

“I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding. Mr. Chairman, this bill that we are debating today has been touted as Congress' solution to the longstanding issue of fire borrowing that has plagued the Forest Service. I represent a district that has experienced a lot of wildfire. Thankfully, the recent devastating fires in the North Bay were not caused by this fire-borrowing issue. They did not involve Federal public lands. However, I have had a lot of wildfire in my district over the years, and fire borrowing is a top priority for me. Unfortunately, as it is currently written, this bill introduces more problems than solutions on this issue. Let me explain. The title in the bill pertaining to fire borrowing repurposes the Stafford Act, which Congress enacted to provide assistance to State and local governments in case of emergencies. This requires Congress to appropriate the 10-year average for wildfire suppression before the Forest Service can access emergency funds. That is not the way to solve this problem. In fact, I saw that just yesterday the administration issued a SAP because of this problematic provision. If Congress is serious about fixing the budget issue, we should be making funds available ahead of an emergency situation, and we should remove the cost of fighting catastrophic fires from the agency's base budget. That will enable them to invest in proactive measures to make our forests more resilient and healthy.…”