We will also hear H.R. 3176, the Drought Relief Act, offered by Mr. DeFazio.

It seems that the U.S. Forest Service is going out of its way to make life difficult for people, to inconvenience people, and almost seem to be reversing the entire original purpose of the Forest Service.

This amounts to an uncompensated taking and is a violation of both the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Mr. Tipton's bill simply prohibits the Federal Government from using what should be a routine permitting process to extract long-held water rights from private users.

We must stop fiddling while Rome burns. The answers we need for this hearing demand that the government be reopened.

So hopefully we won't move forward until we have an opportunity with a restored government to have the Forest Service come in and explain its new directive and see if that doesn't do what we think it needs to do, then take more targeted…

What he didn't explain was that process takes a year or more, and by the time the normal environmental review of salvage operations has been completed, a year from now, what was once forestland will have already begun converting to…

Basically what we are doing is consigning what was once forestland to become brushland for the next several decades?

I would counsel my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if you want timely salvage operations in Yosemite or anywhere else in the country--if that's really your goal--fund the Government.

We need to take immediate action.

The situation is particularly urgent because of the early infestation of bark beetles, which have already been observed attacking the dead trees.

It is estimated that up to 1 billion board feet of fire-killed timber can still be salvaged out of the forests that have been devastated by the Yosemite Rim Fire, but it requires immediate action.