Eliminating Federal red tape and excessive litigation is, indeed, the only path to create healthy forests, jobs, and abundant water and power supplies.

I again want to thank Congressman Scott Tipton for his leadership on these issues and for pressing to have this field hearing conducted today here in Montrose.

Eliminating Federal Red Tape and Excessive Litigation is indeed the only path to Create Healthy Forests, Jobs and Abundant Water and Power Supplies.

The result is now clear and undeniable: economically devastated communities, closed timber mills, unemployed families, overgrown forests, overdrawn watersheds, jeopardized transmission lines, rampant disease and pestilence and increasingly…

When the mills in my district closed in 2009 the owner made it very clear that although the economic downturn was a catalyst, the underlying cause was the fact that 2/3 of the timber they depended upon was held up by environmental…

I am particularly interested today in suggestions of what needs to be done legislatively and administratively to unravel the paralyzing tangle of litigation, over-regulation, and endless deliberation that have misguided our federal…

It used to be that lumber companies would bid for timber on Federal lands. They would pay the Federal Treasury to purchase that Federal timber.

The concern I am trying to explore is that just the bureaucratic delay alone in preparing the sale consumes a great portion, if not the entire portion, of the salvage time that you have to go in and get that timber for high-value products.

Now it seems the Federal Government has to pay you to remove timber from the public lands.

Representative McClintock spoke to that, and it was by 2001 that most of the big mills closed.

And frankly, I would challenge the Republican majority in the House to bring that to a halt.