William Bryan: “let me compliment the Senator from Oregon for his leadership in helping craft this very carefully balanced and I believe…”

“let me compliment the Senator from Oregon for his leadership in helping craft this very carefully balanced and I believe very modest amendment. Although the Senator from Illinois has left the floor, I want to compliment him for the clarity of his comments. I think he has put this debate in the proper context. The Senator from Idaho has framed the issue as being for or against harvesting timber for commercial sales on the national forests. That is not the issue before the Senate today. This amendment does not deal with that issue. This amendment reduces the amount of money allocated for the commercial timber sales program back to the amount the President recommended in his budget and the Forest Service, the professional managers, recommended, which was $196 million. That commercial timber program has been subject to much criticism over the years. It is, in my judgment, one of the vestiges of corporate welfare that still exists in the Congress of the United States. Courageously, on a bipartisan basis, both parties worked to reform the welfare system. We have already seen enormous benefits as a result of that bipartisan action. For reasons that are not altogether clear to me, we have had much less success in removing the vestiges of corporate welfare. It is for that reason that such responsible organizations as the Concord Coalition as well as the National Taxpayers Union are strongly in support of the Bryan-Wyden-Fitzgerald amendment.”