Angie Craig: “yesterday, our friend and colleague from New Hampshire said this amendment is not about being a wild-eyed…”

“yesterday, our friend and colleague from New Hampshire said this amendment is not about being a wild-eyed environmentalist, but that it is about being fiscally responsible. So I am going to take the fiscally responsible side of that argument and say, let us open Pandora's box. I think this amendment does it. This bill includes $254 million for State and private forestry assistance. I doubt that New Hampshire gets any of that. It also includes $257 million for recreation, wilderness, and heritage management. Should we not hold the recreational industry to the same standard we are holding the logging industry--no subsidy and everybody who hikes pay your own way? That is part of the argument. If we are going to hold the Tongass Forest to the standards we would be holding it to in this amendment, to cut the resources--what about the community action programs? The Senator from New Mexico said he made the decision--are we not going to invest in the community forestry program for the State of New Mexico and the communities that benefit from that? Cut them all. If that is the principle we apply here, cut them all. Eighty percent of the timber sales on public lands in this country to supply our fiber needs are now held up in the courts for legal action. Those are the realities, while the timber pours in out of Canada and cuts jobs out from rural America. That is exactly what is going on.…”