Angie Craig: “Unemployment in rural timber-dependent communities is in double-digit figures despite rosy employment figures in the…”

“Unemployment in rural timber-dependent communities is in double-digit figures despite rosy employment figures in the rest of America. The Senator from Oregon and I visited similar communities--he in his State, I in my State--over the August recess. I can go from my community of Boise where there is near zero unemployment--it is a growth community, it is a high-tech community, it is doing very well-- and I can drive 100 miles to a community that has 14 to 16-percent unemployment. Why? That community is right here. That community is right here. That is because they were dependent upon the public lands and our Government and the politics of the public lands said: Stay off the land. Don't cut a tree. The mills closed or the mill is closing or the mill is at risk. Those people are unemployed. They cannot identify with a job in the high-tech industry. Why? Each of them would have to move 100 miles and uproot their family and they would have to be retrained and educated. A 45-year-old man does not want to do that. He cannot understand, if we are growing five times more trees than we are cutting, why we cannot at least create a balance in a program that will afford him or his son, who is graduating from high school and does not want to go on to college, a job in the forest products industry. While the national average unemployment rate hovers at around 4 percent, more than 30 forest-dependent counties have three times that rate.”