Bruce F. Vento: “If there were not a subsidy, we would not have the $164 million in the bill that we have before us. It is just economic…”

“If there were not a subsidy, we would not have the $164 million in the bill that we have before us. It is just economic sense. If these forests cannot pay for themselves, if these forests do not pay to cut these trees down, and I tell my colleagues, our forestry practices are a disaster because of incidents like this. Go out and fly over the 400,000 miles of roads that they have constructed that are in disrepair and will never be taken care of. At the rate we are going, we are just destroying the environment, is what we are doing, and it does not make economic sense. We would not have to have this money in the bill. Our forestry practices have resulted in just the prime cuts going. So the areas that remain, yes, they are below cost, because the prime areas have been cut out. It takes money, obviously, to restore these areas today. That is what is going on, is the type of cuts, and what is left simply does not make sense in terms of the economics. That is why we will have to have more and more money each year to deal with this particular problem.”