Bruce F. Vento: “my amendment is about setting priorities. Should be timber industry or the National Park Service get the preference when…”

“my amendment is about setting priorities. Should be timber industry or the National Park Service get the preference when we allocate scarce Federal dollars. That is what this is about. The timber sales actually cost the Government money, forcing the American taxpayer to subsidize the timber interests. That is continuing business as usual with regard to this funding measure. Timber purchasers can build roads in natural forests for logging purposes and then can receive purchaser credits. Often they do, so the Federal Government never receives anything back, so often the timber sales yield so low a bid in terms of dollars that the Government does no receive money. In fact, they have to put more money into harvesting the forest, to clearcutting the trees, than in fact we get back. So the taxpayer not only loses these wonderful verdant green forests, but we also lose our green dollars from our pocketbook, the taxpayers' dollars that have to go in there to subsidize this activity. All we are saying is that the dollars in the appropriations, the Interior appropriation, ought to have a priority on the people's business, in the people's parks, in our national park system, which I think everyone would agree we would like to give more money to but we cannot do it because we are in a tough budget situation.”