Tina Smith: “I intended to speak in reference to an amendment I was to call up for the supplemental, but because we are in morning…”

“I intended to speak in reference to an amendment I was to call up for the supplemental, but because we are in morning business I will speak in morning business. My amendment would be objected to as out of order, as being inconsistent with the supplemental emergency bill. However, I am here to talk about an emergency in rural Oregon in timber-dependent communities. For 100 years, there has been a relationship between the Federal Government and rural communities that has been absolutely indispensable to our country and to those communities. The deal was this: In those States where the Federal Government owns much of the land--in my State it owns more than half of the State of Oregon--there would be multiple uses of public lands. They would be managed as to their resources consistent with environmental law. In the case of the State of Oregon, there would be the result of timber products, wood products, to build countless millions of homes. There would be jobs for people and there would be the types of jobs that would create tax revenues that would allow local communities to have services. In addition to that, there is what are called timber receipts. Local communities would get 25 percent of the timber receipts from the harvest of public timber. This has been absolutely indispensable to the life of these rural communities. That deal changed in the 1990s. To show you how devastating this change was to my State, we had the listing of the spotted owl.…”