Jim Baird: “I'll just make two quick points. It is a red herring, to say the least, to say that this is about giving President Bush…”

“I'll just make two quick points. It is a red herring, to say the least, to say that this is about giving President Bush or the Bush administration control over our Federal forests. Max Peterson was the former Chief of the Forest Service under a Democratic President, President Carter. This is what Max Peterson said about this bill: ``The Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act allows trained forest managers to act in accordance with carefully developed forest plans, ending compliance with environmental laws to best restore, protect, and enhance the health of our Federal forests. The legislation deserves favorable action by the House and the Senate and approval by the President.'' That is not a Bush appointee, it is a Carter appointee, a Democrat. Let me also address this issue of 96 percent of Americans seeming to oppose the road element of this bill. That is specious. Ninety-six percent of the American public did not say this. If there has been a catastrophic fire and you could use the wood responsibly, and roads in would be built and paid for by the people pulling out the wood, and they would be immediately decommissioned so that no permanent road would remain, how do you feel about that? That is not what they said. Essentially I think they were saying in a healthy green forest, unimpacted by fire, should we keep the roads out? Yeah. But that is a different question. It is apples and oranges.…”