Maurice Hinchey: “Mr. Chairman, I find this is a very interesting debate because it is characterized as sort of people from somewhere else…”

“Mr. Chairman, I find this is a very interesting debate because it is characterized as sort of people from somewhere else jumping in. This plan was put in place by the former Speaker of the House because he recognized all the problems we had had on the west side. On the west side we had every forest shut down for long periods of time. Not a stick of wood was cut anywhere. So he said to himself, let us not repeat the mistakes of the west side. Let us develop a coordinated plan from the outset between all the forests and all the Bureau of Land Management and get this thing done in a way that will actually work. What I am hearing from my colleagues here in defending this rider is they do not want to have any of the plan. They do not want to have it implemented by the Bureau of Land Management. They want to turn it back into one fight after another in the courts. If you have 74 land management plans, that means you have got district by district inside those forests. If one ranger wants to do it one way in one district and another ranger wants to do it in the next district differently, who is going to coordinate that? Not according to my colleagues. They do not want it coordinated.”