Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise this evening to speak about a simple amendment that would go a long way to save a lot of jobs in our timber industry and our forested communities. To give a little bit of background, the collapse of the housing market has devastated the timber industry and the many rural communities that depend on it, resulting in major job losses. Because of a fate tied to the housing industry, the timber industry is one of the hardest hit by the current recession, with timber prices at a record low. That precipitous drop in timber prices has created a unique and very threatening problem for companies that harvest timber on federally owned lands. Specifically, a lot of companies bid for contracts to harvest timber and they did so right before the housing market and then the timber market collapsed. So those companies bid. Some won contracts, and those that won those contracts won them at a very high price for the timber. They could make a profit selling that timber when they harvested it, but by the time the process was completed, the timber prices had fallen through the floor. At the current record-low timber prices, harvesting under contract would cost more than the timber is worth. So the companies would lose money by going forward, resulting in major losses and leading to layoffs and lost jobs.…”