Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Oregon, who, back in the year 2000, fought so hard to right a wrong. The wrong was that a variety of measures related to these timbered acres reduced the ability to pull as much harvest off as in the past. Part of that was the fact that there was simply a lot of second growth that wasn't ready to be cut yet. Another was a variety of rules related to environmental protections, to forest fire prevention. There were a whole series of things. The bottom line is that these counties, which originally had these lands before they transferred them to Federal Government for safekeeping, are dependent upon revenue from the timber sales on these lands. My colleague pointed out that those timber sales simply can can't operate at the same level to provide the resources those counties operated on. Much as with Payments in Lieu of Taxes, or the PILT program, we stepped in--my colleague stepped in and led the effort to honor the promise made to those counties. We have been doing so now for 16 years. One of the challenges that has emerged is that we reauthorize it only for a short period of time. We say we will still honor the promise but only for a year or only for 2 years, which means the counties never know what is going to be coming. They are really caught in limbo.…”