Jay Inslee: “here we go again. First, we had the clean skies bill, that got more pollution; then we had the deficit reduction bill…”

“here we go again. First, we had the clean skies bill, that got more pollution; then we had the deficit reduction bill, and we had more deficit; now we have the forest recovery bill, which assures that we will be using less science and less common sense by the American people to make decisions of where and how to do forest recovery plans. This has largely been a red-herring debate to date. This is not a question whether we are going to have forest recovery plans and places to replant and places to harvest deadwood. What it is a debate about is where we do these recovery plans and how we do these recovery plans. This bill, as currently structured, guarantees two things: We will at times do them in the wrong place and we will at times do them in the wrong way. It does that by a repeated continuation of the terrible habit this Congress has gotten into, which is to repeal our environmental protection laws. And that is why every single environmental group dedicated to the preservation of our forests is very strongly opposed to this bill. Now, how is it going to be the wrong place and the wrong way? First, it will assure these are sometimes done in the wrong way by gutting the insistence that we use science.…”