Political Quotes

“in fiscal year 1990, the Forest Service sold 11 billion board feet of timber for harvest and for productive use. For the last 2 years, we have authorized through our appropriations 3.6 billion board feet of harvest. The administration proposed in its budget for this year 3.2 billion, a further reduction, and a reduction from 1990 of 71 percent, as my colleague from Idaho pointed out. Peculiarly, or interestingly enough, the Forest Service in its actual National Forest Land Management Plan allows for a harvest of about twice this amount. It is only the appropriations level recommended by the administration, and for that matter by this Congress, that has the level almost 50 percent below what the Forest Service plans say is both economically and environmentally sustainable. That is the first peculiar argument. Second, the committee bill does not increase the allowable harvest. It simply allows the same harvest for next year that appropriations bills passed overwhelmingly by this body and signed by the President have permitted for the course of the last 2 years. The question is whether or not we should continue to move toward no harvest at all, as many of the national environmental organizations recommend, or whether we should consider continuing the relatively modest harvests that were promised by this President and this administration at the beginning of his Presidency, most particularly in the Pacific Northwest.”