T. Gorton: “I will comment on that. Obviously, the regulations in these forest plans have a tremendous impact not just on the…”

“I will comment on that. Obviously, the regulations in these forest plans have a tremendous impact not just on the Federal Government and management of the Forest Service, but very obviously on the communities and the areas in which these forests are located. The regulations and the rules that we are talking about have been under review for 8 years; that means through two administrations. Evidently, they must be rather controversial because they seem to have been about ready to promulgate and just before the elections, both in 1992 and 1996, they were withdrawn. Now we have gone just about a year after the last election. And we have been deeply concerned that so many millions of dollars have been spent on plan revisions that may just be thrown into the wastebasket when these regulations do come out. So the design of this provision in the bill is to see to it that an administration, after 8 years and these two delays, comes up with final or at least interim regulations--something that it ought to be able to do within a relatively short period of time.”