David Obey: “I do simply want to express my frustration about the fact that this amendment need be here at all. I supported the…”

“I do simply want to express my frustration about the fact that this amendment need be here at all. I supported the proposal last year which allowed timber companies to get at what we were told was salvage, and I think it was a rational thing to try to do. My problem is that, as has been indicated by a number of speakers today, that proposal wound up allowing a lot more than was advertised, and a lot more than it was explained as doing, because in addition to allowing legitimate salvage, it also would up allowing about 50 percent of the timber that was taken from those areas to in fact be green timber. That creates a dilemma for people like me who want to see to it that we do not simply allow timber to rot on the ground, and yet we also do not want to see every environmental law in the country waived in order to enable people to get at live trees. So I would simply use this motion to say to anyone interested in the issue on the floor, that in the future when issues like this arise, it would be very good for both sides if legislation which is proposed actually does what it is advertised as doing, because I am confident if that proposition in fact had been limited simply to straight salvage, as the House was told it was, we would not have had much of the controversy that has surrounded this ever since.”