David Obey: “I find myself very frustrated tonight. I feel like I am in Forestry Theology 1A. I am not a forest manager. I have a…”

“I find myself very frustrated tonight. I feel like I am in Forestry Theology 1A. I am not a forest manager. I have a district with one of the largest national forests in the eastern region of the United States, and I have firsthand dealing with how the public and the Forest Service and the various legitimate interest groups that use forests have to work with each other, and I am going to vote for this amendment. But I want to get some things off my chest, because frankly, both sides frustrate me. I am going to vote for the Udall amendment, because I think what it does is to stop a process which has in certain ways excluded the public from full participation in the public comment period. What the agency has done with public opinions expressed in a variety of ways are not going to count when final decisions are made. I have heard from conservation groups, and I have heard from their opponents, both who have objected to the way that public comment is being restricted. I think they have a point. So I am going to vote for this. But I just want to say one thing. I get very frustrated being whipsawed between the users of forests who want to use it for economic purposes and the recreational users of forests, the environmentalists on the other side. The only way that you can get rational public policy in an area like the forest is to sit down and work out compromises.”