Bob Wise: “many of the speakers in opposition to this amendment are from the West. The only thing west about West Virginia is its…”

“many of the speakers in opposition to this amendment are from the West. The only thing west about West Virginia is its name, but we have got national forests and we have got loggers and we have got timber people and we have got folks working in the woods, too, 20,000 of them, and, no, they are not all working in the national forest doing logging. There are going to be thousands more that are in the national forests who are the hunters, people who want to go fishing, people on recreation, people going hiking, a wide range of people. How do you get into the national forest? Unless you have got some real desire to go see the primeval forest you go in on a road, you go in on a road to fight the fire, for recreation, for forest management. Yes, you go in on a road for logging. And yes, loggers pay for those roads. They pay to build them. It is reflected in the bid for the property. Some people say, ``Well, they don't pay to maintain them.'' They do not use them after they build them. They leave a road there that many others use. Loggers are the only ones who actually pay to build the roads into the forests in the first place. Price Waterhouse analyzes this and says there is no subsidy here. There is no subsidy because they are actually paying for the road that they build and that later many others will use, many others that need access to these forests.”