Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003

HEALTHY FORESTS RESTORATION ACT OF 2003

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I will be very brief. I want to recognize my friend from New Mexico who has spent a lot of time on this bill and has an important amendment.

As we go to the amendments this afternoon—particularly those from my side—I think it is critically important that the bipartisan compromise which was consummated yesterday in a 97-to-1 vote on the floor of the Senate not become unraveled today. This is, in my view, the only bill that can make it to the President's desk. It is a balanced approach on management. It ensures that the public has every single opportunity to participate in the debate about forestry but, at the same time, it does not establish a constitutional right to a 5-year delay on every conceivable matter that may relate to the forestry sector.

In particular, it provides for potentially lifesaving hazardous fuel reduction projects in our national forests. We have to respond to what we have seen in California. It is a heartfelt need in that State.

If this legislation as set out in the compromise doesn't become law, what we have seen in California in the last few days, and as we saw in Oregon last year, is going to be what the country faces year after year.

I am very interested in working with our colleagues in an expeditious manner. I thank Senator Cochran again for all of his cooperation. Senator Bingaman has been waiting for a long time.

I intend to work with all of our colleagues on this amendments today. What I especially look forward to is completing the work on this legislation. It was a very exciting development to have yesterday's vote by such a large plurality. It shows what you can do if you stay at it and try to find common ground in an area that is about as contentious as you can find. As Senator Cochran noted, we hope colleagues will bring amendments to the floor and move expeditiously.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I have already indicated I want to make sure the compromise we voted on yesterday does not unravel. I will support the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico because I believe it will allow us to go forward and make sure the work that the bipartisan group did is not in vain.

The bottom line is very simple: To get the money to put the fires out, fire suppression, you have to go out and steal from every single Forest Service program around and then hope that at some point down the road you are going to get repaid. It makes a mockery out of any effort to responsibly budget in this area. In our part of the world, we see, in effect, funds robbed from nonprofit organizations such as Wallowa Resources, a small nonprofit in eastern Oregon.

My only concern about putting this off is that if we don't deal with this issue now, the question is, When will we deal with it? This is an extraordinarily important question. It will not, in my view, unravel the compromise which I will fight like crazy to protect, despite the fact that I think what the Senator from Mississippi and the Senator from Idaho have said has considerable validity as well.

I hope we will support this amendment and then figure out in the course of the afternoon some way in which we can find some common ground on this issue. Today the process of just stealing from every program around to fight fires really becomes almost farcical. The Bingaman amendment responds to that. I hope my colleagues will support it.

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, just very briefly, Chairman Cochran has it exactly right. If there is one thing we want to accomplish in the natural resources area, it is to try to move this bill away from confrontation to collaboration. That is what we tried to do in the bipartisan compromise. I think we can reconcile that with the Bingaman amendment. I urge its support.