National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 - Continued

Floor Speech

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2009--Continued -- (Senate - September 15, 2008)

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COUNTY PAYMENTS REAUTHORIZATION

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, around the Halls of Congress this week are some wonderful folks walking around in green shirts trying to save our rural schools and many rural communities across our country. These are folks who come from areas such as mine where the Federal Government owns much of the land. For decades and decades, in these communities, the secured money for funding schools in our State and for a variety of other services, such as police and essential needs for counties, has come through Federal timber payments. As the distinguished Presiding Officer knows, as a result of environmental law changes and other policies these communities have been strapped for funds now for quite some time.

In 2000, the distinguished Senator from Idaho Mr. Craig, and I, wrote legislation that brought essential funds to these communities so they could secure quality education for their students, for their families. But the law expired in 2006. So we sought, then, to extend this program on a multiyear basis. We had a vote in the Senate with overwhelming support for the legislation. Mr. President, 74 Senators voted for it, but the other body was not able to pass the legislation. So at that time the program was extended for just 1 year, and now it appears unless additional help is passed in this Congress, we are going to see many of these communities simply not able to survive.

I have been told in my State alone two rural communities would simply have to shut their doors, and we are looking at the prospect of the State taking over those communities.

The reason all those folks in the green shirts are walking the corridors this week is they are making one last-ditch effort to get the funding passed before these county governments have to make what are not just drastic cuts to their budgets permanent but cuts that will be so severe, as I have indicated, the communities simply could not survive.

The energy tax extenders bill is the last best hope for getting this done, and as a result of the exceptional work done by Chairman Baucus and Senator Grassley, the multiyear reauthorization of the county payments legislation has been included in their proposal. I think a number of colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been very supportive of this effort. I particularly express my thanks to Chairman Baucus, the distinguished leader; Senator Reid, the chairman of the energy community, and Senator Jeff Bingaman. All of them have been enormously helpful as we have prosecuted this cause for months on end.

On the Republican side, Senator Grassley has been extraordinarily helpful. Senator Craig, who authored this legislation originally with me, has been very helpful. Senator Smith of my home State continues to strongly support this effort. I am also very grateful to Senator Crapo from Idaho who continually brings up, at practically every session of the Senate Finance Committee, how important it is to reauthorize this proposal.

I know in the last few weeks of our fall session it is going to be easy to block legislation and hard to pass it. But I am very hopeful the energy tax legislation, which includes the county payments legislation, which has the strong bipartisan support of Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Grassley, will prevail in the Senate and will go to the House of Representatives.

For literally decades, support from the Federal Government for these essential services, particularly schools in much of the country--but fighting meth, law enforcement, and other essential services in my State--have, in effect, been part of a bigger agreement with the Federal Government. In effect, what happened is something like 100 years ago, when the National Forest System was created, the communities that had largely forested areas said: We are going to offer a benefit to all the people of this country in terms of the National Forest System, but in return for placing these lands in public ownership, our communities would get support for essential services. For decades and decades that went on, and it was quite beneficial to both sides--to the rural communities and to the Federal Government--and we saw in my home State people from all over the country come and enjoy the National Forest System in Oregon and other communities around the United States.

But we saw, in the late 1970s and 1980s, because of the change in environmental policy and changes in the size of the timber cut, the money shriveled up for these rural communities. So it is essential we pass this legislation, particularly for this multiyear purpose, because it is our sense that in these rural communities, they know they have to look to the future for a variety of other opportunities to have family wage employment.

For example, in our part of the world, we hope to have a very significant job-creating program to thin out the second row of trees. This is an opportunity to get merchantable timber to the mills but do it in a way that helps family wage employment and is good for the environment. We are going to have rural communities and folks from the forest product sector and environmental leaders supporting us in that effort. In the other body, a friend of the Presiding Officer and myself, Congressman Fazio, has championed a similar effort. But to set in place these new programs such as thinning and biomass, where we can create clean energy from our forests, we are going to need a bit of time. That is why this multiyear program is so extraordinarily important.

It is my view that the best opportunity we have had for some time to get county payments passed has come about because of the strong bipartisan work done in this Chamber to add county payments to the energy tax legislation. It is my hope, as we did when 74 Senators came together to support the original legislation I offered in this session, that, once again, we can get strong bipartisan support for county payments as part of the energy tax bill. If we can get it sent from the Senate in a timely way to the other body, I think this time it will be possible to thread the needle, secure the funding for our rural communities, give them the opportunity to make the transition to these other areas that will allow them to strengthen their economy and particularly bring to our schools, to our law enforcement agencies the tools that are so desperately needed at this critical time.

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