Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 - Continued

Floor Speech

RENEWABLE ENERGY AND JOB CREATION ACT OF 2008--Continued -- (Senate - September 23, 2008)

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I particularly wish to thank my friend from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, for his courtesy because I know his remarks are extremely important, given these tough fiscal times.

I will be speaking on the third amendment and particularly the part of that third amendment that addresses the extraordinary economic hurt in much of rural America. Senator Baucus and the ranking minority member, Senator Grassley, have worked very closely with me and a number of Members of the Senate who represent rural communities where the Federal Government owns much of the land, and tonight it looks like there is some promising news ahead for these desperately hard-hit rural communities.

More than 100 years ago, our rural communities entered into an agreement with the Federal Government. What these rural communities said was that, in effect, they would give up their land so there could be a national forest system, and in return the Federal Government would ensure that these rural communities would have sufficient funds for schools and basic services.

This was facilitated by tying these payments to the rural communities to the amount of timber that was cut in these areas.

Now, this went quite well for many years. But as the environmental laws in our country began to change, this money shriveled up. It shriveled up and we were faced, in rural communities, with the prospect of having school 3 days a week. In my part of the country, our law enforcement officials were faced with not having the funds that they desperately needed to fight this epidemic of methamphetamines. Suffice it to say there was a real question--and there continues to be--as to whether some of these communities and some of these rural counties would actually survive. We have three in our State that are walking on an economic tightrope right now.

So what Chairman Baucus and Senator Grassley have done, working with a host of us from these communities--myself, Senator Bingaman, Senator Feinstein, Senator Cantwell, Senators Murray, Smith, Boxer, Crapo, Craig, and other colleagues on both sides of the aisle--is they have given us the opportunity, if this third part of the extenders package passes tonight, to give new hope to these rural areas. The hope comes in the form of a multiyear reauthorization of the law that I wrote in 2000 with Senator Craig to the Secure Rural Schools legislation.

It provides a safety net for these communities in our part of the country so they can educate their kids, fight drugs and crime, and pay for essential services. Right now, pink slips have been sent out in my State and elsewhere to county workers, teachers, and others. Without the legislation that has been put together so carefully by Chairman Baucus and Senator Grassley, my view is we will see devastating losses to the very fabric of rural communities. Some of those rural communities will not survive. Today's vote--the vote we are going to have this afternoon--provides the best opportunity we have seen in many months to ensure that rural communities do not drown in this economic crisis.

The reason this proposal is so very important is that it is a multiyear reauthorization of the law that Senator Craig and I wrote in 2000. The reason we feel so strongly about a multiyear reauthorization is it will give our rural communities an opportunity to plan for new economic development efforts where they can create good-paying jobs for their people.

I know for a fact, given the huge problems we have had with fires in the West, that it will be possible to put together a strong thinning program, where we can thin out, for example, the overstocked second growth stands and get those merchantable materials--they are merchantable materials--to the mills and put our people to work.

We are going to be able to take other steps. We want to have new clean energy programs, using biomass, something where the Senate has brought together the forest product sector, the environmentalists, scientists, and others. We are looking at new opportunities in carbon sequestration. But to have the time for our rural communities to get into the thinning, to get into biomass, to get into carbon sequestration, we desperately need this 4-year reauthorization program to take these rural communities off the economic roller coaster they have been on since the time in which these funds ran out.

We have had wave after wave of bad economic news in rural America. We are now in a position to vote for a measure that will give new opportunity to these rural communities and particularly the opportunity over the next few years to survive and to look at additional business ventures that are tailor-made for the times. They are going to be greener, they are going to be sustainable, but they are going to create family wage employment.

In our part of the country, we recognize this is a different day than it was 100 years ago, when folks in the Northwest and other parts of rural America made this agreement with the Federal Government. Times have changed, and they are certainly tough fiscal times, made tougher by the events of the last few weeks. But the people I have the honor to represent in the Senate are up to making these changes.

On this legislation that we will vote on shortly, I am very hopeful that this time the other body will finally approve it; we have had 74 votes in the Senate in favor of this package. What Chairman Baucus and Senator Grassley have added to the legislation virtually mirrors the vote that we had on the amendment I offered earlier in the Congress. Chairman Conrad worked very closely with westerners to ensure that this was fiscally responsible. Senator Grassley, the ranking Republican on our Finance Committee, on which Senator Conrad and I serve, worked closely with us. This is truly bipartisan. It is a vote that would bring new hope to rural America, ensuring their survival and the chance for better days ahead.

I urge my colleagues to support the third part of the tax extenders package.

I thank my colleague from North Dakota for the courtesy of speaking at this time, and I yield the floor.

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