Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Reauthorization Act of 2007

Mr. Speaker, I want to welcome my colleagues from Oregon who are in the Chamber with me tonight. Congressman DeFazio and Congresswoman Darlene Hooley are here with me, and I know we will be joined by other members of the Northwest delegation to talk about a very, very important issue, the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, H.R. 17, also known as County Payments, that in both this Congress and the last has been a strongly bipartisan issue. The DeFazio-Walden legislation, H.R. 17, a bill to reauthorize and fund the County Payments Program for 7 years to date enjoys the support of 114 cosponsors in this Congress. The exact same bill last Congress had 139 cosponsors.

As I have said in 13 of 18 one-minute floor speeches: the failure of Congress, either the last one or this one, to reauthorize the County Payments Program amounts to a breach of faith to more than 600 forested counties all across America and 4,400 school districts all across this country.

I would like to take a moment to highlight a few of the impacts of the rural forested counties and school districts in America without these funds: severe cuts in funding for jail beds; sheriffs' patrols are being cut sometimes in half; criminal prosecutions and the pursuit of meth cooks, all of that being reduced; rural school districts foregoing overdue repairs; may not be able to buy textbooks, or face significant challenges busing kids to schools. It also means libraries will close in places like Jackson County, Oregon.

I would like to draw your attention to this poster here to my left. It is from a young lady, a fifth grader named Alice from Ashland, Oregon, who utilizes one of the 15 Jackson County libraries where she lives, and they are all scheduled to close in just a couple of months, in April, if we don't reauthorize and fund the Secure County Schools legislation.

Alice has resolved to read all the ``Hank the Cowdog'' books, but she needs these libraries to stay open. She says: ``Representative Walden, I live in Ashland and I go to Bellview School. I am in the fifth grade. I use our library a lot. We always use books on tape for car trips. My New Year's resolution is to read all the ``Hank the Cowdog'' books, and the library has them all. I need the library to stay open so I can finish my resolution. I also use a lot of books here for school reports. Please help to keep our library system open. Sincerely, Alice.''

Alice is a fifth grader in Ashland, Oregon. She gets it. If Alice can get it, this Congress ought to be able to get it, and we ought to be able to keep the libraries open in Jackson County.

Many of you in this Chamber and Americans all across the land will remember the heart-wrenching service for the Kim family in southern Oregon this winter, lost in the national forest, and the mountain climbers who perished on Mount Hood just 45 minutes from my home in Hood River. Both of these counties, both of the search and rescue operations that took place used funds out of the program that Congressman DeFazio and others and I are trying to reauthorize to help pay for the equipment and for the search and rescue operations, to go on Federal land using county resources to look for these people who were lost, some of whom perished.

These vital county services and rural school programs were once funded by timber receipts, but because of virtual elimination of the timber harvest on our Federal forests, Congress approved the county payments to develop forest health improvement projects on public lands and simultaneously stimulate job development in some of our rural communities.

This law has been a primary funding mechanism to provide rural schools with educational opportunities comparable to suburban and urban students. It has also restored programs for students in rural schools and prevented the closure of numerous isolated rural schools. It has allowed over 600 rural counties to address the severe road maintenance backlog.

Before I get into that, though, I would like to show you total Pacific Northwest timber receipts. As you can see here, it has fluctuated over the years, but it has never been as low as it is today. There were big years of timber harvest, this one up, very large; but generally it has been in this framework, and you can see, really, since the 1990s it has just gone way down.

The Federal Government has had a compact with these counties dating back to when Teddy Roosevelt was President and created the great forest reserves, setting aside huge swaths of land. Upwards to half of my district is under Federal management and control, and many of my colleagues and some of my counties it is upwards to 70, 75 percent.

The Federal Government believed in 1908 and again in 1938 that it had a responsibility to help these communities surrounded by Federal lands because these lands were not going to be on their tax base. That is what started this whole program. They used to share timber receipts. As you can see, timber harvests went down, the receipts went down.

You say, what happened to our wood products system? Well, here is what happened. See what happened on Federal forest lands. This is 1980 here, top level, about 11 billion board feet sold. Then it drops way down in the red. Where did we get the lumber? Imports. Soft wood lumber imports right there, the blue and the yellow.

So this came along, we said timber receipts are down, so we are going to replace it, 6 years ago, now almost 7. We authorized this Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act.

The country has 7,500 national forests and grasslands covering 192 million acres. That is the size of Texas, by the way. Our State of Oregon has 15 national forests. We are proud of them.

You need to know they cover 14 million acres, or nearly one-quarter of the State's land mass. There are forests in my district that cover nearly 12 million acres.

To put this in perspective, within the Forest Service regions 8 and 9, which cover 34 States, all States east of the Missouri River, Oklahoma and Texas, there are 52 national forests covering 25 million acres. My district alone has nearly half that amount of acreage. You can see those of us in the rural West are really impacted by what goes on in the Federal lands, whether it is search and rescue operations, forest fire operations. You name it, it is expensive.

When the Federal reserves were created, we set up this funding mechanism, again going back to 1908 and then coming forward. The problem now is promise to rural schools, the promise to rural communities, and the promise to rural roads has been broken. It broke last year, and it is up to us now in this Congress to keep the faith with the school kids of America and rural America, to keep faith with the resource advisory committees. They are bringing environmentalists and others together to improve forest health and habitat, great projects all over the country, to keep faith with basic county services that are being provided, funded by this program.

Folks, last checks went out the end of the year. What is happening now is the pink slips are going out. Road departments are being cut in half. County sheriffs' departments are being cut in half. School teachers getting pink slips, being told, we are not sure we will have the money to hire you back next year. This is now a crisis, and it is time for Congress to act.

I would at this point like to yield to my colleague from Oregon, my partner in this effort, H.R. 17, to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, Peter DeFazio from southern Oregon, the Fourth District.

I would just like to follow up on something the gentleman said. You talked about law enforcement needs on these rural lands. Wheeler County, Oregon, population less than 2,000 people, has three deputies and a sheriff. Total of four are doing law enforcement. They will have to layoff a quarter of their force as a result of the loss of this program if we don't reauthorize it.

Now, I tell you that because they are responsible for patrolling 1,833 square miles. That is an area 30 times larger than the District of Columbia. You are going to have three officers, the sheriff and a couple of deputies, over 30 times the size of the district, you have got more than that probably standing right out behind us here.

Now, who are these deputies? One of them rides horseback. He is out riding horseback on Federal land, and what does he come across? I don't know if you can see this, but he comes across a $19 million marijuana grove. These little vertical lines here, horizontal lines here, are a marijuana grove, a Mexican drug cartel with illegal nationals doing the cultivation.

It is amazing to me they got it to grow out there, but they did. It is a $19 million growth spread over a quarter of a mile of Federal lands, and it was one of these sheriff deputies riding horseback that spotted this. These are on Federal lands. Why is the Federal Government doing this? Well, the Federal Government is helping to pay for some of this, but now it is breaking its promise.

I yield now to our colleague from Oregon (Ms. Hooley), who has been a real champion in helping us on this.

If I could follow up. You talked about Polk County. Klamath County has a total law enforcement operation of 35 officers to patrol 6,000 square miles. 6,000 square miles. They have to cut that by a third. Sheriff Tom Evinger says they may well end up having no law enforcement patrols at night, nor do the state police patrol at night.

That is an area 100 times larger than the District of Columbia. And when they do patrol they will have no back up. I mean, this is really serious stuff, folks. Search and rescue as you mentioned, the loss on Mt. Hood, but the loss down in southern Oregon, those are just the two that caught the media's attention, and the country and the world's attention.

Let me suggest, as we all know from the northwest, there are many, many more search and rescue operations going on all of the time.

I would comment. And certainly the gentleman from southern Oregon too, that Lake County, this is 93 percent of their road budget. 93 percent of the road budget. I think you can probably put the State of New Hampshire inside Lake County and still have some room to graze cattle.

This is so serious to those counties. We have got to get this done.

I do see we have been joined by a couple other of colleagues, Cathy McMorris Rogers from the great State of Washington, who has been very active on forest and forest health issues when I chaired that subcommittee last session.

I know Mike Thompson from northern California has joined us as well. He has been active in helping us on this. Perhaps we could turn from our colleague from Washington State.

Mrs. McMorris Rodgers. Thank you, Mr. Walden and Mr. DeFazio for your leadership on this issue, for organizing this time for all of us this evening.

I have the honor of representing a district in eastern Washington. We are known for our vast public forests in that area. We have over 2\1/2\ million acres of forest lands.

And these lands and this timber plays a very important role in our region's economy. Maintaining healthy forests is essential to those who make a living from the land, and for those who use it for other purposes.

Unfortunately there are a number of critical issues that impact the health and the economic stability of the forests in our region. As many have mentioned this evening, since 1908 the counties that host forest lands from which timber is cut receive a share from the Federal Government of the timber receipts, about 25 percent.

This is such important money for these counties and schools, used to fund road improvements, fire stations, police protection. And yet as the timber sales have declined, funding received by the counties and schools have also declined. It is because of that issue that we come before you tonight, and that the Secure Rural Schools Fund was originally established, and why it is so important that it continues to be established.

It is essential for the livelihood of rural communities in eastern Washington. The Federal Government owns the majority of the land in many of the counties I represent, like others have

mentioned tonight, for example Okanogan County, which is one of the largest counties in the country, it is 73 percent owned by the Government.

That means 27 percent of the remaining land that is under private ownership is the tax base for a county that is six times the size of Rhode Island. That is the funding from those lands that is used to support search and rescue. Last year they saved a woman's life. And this year they will be forced to cut the special training and equipment and the jobs of some of those who work on the team.

Without revenue from timber receipts, along with the inability to tax Federal land, these communities do not have enough money to provide essential community services and educational opportunities. I remain hopeful that we will be able to find the funding for the reauthorization of this program.

I am hopeful because we do not have another option. In Ferry County, the largest employer was Vaagen Brothers Lumber. I say was because they had to close in 2003. Ferry County has 18 percent private ownership of land. And they too are dependent upon these resources, and we need to keep the promise to our rural communities and schools.

In the State of Washington, half of the money from the secure rural schools goes to support schools. It means $21 million for the State of Washington, and although I would prefer this money go to the schools that are actually timber-dependent schools, nevertheless it is important money to our schools.

For Newport, Washington it means a difference in music or art or maybe the difference in a foreign language teacher. Our timber- dependent schools simply do not have the capacity to make up this kind of funding cut. The purpose of this act is to stabilize payments to counties that help support roads and schools, provide projects that enhance forest ecosystem health, and provide employment opportunities among the Federal land management agencies.

I wanted to point out last year, just one example in my district, we had over 200,000 acres burn. Now this is in Okanogan County, this is a county that is nearly 75 percent owned by the Federal Government. And what we see here is the burn, the brown and the light yellow is where over 200,000 acres were burned.

The pink areas here 1\1/2\ percent of what burned is what is proposed to be salvaged. Hopefully soon, although it is in dispute too. This in my mind demonstrates part of the challenge that we have, because this is a recent example in a county that is desperate for support for community services, trees have been lost. In the past I would have preferred for us to be able to go in there, even like 10 years ago, and be able to harvest some of these trees, create some timber receipts for this county rather than facing this situation where we have had devastating burns, with now very little of that burn being able to be salvaged.

I have here a chart showing wildland acres burned over the last several years. The yellow indicates the year 2000, the green is 2005, the red is 2006, and the blue indicates a 10-year average.

As you can see, this all starts back in May and ends in November. But, again, over several periods of years, last year, we saw record amounts of fire on Federal lands. In fact, we spent a billion and a half dollars fighting fire. We burned more than 9 million acres. That is a record. And it just keeps getting worse and worse. So we have got a real problem out in the forest, and that affects our communities and our counties, because when you have these fires, what happens? Law enforcement has to go out and manage the roads and manager the flow of people, and they are doing around-the-clock vigil work on do we have to evacuate or not.

And of course the Forest Service is involved too, but a lot of that burden falls on that local community. I have had whole communities close for very important times in the summer, because of fires approaching. Sisters, Oregon comes to mind. So your comment about wildfires is very apropos tonight.

We thank you for coming out tonight to share your comments with our colleagues and others about the importance of trying to get this reauthorized. I would yield now to our distinguished colleague, the gentleman from the first district of California, Mike Thompson, whose district receives more than $6 million a year to help cover the costs of law enforcement, education, and other natural resource work that goes on there. So I yield to my colleague from California.

Thank you, Congressman Thompson. We appreciate your vigilance in our efforts to try and get this reauthorized; and your comments tonight, I think, are very powerful in our efforts. You talk about roads. Morrow County road department has 19 employees to service 850 miles of county roads. They are going to be forced to lay off at least seven, perhaps as many as nine.

Wallowa County, 700 miles, county roads maintained by a staff of 14. Soon there will only be seven. That is possibly one person for every 100 miles of road or the same distance from here to Richmond, Virginia. You would have one road maintenance person. This story is repeated over and over in my district, Congresswoman Hooley's district, your district, Congressman DeFazio's district, Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers' district. All over the rural West we are facing this enormous problem.

And people love to come out into their Federal forests. I love to get out into our Federal forests. I love to backpack and do all the things many of us do. It is a wonderful attraction. But people get lost, they get injured, and who is there to pick them up? The local county. The county sheriff, the local rescue patrol. And that is why this funding is so important so they will have the resources, they will have the people when you break a leg or you fall down an ice shaft somewhere. There is somebody to come get you. And that is just the rescue part and the police part. We have talked a lot about the schools as well.

I know my friend from Clackamas County, Congresswoman Hooley, did you want to comment?

And we appreciate your help on it too. And I think we have all signed a letter to the appropriators asking them that in the emergency supplemental they fund at least a 1-year extension while we work on a longer equitable solution to this problem.

My colleague from southern Oregon.

March of 2005 we moved it out of subcommittee.

Would you yield just on one point?

Because you mentioned West Virginia. And Rita Griffith from Pocahontas County, she is a commissioner there. She says nine full-time teaching positions will be cut and funding for an after- school forestry education program will be lost. She is from Pocahontas County, West Virginia. I have got examples from Alaska and Arizona to California and West Virginia, so you are right.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

And the ocean.

And, in fact, you think about in our State and in Northern California how many meth labs have been found on Federal lands, found by county sheriffs deputies generally. They are the ones out there. Now, there are other law enforcement agencies, but a lot of it is that.

And I showed you the marijuana growing that that lone deputy, by himself, no backup, on horseback out riding in the Federal lands, found 6,000 plants in a Mexican cartel drug trafficking operation. This is going on out on Federal lands. And it is not like the Forest Service has a huge police force to go patrol their own lands. They don't. And so it is a severe problem.

Exactly. We have been joined by our colleague from Northern California, Wally Herger, who serves the adjoining area, at least to mine. And I don't know if he touches up against your district or not. But he does an extraordinarily able job representing Northern California and has been very active in forestry issues and forest health issues over the years. And we are delighted you could join us tonight to talk about the importance of reauthorizing H.R. 17.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from the Second District California.

We appreciate your great work on forest health issues and your support of this effort. You mentioned this was just a fraction of what we spend federally for the Federal Government to keep its word. As you recall, we tried to get an amendment on the floor during the debate over the continuing resolution a week or so ago and we would have paid for that by just taking a fraction of what is spent for the whole government. That fraction was .00086 percent of the Federal budget that would pay for this; but not just pay for it, it would keep the commitment of this government to the people out West and elsewhere where there are forests that have been there for up until now 100 years basically, 99 years. So it doesn't take a lot to keep your word, and we need to keep the promise regarding forest health and schools and roads and other things.

So we appreciate your work on this, Congressman Herger. Thanks for your leadership.

That is a county we share.

Most of the States this side of the Mississippi have less than 7 or 8 percent Federal ownership. In my district, much like like

yours, Deschutes County is 79 percent federally controlled. Lake is 78; Harney is 78; Malheur is 76; Hood River is 72; Grant is 61; Wallowa is 58; and Baker is 53 percent of the land masses under Federal ownership and control. That is why this is so important that the Federal Government keep its word.

I would like now to yield to our good friend and colleague from the Fourth District of Washington, the Honorable Doc Hastings, whose district receives $8.8 million a year to help with roads and schools in a very federally dominated area.

Doc, you have been a terrific leader in this effort, and we appreciate your coming down tonight.

This chart here shows it very clearly.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his work and his help in the Rules Committee and on this issue.

You have been most diligent and most helpful and we appreciate your comments tonight. Harney County Judge Steve Grasty has said, ``Loss of this program means losing future opportunities for young people here and in rural counties across America.'' We have comments like that, and I am sure Peter does as well, from every county that is affected, every school superintendent who is trying now to work with their school boards to figure out who stays, who goes, what gets cut, what gets left behind, and what do we do to help rural kids keep up in a school system that is going to be devastated by the loss of these dollars.

This is a national problem. These are national lands. National policy determines what happens on these lands, and you can see by the reduction in Federal timber receipts, one of the outcomes of Federal policy has been near elimination of receipts, which has brought us to this legislation, which now is expired. And I appreciate the work of my colleague from the Fourth District of Washington as we work to reauthorize this to keep the Federal Government's promise to rural schools, rural roads, rural counties, and our Federal forestlands.

And I yield to my colleague.

I am told our time is about up. I just appreciate your help and that of our colleagues.

I would encourage all of our colleagues who are listening tonight, help us pass H.R. 17. Help us keep the promise to these rural people who are surrounded in their areas by Federal lands, which are gorgeous and we love them, but we need your help to deal with them.

Again, I thank all of our colleagues who came down at this very late hour on the East Coast to share their comments and concerns. And together we can keep the promise for America.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 116 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

(Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 116 provides for consideration of H.J. Res. 20, the continuing resolution for fiscal year 2007. It may seem strange that we are doing that at this late date.

The rule provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member on the Committee on Appropriations. The rule also provides one motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, every Congress has a constitutional responsibility to be good stewards of the money given to it by the American people, but the last Congress failed to live up to this duty. Of the 11 appropriations bills it was supposed to pass in 2006, only two were completed. The others were abandoned, left for the incoming Democratic Congress to deal with.

My fellow Democrats and I could have approached this responsibility in the way it was approached last year, but we promised to run the House differently, to run it responsibly, and that is exactly what we intend to do.

We had a mess to clean up, Mr. Speaker. The budget failures of the past Republican Congress have vastly increased our national debt, but they did more than that. They left agencies, States and localities in limbo for months concerning their future funding. What is more, we have seen an explosion in earmarks over the last 12 years in Washington, earmarks that had greased the wheels of an out-of-control congressional machinery.

The number of earmarks approved by the House had, according to estimates by even the most conservative of groups, doubled and tripled in recent Congresses, and for every shameful, unjustifiable bridge to nowhere that was exposed and shouted down by the public, many more questionable earmarks slipped through undetected, a few lines here or there in a large bill, misspending the people's money and taking advantage of their trust.

The Democrats have pledged to fundamentally reform the way earmarks are passed into law by this body, to bring transparency to a process that until recently had been deliberately shrouded in darkness.

The Rules reform package that we enacted on the first day of this Congress will shed new and much-needed light on the earmarking process. It will require the full disclosure of all earmarks proposed by Members of the House. If a project is worth funding, then the Representative requesting it should have no qualms with standing up publicly on its behalf.

But the earmarks in the budget bills left undone by Republicans last Congress did not have any such standards applied to them, and so Democrats have decided to rid this CR of all earmarks. It was a difficult decision and one which we all had to justify to our constituents back home. But in the end, it was a necessary step to bring forth a new day in the people's House.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is not perfect, and cleaning up the mess we inherited required difficult choices between bad alternatives.

But I am very pleased that despite it all the legislation does contain increases in funding for critical programs affecting the lives of millions of people at home and around the world.

Spending on veterans health care is increased by $3.6 billion above the 2006 spending level. Spending on Pell Grants for the first time in 5 years is increased by $615.4 million. The NIH is going to receive an additional $619.6 million.

Other increases are going to support public housing, crime and law enforcement, and domestic transportation needs.

The bill even has a global focus, granting an additional $1.3 million to expand the efforts to combat HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis internationally.

Mr. Speaker, the minority, I predict, will claim that the closed rule under which we are debating this bill is a violation of the spirit of the House and a rejection of the promises Democrats made last year to open up the legislative process.

Let me be very clear, extremely clear about the past record of the House. Since 1997, the House has voted on 75 continuing resolutions, and all of them, 100 percent, were considered under a closed rule process with no amendments allowed. What is more, a third of those continuing resolutions contained substantive policy changes.

In addition to that extensive precedent, the House has already fully debated and considered eight of the appropriations measures contained here. To do so again would take us all year, and we do not have that luxury, not with the many challenges that confront our Nation at this moment in history.

Under the circumstances left for us by the former majority, we have done the best we could. We have produced a bill that will keep the government functioning and a bill that, despite its flaws, is a breath of fresh air compared with how appropriations legislation used to be handled in this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, the American people are ready for a new direction. They have proved that in this country, and that is why they put a new kind of Congress in power. This Congress is going to be defined not just by the way it does business, but by the kind of business it conducts.

This Congress is not going to pass the buck, leaving unfinished business for others to handle and leaving problems for others to fix. Democrats are making the tough choices the American people expect us to make and that they elected us to make.

At the end of the day, that is what real leadership is all about.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Just as a response to my colleague from Washington to remind him that, just a month ago, the minority was the majority. If he thinks the things he points out today were serious problems, he should have fixed them then.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

Mr. Speaker, I want to yield 1 minute to Mr. Obey from Wisconsin for whatever he wants to do with it.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

(Mr. DICKS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of my colleague how many speakers he has remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 15 seconds to Mr. Obey of Wisconsin.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to make certain that everybody understands that the money we are operating under is the money that the Republicans voted last year to spend. We are under their spending levels, not ours, so the complaints ring hollow.

The material previously referred to by Mr. Hastings of Washington is as follows:

Amendment in the nature of a substitute:

Strike all after the resolved clause and insert:

``That upon the adoption of this resolution it shall be in

order to consider in the House the joint resolution (H. J.

Res. 20) making further continuing appropriations for the

fiscal year 2007, and for other purposes. All points of order

against the joint resolution and against its consideration

are waived except those arising under clause 9 or 10 of rule

XXI. The joint resolution shall be considered as read. The

previous question shall be considered as ordered on the joint

resolution and on any amendment thereto to final passage

without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate on

the joint resolution equally divided and controlled by the

chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on

Appropriations; (2) the amendment in section 2 of this

resolution if offered by Representative Walden of Oregon or

his designee, which shall be in order without intervention of

any point of order, shall be considered as read, and shall be

separately debatable for one hour equally divided and

controlled by the proponent and an opponent; and (3) one

motion to recommit with or without instructions.

``Sec. 2. The amendment referred to in section 1 is as

follows:

Page 39, after line 24, insert the following:

``Sec. 20327. Of the uncosted balances available from funds

appropriated under Section 130 of Division H of the

Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2004 (Public Law 108-199)

under the heading `Department of Energy, Energy Programs,

Science', as amended by Section 315 of the Energy and Water

Development Appropriations Act, 2006 (Public Law 109-103),

for the Iowa Environmental and Education project in

Coralville, Iowa, $44,569,000 is rescinded.''.

Page 87, line 6, strike ``$25,423,250,000'' and insert

``$25,467,819,000''.

At the end of chapter 5 of title II of the division B being

added by section 2, add the following new section:

``Sec. 20522. (a) In addition to amounts otherwise

appropriated or made available by this division, $400,000,000

is appropriated for the purpose of making payments for fiscal

year 2007 under sections 102 and 103 of the Secure Rural

Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000 (Public

Law 106-393; 16 U.S.C. 500 note). The Secretary of the

Treasury shall use such funds to make such payments in lieu

of using funds in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, as

otherwise authorized by sections 102(b)(3) and 103(b)(2) of

such Act.

``(b) There is hereby rescinded an amount equal to .00086

percent of the budget authority provided (or obligation limit

imposed) for fiscal year 2007 for any discretionary account

pursuant to this division.''.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

And I want to thank you and I want to thank Mr. DeFazio, both, for your work on this not only in this Congress, but your yeomen's work at the end of the last Congress to try to get this problem resolved. And I apologize for coming down late. I wanted to participate more fully, but the Rules Committee is meeting, as we are speaking, on the Iraq issue. So I was up there and didn't have a chance to come down.

But let me make a couple of points here. This really is about keeping a commitment that was made by the Federal Government to the counties. And you just made the point there that States with counties in the western part of the United States have a lot of Federal ownership. I have two counties that I just want to talk about in my district where over 80 percent of their land is owned by the Federal Government. Now, by definition that means that 80 percent of the taxable land that the county commission would have is not subject to taxation.

The decision was made over 100 years ago for these national forestlands, which is principally in my area. I know you have some development lands in yours. But since they don't have taxation, they said okay. Deals were worked out many years ago that you can have the revenue from harvesting the timber, which worked out very, very well. So that is the Federal policy that was made. The Federal Government owns the land in these counties; so, therefore, they can't tax it. It is Federal policy. In the early 1990s, another Federal policy or interpretation, I should probably say, of a Federal policy has led to a decline in timber receipts, as you can see here by the chart.

When President Clinton, to his credit, tried to come up with a forest plan, the current level at that time of timber harvest was 4\1/2\ billion board-feet, and the promise was that you could at least harvest 1.1 billion, 25 percent of it. We are not even close to that. We are not even close to that because the interpretation of that law and the ensuing lawsuits have kept any activity in these multipurpose areas. And I should make this point: This is national forestland. National forests were created to be multipurpose, including commercial activity. If you want to lock it up and not have any activity at all, the way to do that is put it in a wilderness area. This is not wilderness. Some de facto policies, unfortunately, in the past have led to sometimes this being treated as wilderness areas but it is not. So as a result of this, as a result of the timber receipts going down, these counties who relied on the Federal receipts from timber because they couldn't tax land now are facing huge, huge cuts.

Chelan County in my district, one of the counties that has 80 percent ownership by the Federal Government, will have severe cuts in education, road maintenance, search and rescue, and this is a big tourist area up there, and the forestry education programs. Skamania County, a small county in the southern part of my district, loses 40 percent of its school budget. Forty percent of its school budget. And here we are and that 40 percent starts at the end of last year and they have to get through the end of the year.

So this is something that needs to be resolved, and I really appreciate your allowing me to come down to participate in this. Both of you have been really champions on getting this through. And, hopefully, we will be successful sooner rather than later, because these counties and these communities in our States simply can't wait.

Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues here this evening to urge this Congress to take action now and extend the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, commonly referred to as the county payments bill. This bill is an essential lifeline of support for rural communities throughout the country that are impacted by federal forest land ownership.

I thank my colleagues, Greg Walden and Peter DeFazio, for their steadfast efforts to address this problem.

What we are talking about here tonight is keeping a promise--a promise made to county governments a century ago in what was then still the early years of the National Forest system. County governments, of course, cannot tax the Federal Government. However, they still must provide for schools, roads, and emergency services. The Congress recognized this reality when it promised these communities that they would get a fair share of revenue produced from federal forest lands as compensation for the tax exempt status of federal forest lands. This revenue sharing, which Congress made permanent in 1908, served all parties well and was for many years an equitable solution to the problem.

Unfortunately, since the early 90s, special interest groups that oppose federal timber sales have used the Endangered Species Act to bring harvest activities in the Pacific Northwest to a standstill. The Clinton administration attempted to resolve the crisis by brokering the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994, which called for setting aside 80 percent of the federal forests in the Northwest and allowing for a modest level of continued harvest on some of what remained. This was supposed to produce a steady and reliable level of timber to help meet the growing U.S. demand for building materials and wood products.

However, even this compromise was not good enough for the radical environmentalists that have continuously used litigation to sharply limit federal harvest levels. What resulted is the closure of hundreds of mills throughout the Northwest--leaving thousands of people without family wage jobs and many counties with little or no compensation for the impact of federal land ownership. Today, we import more wood products than we ever did before, and the spotted owl--which was supposedly what all the litigation was about--isn't any closer to recovery as a result of our de facto zero harvest policy.

Fortunately, the Congress at least recognized the dramatic impact to local governments caused by the sharply declining Forest Service timber receipts. This is why we passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act in 2000. This law, which expired at the end of Fiscal Year 2006, enabled local governments to either remain with the traditional receipt sharing system or take a payment based on historical harvest levels. In addition, it authorized funding for local governments to work in cooperation with interested stakeholders to carry out special forest restoration projects. These payments made the difference for many county governments that would otherwise not be able to provide essential services.

Today, however, the future of these payments is in doubt. Despite the many efforts on both sides of the aisle, we were unable to secure an extension of this bill before the 109th Congress adjourned. I am proud of the fact that the House did at least identify and act upon a couple of legislative items last year that would have helped offset the cost of the reauthorization. However, the situation remains that we need to find a way to get the county payments extension through the Congress and on to the President. Time is quickly running out for these rural communities.

Let me give you examples of what will happen to two of my counties if we fail to act now.

Chelan County, which is almost 80 percent federally-owned land, will face severe cuts in education, road maintenance, search and rescue operations and many other county services. In addition, they would be forced to eliminate the Forestry Education Program, which takes ``at risk kids'' from several local rural school districts and involves them in hands on habitat restoration projects during the summer. This program is administered with the help of Washington State University and local employees of state and federal agencies and has been recognized by the National Association of County Officials.

In Skamania County, which is more than 80 percent tax exempt federal land, the local school districts will lose 40 percent of their current budget. That means the loss of dozens of teachers and support positions, the shuttering of school buildings, and dramatic cutbacks in classes and extracurricular offerings. The county government would be forced to cut more than half of their law enforcement personnel, road workers, and court employees. These people will likely have to leave the county to find alternate employment, taking their families with them and further eroding the county's economy.

Mr. Speaker, these are just a couple of examples of the kinds of the consequences to real communities if we fail to act. I again urge the leadership of the Congress to move the extension of the county payments bill on the next available legislative vehicle. Let's keep our promise to these local governments and reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act before it's too late.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Washington State for yielding time.

Mr. Speaker, I am here today to talk about the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, H.R. 17, of which the chairman of the Rules Committee is a cosponsor.

I went before the Rules Committee yesterday with an amendment cosponsored by my colleague from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) to reauthorize, or to appropriate, I should say, not reauthorize, for 1 year, just 1 year, funds for our schools and roads in our communities, $400 million.

To meet the PAYGO test, we provided a mechanism. It is not the most elegant mechanism out there, but it was an across-the-board reduction in all spending by .00086 percent, or 1 penny out of $11.59 spent in this bill.

Today, across America, in more than 4,400 school districts in 600 counties, layoff notices are going out for teachers, for sheriffs' deputies, for search-and-rescue patrols, for essential services in our counties. Libraries in Jackson County, Oregon, will close in April, all 15 of them, because the last Congress and now this Congress has failed to take action, failed.

The distinguished gentleman who chairs the Appropriations Committee says, this is mandatory spending; we can't touch it in our bill. You can't authorize in this bill, oh, unless you got a waiver from the Rules Committee, because you cannot stand here and tell me there aren't programs being funded in this bill that have fully been authorized. I don't believe it is the case. This is one such program, and you made the choice not to do it here.

Now, many of you have indicated that you will work with us to fund this somewhere else, and I am deeply appreciative of that. The chairwoman of the Rules Committee, a cosponsor of this reauthorization legislation, made that commitment yesterday, I believe, to work with us on some other vehicle.

But I just have to tell you how dramatic this is in my district and in districts across this country where school board administrators are having to tell their teachers, next year I can't guarantee you will have a contract, and I have to be able to do that by March 1. They are putting out the layoff notices. They are looking at shutting down vital services. All because this Federal Government made a decision at some point to stop harvesting timber on Federal forest land in a significant measure, an 80 to 85 percent reduction, that this Congress, through its actions in the past and lawsuits and everything else, brought to a dramatic halt, active management of our Federal force.

Last year in America, 9 million acres burned, and this Congress had to appropriate $1.5 billion to put out forest fires and grassland fires, the most in the history of our country, following another year that was the most.

We will not change the policy so we get commonsense management of our forests. Now, for the first time in nearly 100 years you break the commitment that the Federal Government has had since Teddy Roosevelt was President and created the great forest reserves, to be a good neighbor to the counties where up to 70 or 80 percent of the Federal lands in their counties are owned and managed or mismanaged, in some of our opinions, by the Federal Government.

School kids in my district out in Grant County boarding this bus are going to be traveling on roads where the road department is basically being eliminated.

I want to share with you a letter from a fifth grader in Ashland, Oregon. A fifth grader in Ashland, Oregon, gets it and understands that this Congress ought to be able to understand it and get it. She wrote to me after going to a Martin Luther King event and decided she ought to get involved in public service. Her mother is a school teacher; her father is a professor.

``I live in Ashland and go to Bellview School. I am in fifth grade. I use our library a lot. We always borrow books on tape for car trips. My New Year's resolution is to read all the `Hank the Cowdog' books, and the library has them all. I need the library to stay open so I can finish my resolution. I also use a lot of books there for school reports.

``Please help to keep our library system open!

``Sincerely, Alice.''

I appreciate your willingness to work with us in the future. I wish we could have had the amendment made in order in this resolution so that Alice could get her school books and the layoff notices wouldn't go out.

The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act (H.R. 17 a.k.a. County Payments), in both this Congress and the last, has been a strongly bipartisan issue.

The DeFazio-Walden legislation to reauthorize and fund the County Payments program for seven years enjoys the support of 98 Members of their House.

I would like to thank the members of the Rules Committee who heard me out yesterday on a DeFazio-Walden amendment which would have restored funding for this vital program. I would like to thank Congressmen McGovern, Alcee Hastings (FL) and Cardoza, who following my remarks in Committee, joined Chairwoman Slaughter and Congressman Doc Hastings (WA) as cosponsors of H.R. 17.

As I have said in eight of 18 one-minute Floor speeches, the failure of Congress to reauthorize the County Payments program is a breach of faith to more than 600 forested counties and 4,400 school districts across America.

The DeFazio-Walden amendment offered in the Rules Committee yesterday would have provided the vital $400 million to fund this program for one year as we work to fully reauthorize and fund the program. The amendment would have met the PAYGO rule by providing a .00086 percent across-the-board reduction in the [$463 billion] CR we are considering today. This fraction of a percent reduction amounts to one penny out of every $11.59 which will be appropriated in this CR.

One penny is all that rural counties and school districts across this country need.

Without this penny, what will happen to rural America's forested counties and school districts? Severe cuts in funding for jail beds, sheriff's patrols, and criminal prosecutions, and the pursuit of meth cooks. Rural school districts will forego overdue repairs, not buy textbooks, or face significant challenges bussing kids to school.

Libraries will close in places like Jackson County, Oregon. In fact, during the Rules Committee discussion yesterday, Chairwoman Slaughter commented that ``even during the Depression we didn't close libraries.'' I would like to draw your attention to a letter I received from Alice, a fifth-grader from Ashland, Oregon who utilizes one of the 15 Jackson County libraries scheduled to close in April if this vital funding is not restored.

There are further impacts. Surely you remember the searches for the Kim Family in southern Oregon and the mountain climbers on Mt. Hood? Both Jackson and Hood River Counties used equipment and personnel paid for in part by the County Payments program in those searches. The Klamath County, Oregon sheriff's force of 35 officers will be cut by one-third. They patrol an area 100 times the size of the District of Columbia.

These vital county services and rural school programs were once funded by timber receipts. The virtual elimination of timber harvest in our Federal forests prompted Congress to provide payments to develop forest health improvement projects on public lands and simultaneously stimulate job development and community economic stability.

Consider that Oregon's Second District, which I represent, is 60 percent public land; 78 percent of Harney County is public land; 79 percent of Deschutes County is public land; 72 percent of Hood River County is public land.

While these forest and range lands are America's treasures, these vast tracts of land do not provide a tax base for communities, greatly reducing the amount of revenue that can be generated for services like schools, libraries, and law enforcement.

I appreciate the kind words from the Rules Committee members and their commitment to work with Congressman DeFazio and myself to find the appropriate legislative vehicle to deal with this rural Federal funding crisis.

We must not wait any longer--pink slips are being sent to county employees, rural school programs are being cut, and Alice, the fifth- grader from Ashland, Oregon is losing her library--time is running out.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I think I can clarify it, although I am on the minority side.

Mr. Speaker, the bill, I think, has been referred to both the Natural Resources Committee and the Agriculture Committee. In the last Congress, my subcommittee and the full Resources Committee passed the bill out to the Agriculture Committee, where no further action was taken, nor was there any action taken by the United States Senate, which was no great surprise.

I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership on this issue and for bringing this both to the attention of the House and the American people. Obviously, we don't need to do much to communicate the level of concern with people at home and in our districts, or even in hundreds of counties scattered across America.

In fact, across America, over 4,400 rural schools in 40 States will lose funding if this legislation is not reauthorized. 4,400 rural school districts. You can bet most of those rural school districts are already hurting trying to provide the next generation of young Americans with a good education. In some counties all the rural schools will be closed due to a lack of funding if this legislation is not reauthorized.

My colleague from Oregon already talked earlier about the highly publicized search and rescue that went on back at the end of last year, the beginning of this year, for the Kim family. You know, this is not, this was a difficult search and rescue mission, since we didn't know where that family was. They were difficult to locate until later they were found by high-tech tech means.

But the fact is that we will not even have the capability to begin those searches in many counties in southern Oregon and, indeed, across the West and some other parts of the country if this legislation is not reauthorized. Deputy sheriffs are already receiving layoff notices. Counties don't have the same fiscal year as they have here in Washington D.C.

For many counties, the money authorized last October is going to run out about 3 months into their next fiscal year, so we have to begin now to send out layoff notices. We will have hundreds of thousands of square miles of the western United States with no rural law enforcement. What a mecca for meth dealers, organized crime and other criminal elements, potentially even terrorists, if our counties cannot support basic rural law enforcement services; 780 rural counties will lose funding for roads, roads that provide the movement of the trees to the mills that provide the movement of Americans to recreate in their great public lands. Those funds would dramatically cut and in some cases almost eliminate it.

Yes, we are talking about a lot of money here, you are right. It is a lot of money where I come from. It is a lot of money for most Americans: $400 million a year is invested in counties and rural schools across America, and the return is many times that.

Let me talk about an element of something we haven't talked about yet. It is not just critical services, not just schools, not just law enforcement, not just search and rescue. It is actually benefits to the public lands. Here on chart 1, I have before and after photos of hazardous fuels reduction near Eureka, California, in an at-risk community adjacent to public lands in northern California, obviously before, after. That will cut fire fighting costs, it will save lives, it will save resources.

Here we have another that depicts peeled logs that are being used for temporary utility poles, actually in the southeastern United States after the Katrina disaster. Again, these came out of a watershed improvement program, a fuel reduction program, funded by these payments.

Then finally I have here, yes, economic diversification, local economic development, small investments in peeling logs and creating posts here at the Hayfork South Highway Three Fuels Reduction Project in California.

So these investments benefit the resource. So we are not just talking about crucial public services. We are also talking about money that we have put back into the resources. We live there. We know how valuable these resources are. We want to save them and improve them for future generations; but without these funds, some of that investment will be put at risk.

We have been joined by a couple of other Members, I am sure we want to get to those. But just a quick thing. I came from Lane County, I was a commissioner in the early 1980s, when we had a drop off in timber revenues due to markets and not as catastrophic as this. And yet at that time, in a county this size, and we have to relate this to our colleagues back here, they cannot understand how big our districts are, a county which is just one of my counties, the size of the State of Connecticut had no rural law enforcement patrols outside of contract deputies and a couple of small communities, a county the size of the State of Connecticut. And we are headed back to that point in many counties in the western United States.

My friend, Representative Hooley, mentioned reauthorization. I do want to thank the chairman of the Resources Committee, Nick Rahall from West Virginia. And, yes, this touches West Virginia too. There are communities at risk there that are working hard to help us move the reauthorization bill for the longer-term funding in the Resources Committee, hopefully next month.

And obviously my colleague from southern Oregon, Representative Walden, when he was Chair of the Forest Subcommittee of Resources, he and I, quite quickly, and I think just about, almost 2 years ago--

Moved the authorization out, but it unfortunately got hung up in the process and never did become law although we certainly saw more action on this side of the Hill than we did in the Senate.

Yes, sure.

And just since the gentleman from California had referenced Del Norte County, I just want to talk about the county immediately to the north of that which would be Curry County, Oregon.

Now, some people will say, look, why don't these counties just suck it up and take care of their own problems, raise the taxes? Well, in Oregon, our local property tax structure is dictated by the State because of a property tax initiative similar to the one that passed in California. The local commissioners do not have any options when it comes to that.

Now, if Curry County was going to grow its way out of this problem, a county that today has 12,000 houses valued at about $250,000 each, they would have to add 35,000 houses valued at $350,000 each, quadruple the size of the county. And, unfortunately, since they are constrained by public lands----

And the Pacific Ocean, some of those would have to be house boats, I guess.

But it is very serious. And there they are looking at the layoff of 16 of the 43 employees in the Curry County Sheriff's Office. And the sheriff would just then only be able to supervise the jail. There would no longer be a rural law enforcement, which obviously jeopardizes the traveling public and, again, raises the potential, as the gentleman from southern Oregon who represents also eastern

Oregon pointed out, of a vacuum into which some of these gangs that are highly organized in this country, some of which have come across the border from Mexico could infiltrate for methamphetamine production or even growing marijuana.

But of course it ends up in a lot of urban areas, so it is their problem, too.

Mr. Speaker, let me just mention two other counties. I have got a list here. I see another gentleman from Washington that we want to hear from him. But the most heavily impacted county in my district will be Josephine County, and their general fund revenues have dropped 69 percent. Again, a dramatic loss of public safety.

Right. And road services. And then in Coos County, more than half the general fund. Layoff notices have already gone out to 100 out of a 430-person workforce. Again, the deepest cuts, because it is the largest proportion of the budget, public safety, again, the loss of patrol deputies. It is going to be a very, very difficult time when tourists from all across America come to southwest Oregon this summer. If they are in an accident or have other problems in rural areas across large swaths of our State, there will be no immediate help for them.

Well, again just to reiterate, 4,400 school districts across America, I believe, of more than 800 counties are impacted. Critical law enforcement, public safety, search and rescue services, road maintenance services, schools, school class size, school infrastructure, all these things are on the cutting block. Benton County in my district tried a levy. It failed. Again, the cuts will be targeted at law enforcement and the sheriffs' offices. That is the biggest part of the general fund for virtually all my counties. They have no choice.