Community Wood Facilities Assistance Act of 2023

Madam President, I rise today to introduce the Community Wood Facilities Assistance Act of 2023 and thank my colleagues, Senators Collins, Shaheen, and Kelly, for joining me as original cosponsors of the bill.

This bill will assist with the construction of facilities that make sustainable use of small-diameter timber from forest-thinning projects and other needed treatments in eastern and western forests.

In doing so, the bill would also create jobs in rural and forest- dependent communities while decreasing wildfire risk in our vulnerable forests.

The Forest Service reports that 80 million acres of Forest Service lands are at risk of catastrophic wildfire or abnormal levels of insect and disease infestations.

These impacts are only made worse by historic levels of drought. In California alone, 129 million trees have died across 8.9 million acres due to drought and bark beetles. Thirty-six million of those tree deaths were in 2022, triple the number from the previous year. This is clearly a crisis.

Removing select small trees and other hazardous fuels in our forests are critical for preserving our forests over the long term. Not only does this ease the competition large trees face for water, it also reduces the spread of bark beetles and makes the forest less susceptible to catastrophic wildfire.

Between the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress has provided billions of dollars for hazardous fuels reduction and forest thinning work. What is needed now is the economic infrastructure to support this work.

Unfortunately, the number of sawmills, bioenergy facilities, and other forest-product companies have been shrinking for decades. This is due in part to increased production efficiency, but in other instances, market instability forced the closure of many large mills.

One result of the decrease in sawmills is the inability for the market to react nimbly to supply and demand. In 2020, even though massive wildfires should have meant a boom in salvageable trees, the COVID-19 pandemic constrained mill capacity and throughput. This constraint, along with a surge in consumer demand, led to a near 400 percent increase in lumber prices, which are only now resolving.

An analysis by The Nature Conservancy and Bain and Company management consultants recommended incentives to ``bridge the gap between the cost of ecological thinning and the economic viability of wood-processing infrastructure.''

As the report explains, ``If more aggressive restoration targets can be met, there will be significant need for additional processing capacity to defray restoration costs and provide valuable end uses for thinned material.''

Our bill would make targeted changes to existing Forest Service grant programs to help the forest product industry grow and provide outlets for the billions of acres of wood that will result from the investments made in the bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act.

The two grant programs we target in this bill are the Community Wood Energy and Wood Innovations Grant Program and the Wood Innovations Program.

These programs would benefit from changes, particularly from higher Federal cost-shares and an increased ability to provide more funding for each project, in addition to a higher authorized funding.

The first of these, the Community Wood Energy and Wood Innovations Grant Program, provides grants for the capital cost of small wood products facilities. Our bill would first change the name to avoid confusion with the Wood Innovations Program.

Our bill would also double the authorization level to $50 million per year, allow the program to fund new facility construction in addition to improvements. The maximum grant amount would also increase from $1 to $5 million, and the Federal cost share would increase from 35 percent to 50 percent, making it easier for small companies to use.

Our bill will also revise the Forest Service's Wood Innovations Grant Program, which provides grants for innovative uses and applications of wood products and the expansion of related markets. It would similarly allow this program to be used for new facilities in addition to retrofits and improvements and lower the minimum non-Federal cost-share from 50 percent to 33.3 percent.

Congress has an opportunity this year to make these important changes to these grant programs and help stimulate a self-sustaining forest product economy and promote healthier forests. I thank Senators Collins, Shaheen, and Kelly for their partnership on this bill, and I urge the full Senate to promptly take up this bill and pass it as soon as possible.

Madam President, I rise today to introduce the Community Wood Facilities Assistance Act of 2023 and thank my colleagues, Senators Collins, Shaheen, and Kelly, for joining me as original cosponsors of the bill.

This bill will assist with the construction of facilities that make sustainable use of small-diameter timber from forest-thinning projects and other needed treatments in eastern and western forests.

In doing so, the bill would also create jobs in rural and forest- dependent communities while decreasing wildfire risk in our vulnerable forests.

The Forest Service reports that 80 million acres of Forest Service lands are at risk of catastrophic wildfire or abnormal levels of insect and disease infestations.

These impacts are only made worse by historic levels of drought. In California alone, 129 million trees have died across 8.9 million acres due to drought and bark beetles. Thirty-six million of those tree deaths were in 2022, triple the number from the previous year. This is clearly a crisis.

Removing select small trees and other hazardous fuels in our forests are critical for preserving our forests over the long term. Not only does this ease the competition large trees face for water, it also reduces the spread of bark beetles and makes the forest less susceptible to catastrophic wildfire.

Between the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress has provided billions of dollars for hazardous fuels reduction and forest thinning work. What is needed now is the economic infrastructure to support this work.

Unfortunately, the number of sawmills, bioenergy facilities, and other forest-product companies have been shrinking for decades. This is due in part to increased production efficiency, but in other instances, market instability forced the closure of many large mills.

One result of the decrease in sawmills is the inability for the market to react nimbly to supply and demand. In 2020, even though massive wildfires should have meant a boom in salvageable trees, the COVID-19 pandemic constrained mill capacity and throughput. This constraint, along with a surge in consumer demand, led to a near 400 percent increase in lumber prices, which are only now resolving.

An analysis by The Nature Conservancy and Bain and Company management consultants recommended incentives to ``bridge the gap between the cost of ecological thinning and the economic viability of wood-processing infrastructure.''

As the report explains, ``If more aggressive restoration targets can be met, there will be significant need for additional processing capacity to defray restoration costs and provide valuable end uses for thinned material.''

Our bill would make targeted changes to existing Forest Service grant programs to help the forest product industry grow and provide outlets for the billions of acres of wood that will result from the investments made in the bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act.

The two grant programs we target in this bill are the Community Wood Energy and Wood Innovations Grant Program and the Wood Innovations Program.

These programs would benefit from changes, particularly from higher Federal cost-shares and an increased ability to provide more funding for each project, in addition to a higher authorized funding.

The first of these, the Community Wood Energy and Wood Innovations Grant Program, provides grants for the capital cost of small wood products facilities. Our bill would first change the name to avoid confusion with the Wood Innovations Program.

Our bill would also double the authorization level to $50 million per year, allow the program to fund new facility construction in addition to improvements. The maximum grant amount would also increase from $1 to $5 million, and the Federal cost share would increase from 35 percent to 50 percent, making it easier for small companies to use.

Our bill will also revise the Forest Service's Wood Innovations Grant Program, which provides grants for innovative uses and applications of wood products and the expansion of related markets. It would similarly allow this program to be used for new facilities in addition to retrofits and improvements and lower the minimum non-Federal cost-share from 50 percent to 33.3 percent.

Congress has an opportunity this year to make these important changes to these grant programs and help stimulate a self-sustaining forest product economy and promote healthier forests. I thank Senators Collins, Shaheen, and Kelly for their partnership on this bill, and I urge the full Senate to promptly take up this bill and pass it as soon as possible.

Madam President, I rise to introduce the Supercomputing for Safer Chemicals Act or the SUPERSAFE Act. Through the use of supercomputing and artificial intelligence, we have an opportunity to transform our scientific understanding of the detrimental effects associated with certain industrial chemical uses and to shift American commerce towards safer and more sustainable products and manufacturing.

The legislation would establish a SUPERSAFE Consortium to be led by the Environmental Protection Agency in consultation with the heads of relevant Federal Agencies, the National Labs, academic and other research institutions, State agencies, and other entities as determined by the EPA. The purpose of the SUPERSAFE Consortium is to identify exposures to toxic substance and chemicals that are safer to use in commerce.

Specifically, the SUPERSAFE Consortium established by this bill would use supercomputing, machine learning, and other similar capabilities to establish rapid approaches for large-scale identification of toxic substances and the development of safer alternatives to toxic substances by developing and validating computational toxicology methods; address the need to identify safe chemicals for use in consumer and industrial products and in their manufacture to support the move away from toxic substances and toward safe-by-design alternatives; and make recommendations on how the information produced can be applied in risk assessments and other characterizations for use by the Environmental Protection Agency and other Agencies in regulatory decisions and by industry in identifying toxic and safer chemicals.

Importantly, establishing a SUPERSAFE Consortium would encourage interagency collaboration and leverage the best scientific ideas through inclusion of State agencies and public and academic research institutions.

Currently, tens of thousands of untested chemicals can be used in commercial products, resulting in consumer, community, and worker exposures to potentially toxic chemicals. Too often, there is insufficient scientific data for evaluating health effects or identifying safer chemicals, and existing approaches to generating this data are slow, costly, and rely on animal testing.

We are well poised to address this problem and discover safer chemicals by establishing a SUPERSAFE Consortium to use supercomputing, machine learning, and other similar capabilities. These technologies can be developed and applied to rapidly provide information to evaluate chemical safety to identify safe chemicals that avoid the chronic diseases and environmental harm caused by toxic chemicals.

Unfortunately, too many Americans are exposed to toxic chemicals such as PFAS and lead. Congress has stepped up and provided billions to remediate toxic exposures, including via the bipartisan infrastructure law, to address PFAS and lead pollution. Establishing a SUPERSAFE Consortium in Federal law could help avoid the widespread pollution that our communities face so we can address potential pollution challenges before they become widespread.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to enact this bill as quickly as possible.

Madam President, I rise today to introduce the STEM Education in Accounting Act, which would help address workforce shortages in the accounting profession by recognizing accounting as part of a STEM education and adding accounting education programs as an allowable use of K-12 Federal grant funding. I want to thank Senator Rosen for coleading this bill with me.

Accountants play a key role in today's economy. They serve as trusted advisers for companies large and small, assist in measuring business performance, help individuals and businesses file their taxes in an accurate and timely manner, and even investigate instances of financial fraud. Yet, the United States is facing a shortage of accountants willing and able to fill this important economic role. In Maine, for example, municipalities have struggled to find public accountants to conduct their annual audits.

Recent trends suggest this shortage will continue. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job openings for accountants and auditors are expected to grow by 6 percent from 2021 to 2031--about 136,400 openings each year. At the same time, fewer students are pursuing accounting degrees than in prior years.

The STEM Education in Accounting Act seeks to improve the accounting pipeline by expanding K-12 students' exposure to accounting programs. As with other areas of STEM education, this bill would qualify accounting instruction for Federal funds. This recognition aligns with the increasing need for accounting professionals to have high-level math and technology skills, including the ability to analyze big data, ensure data security, and manage cybersecurity risk.

In particular, this bill would allow States and school districts to use a portion of their Federal student support and academic enrichment grant funding to support accounting education, including accounting career awareness. The Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grant Program was created as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act and aims to help States and school districts offer a well-rounded educational experience to all students. The STEM Education in Accounting Act would also allow school districts to use this flexible grant to strengthen accounting curricula, including increasing access to high-quality accounting courses for members of groups underrepresented in the accounting profession.

Businesses and individuals rely on accountants to help them develop and reach their financial goals. The STEM Education in Accounting Act would help address the shortage of accountants by promoting accounting education and improving the pipeline of future accountants. I encourage my colleagues to support this bipartisan bill.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.