Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

As I speak here on the floor, there are fires burning across the West, a major fire in my own district, and others elsewhere. The President asked for an additional $280 million to fight these fires because the Forest Service has already spent 84 percent of the inadequate budget for this year, 16 percent left; and the years fires have hardly begun. Last year we spent $1.6 billion.

Now, the majority here wants to pretend that we can do this all on the cheap. We do not need money to fight fires. We do not need money to prevent fires. They have jammed through a so-called Healthy Forest Bill after stripping out the money we proposed last fall in a bipartisan way to fund fuel reduction efforts. You cannot do that for nothing, but they want to pretend you can; and now they want to pretend that you can fight fires for nothing.

There is not an additional penny in this bill for the fire emergency in the western U.S. So you know what the Forest Service is going to do? They are going to borrow money. You know where they are going to borrow the money? They are going to borrow money from the already underfunded fuel reduction programs. Guess what? We have created a little endless cycle here. We are going to pretend we are doing something about fuel reduction in healthy forests, but we are not really going to do it. But it is a great political issue.

In fact, the little bit that we are already doing, we are going to rob it to fight this year's fires. The Forest Service is already preparing those cuts. That means this year's fuel reduction program will not go forward because the majority here will not even meet the President's meager request to help fight the fires that are burning today in the western United States.

Come on, you can find the money for everything else around here, tax cuts, for all sorts of other things; but somehow we get fires burning, we cannot find the money to fight the fires. And what is worse, we are going to create worse fires in the future because you are going to borrow that money and stop those programs in their tracks. It is a sad day for the United States Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

As this is the first significant trade agreement in the 21st century, let us look back and see, is our trade policy working? 2001, $358 billion trade deficit; 2002, $436 billion trade deficit; a record first quarter this year, $136 billion headed toward a $550 billion trade deficit; $1.5 billion a day, $1 million a minute. Three million jobs have been lost in the last decade due to trade policies, capital exports; 251,000 manufacturing jobs since January 1; 53,000 in May.

NAFTA, WTO, Fast Track, FTAA. Every time here on the floor of the House we hear the same carrying on about exports of goods and services and consumer benefits. Yes, exports will result. I agree. But they forget to tell us that there will be a much greater increase in imports, and they do not talk about the net, which is this deficit headed to more than $.5 trillion.

Then, if cornered, they will fall back and say, what about the consumer benefits? Well, the benefits are not really great for American workers when their jobs have been exported, no matter how cheap the goods are.

Earlier, we heard an eloquent lesson in geography, new false promises for our farmers. Already there are pending unfair trade complaints for dumping against grapes, raspberries, pears and salmon from Chile. But do not worry, we will retrain these people who lose their jobs for the new high-tech economy and for all the skilled work. Except now IBM, Boeing, GM, they are all exporting their jobs; and it is estimated under these agreements we will export 3.3 million skilled jobs in the next decade because of these trade agreements.

There is a new twist in this one, though. We are going to import skilled laborers from Chile under this agreement. Yes, we will mandate the importation of skilled laborers to displace the few remaining jobs in the United States of America.

Is our trade policy working? Yes, exactly as designed, but not the way it is being sold here on the floor of the House. It is about access to cheap labor, weak laws, and profiting a select few multinational corporations.

Will the last worker in the last manufacturing plant in America please turn out the lights.

Mr. Speaker, if you are defending the indefensible, that U.S.-manufactured, FDA-approved drugs are available at half the price or less in Canada, well, then change the subject. Say it is about safety. PhRMA has spent tens of millions of dollars advertising how it is about safety.

Which capsule has been tampered with? Well, actually the answer in Canada is neither. Not a single one has been found in the last decade in Canada of a USA-manufactured, FDA-approved drug that has been tampered with. However, what is really at risk here and the real danger is the danger to their profits.

Look at the difference in price. Which one of these capsules is the one that is 50 percent cheaper? Guess what? They are identical, but this capsule took a short vacation to Canada and the price dropped in half.

That is what we are defending against here on the floor. This is not about safety. You want to talk about safety for my seniors. I am a gerontologist, and I have sat with seniors who cried because they could not afford the prescription drugs they needed, couples who decided which one would get the prescription month in month out. Go talk to your pharmacist. Go talk to your seniors. Ask them how they divide the drugs and the dosages in half, not to save money but because they cannot afford to take a full dosage. That is what is killing seniors. It is killing them today.

Now you want to create this mythical threat of adulteration. So the manufacturers, the drug manufacturers, the most wealthy, profitable industry on Earth cannot afford to invest in tamper-proof packaging?

I guess it is beyond their capabilities. Come on. Let us get real. Let us talk about what it is really about. It is about profit. The profit center for the drug industry is in the United States because other countries have negotiated the price down on behalf of their citizens, and we were getting gouged to pay for it.

The research is not going to go away. That is the last thing that is going to go away. They only make money on the patented drugs. They will maybe cut the CEOs salaries and maybe the $6 billion a year in direct advertising before they cut the research. We will still get the research. We will get the new drugs, and we will have healthier seniors if we pass this legislation.

Today Congress will vote on and approve so-called free trade agreements with Singapore and Chile. We find our Nation sunk in the hole of a $500 billion trade deficit, and Congress is going to get out the shovels and dig a little deeper.

Mr. Speaker, 251,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost so far this year, exported from the United States; 53,000 jobs in May alone. We have a record 136.1 trade deficit for the first 3 months on a track to $550 billion trade deficit this year.

Our trade policies are failing our workers and our Nation and our future. And the response of this administration and this Congress is a collective yawn and a vote to continue down the same disastrous path. It is pathetic.

Mr. Speaker, when you are in a deep hole in Washington, D.C., what do you do? You dig it a little deeper. That is what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are proposing with the Chile and Singapore free trade agreements.

The United States ran a record $435.7 billion trade deficit last year, up from $358.3 billion in 2001, and we are headed toward a new record this year. We have a failed trade policy. We are exporting millions of jobs every year while Americans cannot find work. But this one is even better. This is truly a groundbreaking agreement.

The Bush administration has gone further than the losers in the Clinton administration who pushed free trade and the Bush administration I and the Reagan administration, 20 years of failed trade policy in this country. This one is even better. We are going to export jobs and import workers. It has a little provision they snuck in, and Congress is not allowed any amendments in these trade agreements, that will actually import skilled workers to the United States. They are only coming on a temporary basis, only take away jobs on a temporary basis. We are going to export all those obsolete industrial jobs, they say. I think we need those industrial jobs, but that is the theory on that side of the aisle. They say do not worry, we will retrain people for these new jobs, the high-tech jobs, the skilled jobs.

Now the estimates are that we are going to export 3.3 million highly skilled high-tech jobs over the next 5 years. And under this trade agreement, we are going to import workers to do the few that are left here. This is really great. This is wonderful. What a great country.

Mr. Speaker, if the American people could only have a voice on this issue. They will not get a voice here in the House, and it is very unlikely they will get a voice in the United States Senate. We are exporting $1.5 billion a day in U.S. wealth. We are continuing to drag down the economy.

The output of our economy over the last decade, according to credible economists, has been drug down by 35.2 percent over 10 years because of our trade deficit. What will this legislation do with Chile and Singapore, which is the forerunner for massive new free trade agreements all up and down

South America? It will actually accelerate that decline. We are already running a trade deficit with Chile, and it will grow greatly under this.

And with Singapore, yes, we had a little tiny trade surplus; but it is down by 50 percent in 1 year, and like with Mexico under NAFTA, we will be running huge and growing trade deficits with Singapore.

We cannot continue to run these deficits year in year out, export American jobs year in and year out, export America's industrial manufacturing base and continue to be a great economy. We are headed toward disaster here. In fact, the percent of our GDP that we are losing with these trade deficits is now exceeding the percent that Argentina was experiencing before their economic implosion or the Asian nations before their economic implosion.

Mr. Speaker, how long will people around the world continue to lend us money to buy foreign goods and undermine our own economy? This is absolutely absurd what we are doing here, and we are going to do more of it. Only inside the Washington, D.C. beltway would people look at $500 billion trade deficits, loss of our manufacturing base, the importation of skilled foreign workers and say this is great for our country because one or two multi-national corporations that nominally are based in the United States, they probably do not pay taxes here, but still pretend they are American companies, will get a little bit under this agreement.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, this rule, which this amendment would address, in my opinion is perhaps the most radical usurpation of the public interest in the history of regulation. But then again, the head of the FCC does not believe in regulation nor does he believe in public interest.

To quote him, he has called regulation ``the oppressor.'' And when asked about public interest, he said he has no idea. ``It is an empty vessel in which people pour whatever their preconceived views or biases are.''

And he went on to say, ``The night after I was sworn in as a commissioner,'' this is Michael Powell, the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, ``I waited for a visit from the angel of public interest, I waited all night, but she did not come.'' So his conclusion is, if you believe in markets, part of the right price is determined by the give-and-take of consumers and producers, and ``Thou shalt not regulate,'' and that, in fact, is what he has done here.

Now, there is substantial agreement on this side of the aisle that what he has done is an extraordinary blow to our system in the United States of America, our system of governance of our democratic republic. But there is some disagreement over the tactics on how we fight back. Considering the fact that the Republicans control both Houses of Congress and the White House, I believe that we need to send the strongest possible message, and this amendment would, thus far, absent adoption of the Dingell legislation, which I believe the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), and others will never allow to come to the floor of the House, but absent that, this is the strongest statement that we could send so far. We would be standing with more than 400,000 Americans who commented against this rule.

Now, the chairman of the committee got up to say, well, the benefits of this flow to the public, but he did not go on to say, they just do not realize it. Because almost every person who testified on the most- commented-upon rule-making in the history of the United States of America said ``no.'' ``No.''

There was one hearing held in the distant realm of Virginia. That is how much public scrutiny this rule received. Why did it receive so little public scrutiny? Because they knew that more than 400,000 people would oppose it had they only known about it ahead of time.

Now we are hearing about a lot of red herrings. This place kind of smells a little bit. The waivers will go away. No, the waivers are preexisting in this rule. The waivers will not go away. They want to help the little guys that are doing good things with the waivers. That is the only reason they are supporting Michael Powell and total rollback of public interest and the total collapse of any idea of diverse media in this country and the total concentration of this system.

No, they are really for the little guys and the waivers and the exceptions and the grandfathers, and that is why we are really here.

Well, no, that is not why we are really here. We are really here because the big money and the big interests want to own it all. It will be great, the day we can go anywhere in America, turn on the tube, watch a local station and we will see exactly the same thing we would have seen at home. It will purport to provide local news.

Some people are getting puzzled when they see what is considered to be local news under the current system, which is already concentrated enough, which has nothing to do with where they live. Imagine what it will be like when it is totally one or two or three big companies dictating all the content across all the country, and not only the content of television but the content of newspapers and radio. It will be great. We will not have to be confused anymore by conflicting opinions.

God forbid we should even begin to discuss the concepts of fairness, which stood as the rule of this land for nearly three-quarters of a century under which we had a vibrant democracy. Fairness. Now it is whoever can own it can say whatever they want and the hell with fairness.

We do not have to have fairness. We do not have to have diversity of opinion. We afford it, we bought it, we can say what we want, we can exclude who we want, we can discriminate against the groups that we do not like that say things we do not like about our President or about anything else we disagree with.

That is the vision of Michael Powell and the majority in this House. That is the system they want.

That is wrong. It is wrong whether in the majority or the minority. It is wrong for the future of our Nation.

So, please, support this amendment. Send the strongest message possible. And if this passes by a big margin, if the worst thing that could happen in the conference committee with the Senate is that we bargain back a little bit toward the good work done by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), then, okay, that is the best we can do. I would love to see the President put in a position to have to veto something so much in the public interest that people care so much about.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to proceed out of order.

Madam Speaker, this week the House will take a historic vote, probably very late toward the end of the week, late in the evening, giving the pharmaceutical industry the maximum amount of time to beat back a provision of law that would lower the price of prescription drugs for every American, not just those on Medicare, but every American.

Let us use a couple of examples here. This is a simple vote. It would allow Americans to reimport, without limit, American-manufactured, FDA- certified, safe drugs from Canada back into the United States. The interesting thing about these drugs is they are manufactured in the United States of America; but when they take a vacation to Canada, their price drops dramatically because the Government of Canada, unlike the Government of the United States, with the exception of the Veterans Department and some other agencies at the Pentagon, negotiates with the pharmaceutical industry and negotiates lower prices. They use market forces to benefit the people of Canada.

The Republicans here in the House, bizarrely enough, are offering a $400 billion prescription drug benefit for seniors that is based on subsidies to the private insurance industry and supporting the outrageous list price for drugs, which no one pays except the uninsured; but they would mandate that that be done. They would outlaw the United States Government from negotiating lower prices, unlike the Government of Canada, the Government of Great Britain, the governments of all the EU, virtually every other government in the world. In almost every country in the world a person can buy U.S.-manufactured, FDA- certified drugs for a substantial discount below the price those drugs are made available here.

In the case of one drug for glaucoma, Xalatan, the cost in the U.S. is $631 a year. If we buy it in Canada, it is $429 a year. If the government negotiated, as the VA does, we can get it for $336 a year; but under the brilliant Republican plan here in the House, a drug that costs $631 a year will cost a senior $746. They will pay actually more than the drug costs today list price. This is the grand new benefit that they are going to deliver at a cost of $400 billion.

We could lower the price of drugs more substantially for every American, particularly those on Medicare, by simply voting for and allowing the safe reimportation of U.S.-manufactured, FDA-certified drugs from Canada, plain and simple.

We are going to hear a whole host of reasons why that is a bad idea. It will hurt their profits. Yes, it will hurt their profits. They say, well, if our profits go down, we will not do the research. That is a lie. The pharmaceutical industry makes its money on new drugs. They get an exclusive 17-year patent for those drugs. That is their profit center. The last thing that is going to go is the research because that is where they are going to make their money. Maybe they will cut the obscene salaries of their CEOs. Maybe they can be get by on two, three million a year instead of sixty.

Maybe they will cut the billions they are spending to direct promote their drugs on television, something that was outlawed by the FCC and the FDA until quite recently and something that is very problematic, to get people induced to go out and by a particular drug, to go into their doctor who is pushed for time and say I want that purple pill, I saw it on television. Well, that is not what you need. I want the purple pill. Okay, I have only got 10 minutes, you are out of here, you have got the prescription. Doctors tell me they do that. So if they saved those billions, they cut the salaries and some of their other overhead and administrative costs, they would still have plenty of money to do the research, and they could still earn a good profit; but Americans would pay 40 or 50 percent less for their drugs.

They say this legislation will kill people. They claim somehow the drugs that took a vacation to Canada have become unsafe while they were there. They say this will kill people. I will tell my colleagues what is killing people in the United States of America today: the fact that they cannot afford life-saving drugs. There are seniors in my district who divide their drugs in half. There are seniors in my district, couples, who decide which one is going to get the critical drugs this month because they cannot afford to buy all of them because they do not have a benefit. That is killing people.

Bringing back U.S.-manufactured, FDA-certified drugs from Canada is not going to kill people. It will kill obscene profits on the part of this industry because they are gouging America's seniors. America's seniors are paying twice as much as people in Canada for many drugs and even more if we go across the border to Mexico.

So this is going to be a simple vote, but it is going to be a vote on which millions of dollars are unleashed to send false messages to try and pressure Members of Congress to vote against the interests of all Americans who would be healthier and benefit from less expensive drugs. We could do this through the miracle of market forces and, yes, even free trade.

I voted against the NAFTA agreement. I think it stinks and it is killing jobs in this country; but guess what, probably prohibiting the reimportation of drugs is NAFTA illegal, but no one ever files a complaint when these NAFTA illegal things benefit the big corporations, only when they benefit people, and this Congress is going to try and stop changes in that situation.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I do not rise to offer this amendment because I believe that the General Investigations Account is overfunded. In fact, I believe the entire Corps budget is way underfunded when we look at the real infrastructure needs of the United States. I appreciate the fact that the committee and the House have found $288 million more than the President proposed, but it is still $156 million less than last year, and all across the country we have locks and dams and jetties failing.

In particular, in my own district we have a dam at Fern Ridge which is more than 50 years old which is on the verge of catastrophic failure. The Corps has lowered the level of water behind the dam. They say that at any moment they may have to dewater the reservoir. And when the reservoir is dewatered, we lose both the extraordinary recreation benefits of one of the most heavily recreated lakes in Oregon, the revenues that flow from that recreation, but we also lose the flood control. And just a few years ago this dam was vital when we had a wet winter, and they are now predicting that we again are going to have a wet winter. So if the dam just fails a little bit more, we are going to lose all the flood control capability and all of the recreational attributes, and the Corps of my region says they just will not have the money until the year 2006 to fix this dam.

That is not acceptable. We cannot have dams that are failing and say, come back in 3 years and, by the way, if they have a 100-year flood in the interim, they are out of luck. We will have hundreds of millions of downstream damage, and I guess then Federal flood insurance will pay for it out of a different pocket than the pocket out of which we are appropriating this bill.

So my intention in offering this amendment is not to criticize the committee or the Corps or any of these budgets, but to raise the point that the O&M Account, which goes to issues like the failing Fern Ridge Dam, goes to the dredging of the small ports along the southern Oregon coast, is woefully underfunded.

I also understand that a point of order may lie against this amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his words, and I thank him for his work on this and also his desire to increase the funding. I share that. I intend to support the bill here today on the floor because it does at least partially fund these needs, and I will certainly support a bill that comes back from conference which does better in these areas.

I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. Chairman, I thank both the gentleman for their efforts, and I will do all I can to support those enhancements.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This amendment would extend the authorization for the Park Service which, I think, most Members of this body support, particularly given the backlog we have heard about and the underfunding to levy these fees under what has been commonly called the Rec Fee Demo Program. However, it would not prematurely extend the authority to the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to extend these fees.

These fees, under current law for the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, are authorized by prior appropriation, not through the authorizing committee, through October 1 of next year. The authorizing committee has actually been processing, beginning work on an authorization bill, which will be the first time since 1996 that these were properly authorized for the Forest Service and the BLM. If this amendment would pass, that committee would have ample time to properly authorize the program before the expiration a year from next October.

So I think that this would address the concerns of many Members of the House who are split between those who feel very strongly we need these funds for the Park Service, and those of us who feel very strongly that levying these fees indiscriminately across the Forest Service and the BLM, to nondeveloped areas in particular, is of great concern. Basically, if you want to drive your car around a park and go hunting or go fishing or just walk with the kids or the dog, you have to buy a pass for nondeveloped sites, and a lot of us have strong concerns about that.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds, just to respond to the esteemed chairman.

I just want this to be conducted factually. The total amount of funds, including the Park Service, may be the number the gentleman quoted, but the actual amount of money in the last year that we have figures for for the Forest Service was $36 million, not $191 million, and only $13 million of that was applied somewhere, somehow on the ground. This program is, in fact, eating up more than half of its costs in overhead.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden).

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I share a lot of the sentiments expressed by the chairman. But I would point out that both of these programs, both the Forest Service and the Park Service are authorized by the appropriators through October 1 of next year, which would give our committee more than ample time to authorize before the expiration. Just to have a degree of certainty because people are so concerned about the parks, I said, well, the parks would still fall under the 2-year extension here. But the Forest Service, I just want to make sure that we get it done and the other body does not somehow mess us up on this.

Mr. Chairman, could I get the division of the time that is left?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chairman I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley).

(Mr. BRADLEY of New Hampshire asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, how much time remains on each side?

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, the key points here are, and a number have been made by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) for whom I have great respect, that the Park Service needs this money. They do, and that is why I have offered this amendment. It is to make certain that we cannot fail in our duty to the Park Service. This would extend 2 years further, which means a grand total of 38 months for the Park Service before we would have to pass an authorization; and surely the United States Congress in 38 months can come up with a permanent authorization for the Park Service.

But what I fear is, and we have heard this before on the floor, I heard 5 years ago from a former chairman of the authorizing committee that he would never, ever support further extension without proper authorization. The gentleman is now retired, but we did reauthorize this program with a rider in an appropriations bill without going through the authorizing process.

I am pleased the current chairmen of the full committee and the subcommittee are working on legislation, but I fear this takes the pressure off, that if we pass now an extension for another 2 years from October 1 of 2004 for the United States Forest Service, we will not get to cleaning up that program and making the changes that need to be made.

I am surprised anyone would want to support a tax where 50 percent of the tax is spent on overhead, and that is what is happening with the Forest Service. And the other 50 percent we do not really know where that money is going. There is no tracking. There is nothing to show that is going to meet inventoried unmet needs or enhancement needs for the recreational experience of the people who are paying this tax. And it is, in fact, a tax.

Take the town of Oak Ridge in my district, totally surrounded by the national forests. If they go out to recreate with their families, just to drive up the nearest roads to park and walk over and fish, it is a paved maintained road, they are going to have to pay $35 to do that. Now that is not right. It is a low-income community, and it is just not right. They are surrounded by national forests. They don't have any options. They have to pay this tax.

Then, to add insult to injury, half of the tax they are paying is going to bureaucratic overhead; and they do not know where the other half is going because the Forest Service is not tracking it. We have no system.

I am certain the authorizing committee can rectify those matters, hopefully even eliminating a requirement of a tax on people who want to go to undeveloped recreation. I have no problem with charging this. It would obviously allow the continued charges at parks, but I do not have a problem for continuing to charge for developed campsites, boat ramps, special use areas, and other things on Forest Service and BLM lands.

I would urge my colleagues to support this because I fear if we once again, through this process, extend this for 38 months into the future for the Forest Service, we will never get to correcting this program.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote and, pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman who preceded me talked about the threats to the population if we do not have this practice. It has not happened in my State. We banned this practice.

Real sportsmen do not bait bears. In Oregon, what has happened is actually three times as many people have bought hunting licenses to hunt bears. So, actually, the bear harvest, if Members want to call it that, is up in Oregon because real hunters are out there, not the guys sitting around waiting for the bears to come and feast on what they are being baited with.

Mr. Chairman, I was sitting in my office watching this debate. I participated earlier, and I was

going to participate later, and I was not going to participate on this amendment until I was insulted and the memories of young people from my district were insulted by the gentleman from Minnesota. To try and purport that the National Forest Management Act had anything to do with the death of those kids is outrageous.

Mr. Chairman, where is the money for the firefighting? The other side has not adequately funded it. Where is the money for the fuels reduction? It is not in the budget. The other side has passed a so- called healthy forest bill that does not have one penny, not one red cent in it for fuels reduction.

The other side wants to pretend this stuff can be done on the cheap so they can give money in tax cuts to the wealthy people. Those kids died protecting their property.

Mr. Chairman, it does not have to do with the National Forest Management Act, and Members know. Put up the money to fight the fires. Put up the money to do the fuels reduction and stop screwing around with the public process. That is what is being done here. The target here is not to get rid of the brush. We have a 6 billion board foot backlog of commercial thinning in the Pacific Northwest that the Forest Service does not have the money to fund; 6 billion board feet. That could put one heck of a lot of people to work for one heck of a long time.

But the other side will not fund it because what is the real target here, the target here is the little bit of the remaining old growth. That is why they want to change the rules. Not to get the brush or fuels reduction or deal with the 6 billion board foot backlog of thinning but to go into these forests and cut the last remaining valuable old growth trees, the only trees that happen to be fire resistant, the only trees that should be left behind when foresters go through and remove the rest of the junk from 100 years of forest mismanagement.

And, yes, Democrat and Republican administrations alike are responsible for forest mismanagement. But to perpetuate it now and to perpetuate it under a myth that somehow it will not cost a penny to undo 100 years of mismanagement, that somehow you are going to go in and do the thinning, that somehow you are going to go in and do the brush removal and the fuels reduction and it will not cost a cent, the only way to do that is to take out the most valuable trees at the same time, which means you do not leave what every credible fire ecologist and scientist says needs to be left in fire-prone forests and which would take us back to presettlement conditions and premismanagement conditions, the old growth. Do not do this by disrespecting the young people from my district and other people in the West who died fighting these fires.

Offered By: Mr. DeFazio

Amendment No. 3: Page 2, line 18, after the dollar amount

insert ``(reduced by $17,788,000)''.

Page 5, line 15, after the dollar amount insert

``(increased by $17,788,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. DeFazio

Amendment No. 4: Page 5, line 15, after the dollar amount

insert ``(increased by $33,981,000)''.

Page 7, line 5, after the dollar amount insert ``(reduced

by $33,981,000)''.