37 



things that the bill does change. That is the only thing I am say- 

 ing, and once you have it in legislation, that is the action that we 

 will follow. 



Mr. Brown. I do not perceive any critical areas in which this bill 

 mandates anything. It does mandate a process, however. Basically, 

 it is a process mandated under present law, which has not been fol- 

 lowed. But what it does mandate is that you develop a plan cover- 

 ing the various matters that are described in the bill on the advice 

 of a scientific advisory committee, and with public input. Now, is 

 that strange and foreign to your philosophy? 



Mr. J. Thomas. No, sir; it is not. 



Mr. Brown. All right. I tend to get emotional sometimes about 

 the fact that the administration repeatedly comes in — and I am 

 talking any administration — and says, "Congress, don't bother me. 

 We understand what we're doing better than you do, and we don't 

 want you to give us any directions." And I sense a tendency on 

 your part to reflect that kind of attitude sometimes. 



Mr. J. Thomas. Congressman, I want to make one thing perfectly 

 clear. If you pass legislation, as long as I am in charge of the For- 

 est Service, I will carry that out to the letter. That is not my inten- 

 tion. I just think my experience of 40 years indicates that prescrip- 

 tive legislation in natural resources management usually does not 

 give a good result. 



Mr. Brown. I tend to agree with you, and if you will observe, 

 most of the legislation I have been involved in does not try to pre- 

 scribe anything except the process by which you get the best pos- 

 sible input and act on it in an appropriate fashion. It does not pre- 

 scribe the results. 



Chief, let me ask you a question having to do with the economics 

 of the situation there. I have information which I understand 

 comes from the Forest Service's 1988 environmental impact state- 

 ment that you spend twice as much annually on timber manage- 

 ment in this area covered by the bill as you spend on recreation, 

 despite the fact that recreation produces almost 10 times the eco- 

 nomic benefit to the area. 



Could you explain to me why your resource allocation is so dis- 

 proportionate to the economic benefits of the two different uses? 



Mr. J. Thomas. I am not familiar with that. That was before I 

 started thinking about this sort of thing. But I will explain in gen- 

 eral how that works. 



Basically, the Forest Service puts together a budget, submits it 

 to the USDA. The USDA alters it, submits it to 0MB. 0MB alters 

 it and it becomes the President's budget, and then it is submitted 

 to Congress, and usually in that process, the things that we have 

 asked for in recreation have been reduced while we receive full 

 funding or close to full funding for our timber management activi- 

 ties. 



Mr. Brown. Well, there are reasons why that has happened in 

 the past, and I am sure you are aware of some of those reasons. 



The environmental impact statement also — I think I indicated 

 this, that you spend $169 million annually on timber management, 

 while the gross revenue from timber sales is $162 million, which 

 is a net loss of $7 million a year. That is approximately the same 



