29 



Mr. Vento. Madam Chairwoman, I don't want to get into the 

 blame game today. I think that a httle bit of that goes a long way. 

 I would just observe that in the '80's — most of the 80's — the Con- 

 gress actually mandated cuts over and above what were sustain- 

 able in many forests. I mean, the record is pretty clear in terms 

 of the sales being made and the cuts occurring. 



It, obviously, resulted in a superimposing on policy in the appeal 

 process — those types of decisions, which, obviously, had a backlash 

 in terms of what occurred in the appeal process after the stress 

 was not able to cope. Obviously, it was when you try to super- 

 impose a policy that is inappropriate, yet it, obviously, ends up 

 using or misusing some of the appeal process that was in place. 



There are a lot of problems that occur. I think that, you know, 

 blaming one organization or another or what I think the fact is I 

 don't think is going to do it. I think we ought to be guided by the 

 facts, and hopefully we will get some of that information in the 

 panels that we have that are here to talk about that, the profes- 

 sionals in the Forest Service. And Mr. Taylor and I continue our 

 debate to agree to disagree on what the analysis and what the 

 cause of this is. 



I think there are plenty of problems to go around in terms of 

 dealing with these issues. I don't think the answer is the salvage 

 program. I think, candidly, that many of the probable areas have 

 been harvested, and very often the issue of salvage goes to what 

 is economically feasible, which is what we were basically arguing 

 about last night. 



If we put enough dollars to anything, you can make it work. The 

 question is trying to get it to work on the basis of the dollars that 

 are available, not the taxpayer subsidies of the activities. That is 

 one of the major concerns. It has nothing to do with, I suppose, the 

 environment. 



If we are concerned about the environment, we know that we 

 have got a lot of areas that have not received the type of attention 

 they should or received the regular attention they should in terms 

 of thinning and reforestation and watershed restoration. All of that 

 is going to cost money. We are going to have to invest money in 

 many of these forests in order to accomplish the goal. 



I think the concern that I have is not so much about the invest- 

 ment of dollars but the fact that we continue to aggravate the prob- 

 lem by subsidizing types of sales that don't really achieve or fit 

 within that particular policy. 



Mr. Taylor. Madam Chairman, would the gentleman yield? 



Mr. Vento. That is the reason, obviously, that we had the closed 

 votes and we contested issues on the Floor yesterday. I would be 

 happy to give my colleague and my friend 



Mr. Taylor. Thank you. We disagree over a lot of things that we 

 are talking about here, and you mentioned that we had cut over 

 the years, and we probably disagree on that. We have cut the har- 

 vested forest down now to approximately 20 to 25 percent of na- 

 tional forest is about all that can be considered for harvest. Do you 

 think the overcutting is so great across the Nation that we should 

 have 75 to 80 percent of our national forests off limits to harvest- 

 ing? 



26-518 96-2 



