OT(?) - update
The fires deaths & destruction will continue
Sierra Times
sierratimes.com
Senate Democrats Repeat Filibuster While Forests Burn
By John G. Lankford
Providents News Service
Published 09. 22. 02 at 20:04 Sierra Time
WASHINGTON DC -- Around midday Friday, Senator Harry Reid (D NV), as Senate
Majority Whip, announced the Senate schedule for Monday, September 23. The
late afternoon's events, he said, are to include a vote on a motion to
invoke closure on the Byrd Amendment to the Interior Department funding
bill.
The very same motion, actually aimed not against the Byrd Amendment but the
Bush Healthy Forests Initiative, was voted down September 17. But Senate
Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD)then saved his vote until last, and when
it was clear the Democrat-favored motion would not attract the necessary 60
votes, voted against it despite his having made an impassioned speech in its
favor a short while before.
Under Senate rules, that gave Daschle the right to move that the vote be
reconsidered, which he promptly did. Normally, a Senator sincerely on the
winning side accompanies a motion to reconsider with a motion to lay that on
the table, which buries the issue and seals the vote just taken. Daschle
omitted the motion to table. Now the cloture motion is being asserted again.
Repeated debate on it will occupy time allotted for debate on the Interior
Appropriations Bill, slated to begin Monday afternoon at 3:30 Washington
time.
All of these maneuvers center around the fact that Democrats, beholden to
strident environmentalists, are determined to obstruct passage of Bush's
Healthy Forests Initiative. That measure, offered as the Craig-Domenici
Amendment to the Byrd Amendment, would allow the Departments of Interior and
Agriculture to craft agreements with logging companies to clear deadfall,
underbrush, diseased trees, and excess growth in federal forests, abating
fire risks posed by buildups of excessive fuel.
But Democrats do not want to record votes against Healthy Forests, because
the measure is widely known to be the only practical means of cleaning up
the mess made of federal forest property in recent decades. Contrary
contention or equivocation is fallacy, and many voters, particularly in the
fire-ravaged western states, know it.
The problem is accumulation of underbrush, deadfall, scrub growth and
overcrowding in areas where forest fires have for years been promptly
extinguished while controlled burns were obstructed by fund shortages,
unfavorable weather, project plan appeals and court challenges. All the
while, mechanical cleaning, which consists of picking up clutter, clearing
brush, and thinning overcrowded growth and diseased trees, by logging
companies able to sell the gleanings and pay for the opportunity, were
adamantly obstructed by environmental absolutist groups. As a result, most
national forests are in abysmal health and present major fire risks.
Hiring enough federal workers to correct the mess would be impossibly
expensive and take too long. Doing nothing except a little cleaning and
preventive burning around inhabited areas is sure to invite more forest
holocausts and resulting mudslides and water source ruination this year and
in the future. But the latter two choices are the only ones strident
environmentalists will hear of or let Democratic legislators they support
consider.
Despite appearances, the cloture motion nominally directed against the Byrd
Amendment is not directed against the Byrd Amendment. Even if the motion
succeeds the second time up, cloture allows enough time for that
almost-unanimously-favored relief measure, providing funding to pay for and
reimburse firefighting costs, to pass. It will exclude, however, its actual
target: the Craig-Domenici Amendment to the Byrd Amendment, in other words,
the Healthy Forests Initiative, for lack of sufficient time to consider or
vote on it.
In fact, Democrats do not expect the cloture motion to succeed. They do
expect debate on it to eat up time that could be spent debating and voting
on Craig-Domenici. As the 107th Congress is nearly at its close, they aim to
run out the clock on the Healthy Forests Initiative, while at all times
pretending to look for alternatives they know do not exist. The repetitive
tactic of renewing the cloture motion betrays their strategy,
On September 13, the Washington Times' Audrey Hudson forthrightly
characterized their convoluted maneuvers as a filibuster, prompting
indignant denials. Senator Robert Byrd, (D WV), told the Senate he believed
less senior members did not really understand what a filibuster is. What is
taking place is indeed not a go-to-the-mattresses talkathon. Any such would
itself be subject to a cloture motion that would probably succeed.
Instead, Senate Democrats are using procedural delays, demonstrations of
earnest bipartisanship, requests for just a few more hours, or days, of
meetings and consultations, and more than a smidgen of unadulterated
balderdash. An example of the latter is the straight-faced citation by
Senators Dianne Feinstein and then Barbara Boxer of a General Accounting
Office report put forward as evidence administrative appeals and litigation
blocking Forest Service plans are rare.
But on July 11, Kimberly Stassel published in the Wall Street Journal a
widely-noted revelation that the document the senators are putting forward
is not competent evidence for the point they are using it to make, and GAO
staffers have said so. Senators are not fooled, but citizens are intended to
be. Left unanswered is the question, if administrative and judicial
challenges to federal agencies' forest management decisions are so uncommon,
why do Democrats deem it vital to preserve the right to make them absolutely
intact?
The crux of the controversy is over tactical control of forestry decisions.
The Healthy Forests Initiative, as proposed in the Craig-Domenici Amendment
now being obstructed, would preserve all-stakeholders, previously-noticed
administrative hearings on proposed operations. But once decisions were
made, it would curtail administrative appeals and litigation that could bar
work being done until courts could decide the cases' merits, though suits
would be permitted to be brought and go forward.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden (Or) characterized that as "suing over stumps",
but Republicans see it as enabling refining of legal and regulatory
provisions while getting on with abating mess in the forests according to
the judgment of the federal agencies' professional foresters.
That is considerably more leeway than Senator Tom Daschle allowed
prospective dissenters when inserting "Section 706" into a sure-to-pass
supplementary defense appropriations bill in July. That proviso absolutely
curtailed all judicial review of forest cleanup dispositions it made. But it
only applied to a section of national forest in Daschle's home state, South
Dakota. Hearing of it, western states' senators and other public officials
demanded equivalent consideration for their own flaming woodlands. The
Healthy Forests Initiative, a version of a long-under-development plan
proposed by the Western Governors' Association and submitted to Congress in
various versions, without results, in previous years, was the upshot of
those demands.
But environmentalists point out they received about five acres of federal
forest subjected to roadless Wildlands designation for every one exposed to
mechanical cleaning. And the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and
several other groups declared they did not really agree to the cleaning,
only the wildlands designations. It was for that reason that Daschle
prohibited all judicial challenges: Green groups were poised to take the
payoff and sue over the environmental-law waivers it paid for.
Another device Democrats are using is feigning negotiation in good faith,
calling for meeting after meeting with Republicans in quest of a mutually
acceptable forestry policy measure. In fact, from the beginning, they have
tracked Green groups' post-Daschle-Deal-discovery damage control, trying to
focus reform on areas where dwellings and structures meet the forests, and
saving the vast majority of federal acreage for future Wildlands or other
restricted-use designations.
The American Land Rights Association, a capital-headquartered lobbying group
rallying support for Healthy Forests, on has charged Senate Majority Whip
Reid himself is serving as obstinate obstructer on language negotiations in
those meetings. On Saturday, the Washington Times reported Reid saying
Healthy Forests couldn't pass, and so should be dispensed with and the
Senate move on to other business. That hinted at an attempt to blame
Republicans, demanding a vote on Craig-Domenici rather than a series of
votes on cloture motions, for obstructing Senate business.
Democrats September 17 put forward an alternative amendment offered by
Senator Jeff Bingaman (D NM). The most significant distinction between it
and the Healthy Forests measure is that it strongly concentrates forest
cleaning expenditures on inhabited forest areas, excluding the great
majority of the terrain.
The inhabited-areas-only approach, forestry experts and Republicans point
out, fails to abate most high-intensity fires, desertization, soil glazing
and sterilization, pumping of heat and carbon dioxide (a global-warming
"greenhouse gas") into the atmosphere, subsequent soil erosion, mudslides
(now occurring in Colorado, Utah, and other states where intense charring
has taken place this year), and vital watershed damage including pollution
of streams, reservoirs, and water supplies with ash, silt, debris and mud.
The controversy's greatest sticking point, however, continues to be whether
professionals hired and retained under legislation and processes evolving
from the Constitution, or self-appointed activists and special interests
will control events while they challenge the official foresters' decisions.
Wyden originally favored the Healthy Forests Initiative. But as Democrats
marshaled forces and Green groups applied pressure, he announced on ,
September 12 he had done so in the belief it would be modified so Greens
would accept it. He withdrew his support, giving the gist of the controversy
in these words:
"This issue is fundamentally about trust. Certainly, there are many good
people at the federal land management agencies. But suffice it to say there
are many in the environmental community that do not trust the natural
resources leadership of these agencies. There are many on the other side and
many people in rural communities who believe there are some in the
environmental community that simply are committed to delay."
But given the tactics being thrown in the path of a vote on the Healthy
Forests Initiative, the so-called environmental community committed to delay
includes half of the United States Senate.
"We had a cloture vote," Senator Mike Enzi (R WY) said Thursday. "The
purpose of that cloture vote was to keep us from getting a vote on having
healthy forests in this country.
"We are trying to get a vote. We want a vote. But there are all kinds of
tactics being used to stop us from getting a vote on whether we ought to
have healthy forests, because everybody in this body knows how everybody in
this body ought to vote on healthy forests. They ought to vote for them."
On Monday afternoon, the charge will ring even truer the second time around. |
