FW: Senate budget hearing

Certainly didn't long for Wyden, Feinstein, et. al. to prove themselves dumber than dirt for cavorting with the enemy.  

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mall, Amy
Sent: March 03, 2004 7:40 AM
To: forests-j47nTgNa/[email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: FW: Senate budget hearing


 

	Wyden blasts Bush admin for underfunding hazardous fuels reduction 

	Dan Berman, Environment & Energy Daily reporter 

	Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), an instrumental figure in passing "Healthy Forests" legislation last fall, lashed out at the Bush administration yesterday for its failure to meet Congress' expectation of $760 million in new money for hazardous fuels reduction.

	At a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the Forest Service's FY '05 budget request, a visibly agitated Wyden said he would not have supported the Healthy Forests Restoration Act last year without the $760 million authorization. He pledged to do his best to reinstate some of the funding. 

	"You are taking the health out of the Healthy Forests program," Wyden said to administration witnesses present at the hearing. "At a minimum, you are hundreds of millions of dollars short of what the Congress authorized."

	The White House requested $80 million to $100 million in new money for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management as part of a total $760.4 million under the Healthy Forests rubric. That includes $476 million for hazardous fuels reduction by both agencies. But those figures are far short of the $760 million that Congress authorized for hazardous fuels reduction on 20 million acres of national forest at extreme risk for catastrophic wildfires.

	"We asked for $760 million in new money for these various kinds of initiatives" in the bill, Wyden said. "This is a breach of what the Congress intended on a bipartisan basis in terms of getting this work done." 

	In addition to authorizing the $760 million, the Healthy Forests act includes limits on administrative appeals, legal challenges and environmental review of thinning projects meant to reduce the threat of wildfires, something supporters said is necessary to block actions by environmental groups that delay needed action in the field. 

	Those new tools, along with expanded use of stewardship contracting and categorical exclusions, will allow the Forest Service to make the most of its funding request, even without $760 million in new money, said Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth.

	For the Forest Service's Healthy Forests budget, the administration is requesting $449 million, including $266 million for hazardous fuels reduction, $58 million for vegetation and watershed treatment, and $2 million for stewardship contracting studies. Programs such as rangeland management that remove small trees and brush have a corollary benefit of reducing the risk for wildfires, the agency says.

	But although the administration hopes to treat 4 million acres of federal land through controlled burns, logging, rangeland improvements and other measures, Wyden said the funding request sabotages those efforts. "It is a fantasy to say we are going to get anything close to the amount of work Congress foresaw in this bipartisan legislation," Wyden said. "I think there is going to be enormous frustration out in rural America, which is expecting these new funds to get important work done, and you all basically did a bait and switch."

	The $760 million authorization was a major issue during the debate over the Healthy Forests bill in the Senate and in conference last fall. The House version of the bill contained no funding clause, but Senate conferees insisted on including the authorization in the final bill. 

	"I would not have been on the floor for the entire time this debate came up unless there was a change to get a bipartisan amendment to ensure there would be new dollars for this hazardous fuels reduction program," Wyden said. 

	Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who worked behind-the-scenes with lawmakers last fall, noted the bill leaves funding levels up to the discretionary appropriations process and does not specify the $760 million must be new money. 

	Furthermore, while President Bush strongly supported the bill, based on his "Healthy Forests Initiative," a statement of administration policy (SAP) issued during the Senate debate questioned the need for the $760 million authorization. "The administration is concerned that the authorization level in the Senate bill is well above [recent funding levels] and above the increased funding levels the administration requested and continues to support for FY 2004," the Oct. 29, 2003, SAP states. 

	Wyden disagreed with Rey's assessment, saying, "Everybody in the United States Senate thought this was new money that was going to go towards these efforts."

	Firefighting issues 

	Meanwhile, ranking member Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) criticized the Forest Service's $685 million request for wildfire suppression, saying it is millions of dollars short of the actual figure the agency has spent fighting fires in recent years.

	"I don't think this passes the straight-face test given that all indications are that we will have another bad fire season in the West," Bingaman said.

	The Forest Service says its request is about $88 million more than it budgeted for FY '04. However, the FY '04 budget contains a $300 million repayment for firefighting costs in previous years. The funding request is determined by using the average of costs over the past 10 years, but dramatic wildfire seasons of recent years have forced the Forest Service to far exceed its budget. To make up the shortfall, the Forest Service borrows from other programs, but the solution often comes to the detriment of other essential programs because the money usually is not restored. 

	"Each year we hear testimony about how this administration's request will meet the fire suppression needs and help avoid the chaos of transfers, and each year we end up scrambling for emergency appropriations to cover growing firefighting costs and to repay important accounts that have been raided in the meantime," Bingaman said. "These transfers cause more than chaos, they cause us to delay and dismantle numerous projects in all of our states." 

	For the Forest Service, the practice has delayed forest thinning and rehabilitation programs designed to prevent future wildfires. In 2002, reallocation of funds for fighting wildfires accounted for 30 percent of all delays in fire prevention projects, the General Accounting Office said in a September 2003 report. As a result, the Forest Service and the Interior Department only treated 56 percent of the 4 million acres they planned to treat last year. 

	Rey maintained the administration is willing to work with Bingaman on a proposal to create a government-wide contingency account the Forest Service and other agencies could use in order to avoid drawing from other agency accounts in the future.

	

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