Senate Democrats Repeat Filibuster While Forests Burn

by John G. Lankford
Providents News Service

September 22 2002

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 cloture 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 escess
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
"Secton 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 mutualy
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 obstructor
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 foward 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, desertation, 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 marshalled 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.

-30-

Confirmations and Resources:

Text of Craig-Domenici Amendment and remarks of Sens.
Craig and Domenici on its introduction
http://www.sierratimes.com/02/09/18/pg2jl091802.htm

Scheduling of renewed cloture motion on Byrd
Amendment, 5:30 PM EDT Monday RIGHT COLUMN OF
http://www.senate.gov/

Senator Daschle's Black Hills measure
http://www.americanlands.org/section_706.htm

Bush Healthy Forests Initiative
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/

Ten-year forest recovery plan proposed by the Western
Governors Association, linked from that organization's
webpage at http://www.westgov.org/

Inadequacy of GAO report revealed:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/kstrassel/?id=110001970

Bingaman Amendment alternative to Craig-Domenici
Healthy Forests Initiative
http://www.senate.gov/~bingaman/Press_Files/Press_by_Date/Press_Release/press_release_8.html

ALRA charge against Sen. Reid Sept. 17
http://www.landrights.org/ubbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=000074

Washington Times "filibuster" story by Audrey Hudson,
Sept. 13
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020913-676871.htm

Wyden quotes on "stumps" and "trust"; Feinstein use of
discredited GOA report Congressional Record 107th
Cong. Page S 8516 and following pages

Boxer use of discredited GAO report Congressional
Record 107th Congress Page S 8872 Sept. 19

Description of mudslides, watershed damage after
forest fires in west - Senator Mike Enzi,
Congressional Record 107th Congress Page S 8703;
Senator Larry Craig id. page S 8706

Quote explaining use of first cloture motion to deny
vote on Craig-Domenici amendment Senator Enzi
Congressional Record 107th Congress Page S 8707