USA Freedom Act

Floor Speech

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today there are wildfires burning across the West. I wish to speak for a few moments about some very important work that Chair Mikulski and her colleagues have done on the Appropriations Committee that is really built on a bipartisan proposal that Senator Crapo, our colleague from Idaho, and I, with a large group of bipartisan Senators, are proposing to change the way in which forests are managed and reduce the likelihood of some of--what I call--these infernos. These are fires that are bigger, hotter, more damaging, and they act like a wrecking ball pounding at the rural West.

What has happened over the years is that the preventive efforts in the West in terms of our forests are underfunded. There isn't enough effort that goes to hazardous fuels management and thinning and programs that reduce the huge load of fuels on the forest floor.

Just this past weekend I was in Medford in rural southern Oregon and in Portland, meeting with the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. They told me about the problems that Senator Crapo and I are trying to address in bipartisan legislation that Chairman Mikulski has included in her appropriations bill.

The heart of the problem is that these prevention efforts are underfunded. When it gets very dry and very hot, and particularly when there is a lightning strike or a series of lightning strikes, what we have is an enormous fire in a hurry. All through the West there is an effort to try to share resources, and communities work together and try to share efforts--aerial resources and others--but the reality is there is not enough money in the agency's budgets to put out those huge fires.

What happens then is the bureaucracy borrows from the prevention fund in order to have funds to put the fire out. Then we are on our way to two bigger problems. We are on our way again to a lack of preventive dollars because of this fire borrowing. Some of our colleagues call it fire robbery, but I am trying to be diplomatic. It is fire borrowing, I guess, if we want to be diplomatic. But we underfund prevention. Then, of course, we don't have enough money needed for suppression as well.

This trend that I have described is getting more and more pronounced and more and more serious. So what Senator Crapo and I are proposing to do in order to put the focus on wildfire prevention is in effect to say that the most serious fires, especially in the West--the kind of fires that are dominating our TV screens night after night--1 percent of those infernos ought to be treated like the major natural disasters they are and would be funded in the same way as other natural disasters, such as floods and hurricanes.

Specifically, the legislation that Senator Crapo and I and others are advancing would move any spending above 70 percent of the 10-year rolling average for fire suppression outside of the Agency's baseline budget by making these additional costs eligible to be funded under a separate disaster account.

So far this year, more than 33,000 fires have burned a total of 1.6 million acres nationwide, and the numbers are growing by the minute.

Just this past weekend, visiting with our wonderfully talented folks at the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in Medford, they were telling me that their concern is that in southern Oregon it is very hot and very dry and there can be lightning strikes. They were concerned about the prospect of another Biscuit Fire, which we had at the beginning of the century and which burned 500,000 acres--really, our most destructive fire ever. That was what was on the mind of the firefighting professionals when I visited with them in Medford last Friday.

This year the administration already expects to exceed its firefighting budget by more than $600 million, and that isn't going to surprise anybody in the West. In 8 of the past 10 years, the Forest Service has spent more than its wildfire suppression budget, requiring the Agency to engage in what I have just called ``fire borrowing'' to cover these wildfire suppression costs. The reality is that, in many cases, the borrowed monies are not repaid. In the cases where the funds are repaid, it is only through costly supplemental spending bills that Congress has to enact or by taking money out of future years' budgets.

So what we have is this kind of borrowing that is extraordinarily disruptive to the ongoing work the Forest Service and their contractors are in the middle of performing. And, I might add, what all this does is it makes it more expensive in the future and makes it less likely that we are going to get the important prevention work that is so necessary.

In our part of the world, I think it is fair to say that westerners are coming to consider that the Forest Service charged with managing the Nation's forests for multiple uses and users has really become something that more appropriately should be called the U.S. Fire Service, because ineffect that is what this agency is month after month using more of its resources on.

What I was told in Portland last Saturday, having visited rural Oregon on Friday and Portland on Saturday--the specialists in Portland on Saturday told me that the fire season is 70 days longer than it was until recently.

So we have this challenge of more fuel load built up on the forest floor, drier conditions, lightning strikes, and fire seasons lasting longer. That is a prescription for trouble in the rural West, and in fact that is what we are seeing.

My hope is that, as a result of the work that Senator Crapo and I and others are seeking to do, we can have more hazardous fuel treatment, more preventive work that will be effective at reducing fire risks and lowering costs.

A fire in central Oregon this year slowed to a halt when it reached treated areas outside the city of Bend. I saw that when I was in Bend looking at the difference between treated areas--this preventative kind of approach--and areas that were untreated.

A study published by Northern Arizona University's Ecological Restoration Institute concluded that treatments ``can reduce fire severity'' and ``successfully reduce fire risk to communities.''

Based on Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture analysis, 1 percent of wildland fires represents 30 percent of firefighting costs. That is what Senator Crapo and I want to address in our bill.

What we are saying is, for that 1 percent, the 1 percent that is really driving up costs, let's handle those fires as what they are, which are natural disasters. And then, instead of raiding the prevention money to put the fires out, we will be able to cause less problems in the future because we will have the kind of preventive work that is so effective that I saw in Bend and elsewhere.

It seems to me, as we see in a lot of parts of government, there is a choice. We can spend modest sums up front on prevention in order to generate significant savings down the road. If we have $1 to spend, we ought always to try to put it in prevention and then target scarce resources to fight fires. To the greatest extent possible, we must target disaster money on those infernos that are bigger and hotter and more damaging and cost about 30 percent of the overall budget.

In summary, the legislation that Senator Crapo and I and others are pursuing would fund the true catastrophic fire events under separate natural disaster programs. Routine wildland firefighting costs would be funded through the normal budget and appropriations process.

Oversight hearings, letters, and numerous discussions with the administration and colleagues helped to produce the approach that Chairman Mikulski has included. I remember not long ago being in Idaho, being hosted by our colleagues Senator Crapo and Senator Risch. We had Members from across the political spectrum. Congressman Labrador from the other body was there. We had progressive Members. This is something that is common sense. It just makes sense to make sure that the small number offires, these infernos which are dominating our news accounts, that we handle them from the natural disaster fund. Then let's put most of the money and allow the Forest Service, BLM, and professionals to put their focus and their resources where we can prevent as much of the problem as possible--and prevent it early on.

That is the point of our legislation. We are very grateful to Chairman Mikulski for her effort. I thank Senator Crapo for his support. He and I have been at this with Senator Risch, Senator Merkley, Senator Cantwell, Senator Murray, Senator Bennet--Western Senators and others such as Senator Baldwin and MANCHIN that understand the importance of national forests. Senator Udall has been doing important work on this in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. All of the Western Senators are of like mind here. Chair Mikulski recognizes what we are looking at and the prospect that we would be leaving this week without this change to make better use of our resources. I call it legislative malpractice because we have an opportunity in a bipartisan way to make a real difference here. If our colleagues are outside the West, I would say it is a chance to spend scarce dollars more effectively. For us in the West, it is nothing short of survival.

Mr. President, I yield the floor

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