Continental Divide Trail Completion Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Chair, I am glad we are finally here on the floor today talking about an issue that is important to our whole country. I appreciate the gentleman from Colorado and his concerns about wildfires. I wish that we could work together on actually solving these issues in a manner and with policy that would actually do something.
I learned in engineering school that expending effort is not work. For example, you can push on a boulder all day, but until something moves, no work has been accomplished.
To put it another way, there is a saying that you should never confuse motion with action, which is exactly what the legislation before us today does. This bill is more than 550 pages yet does absolutely nothing to prevent wildfires or significantly improve our resiliency to drought.
This bill will actually make our wildfire crisis worse. Perhaps that is why my Democrat colleagues named it the Wildfire Response Act, instead of naming it the wildfire prevention act, which is what we should be focusing on because we will have to respond to all the wildfires that are going to happen anyway and the new ones that this bill creates.
Here is a little bit of forestry 101. There are two ways to reduce wildfire risk: thinning and controlled burning. This bill mentions thinning zero times. Not once does it mention thinning, but it mentions environmental justice 165 times. That should tell you what this bill is really about.
Instead of streamlining environmental regulations and addressing frivolous litigation, which delay vital forest management projects across the country, this bill would add mountains of new red tape on our Federal agencies that will grind their already glacial pace of treatments to a complete halt.
It would throw out the Forest Service's 10-year strategy to reduce hazardous fuels and make them completely redo this work less than 6 months after they started implementing their current strategy.
This makes you wonder if congressional Democrats disagree with the work of the Biden administration or if they have found the administration's work product is deficient and unreliable.
It would lock up 58 million acres of land into new roadless areas, despite research showing that more than half of all fires, including most of the largest fires on Western U.S. national forest lands, burn primarily in roadless areas, areas where land use restrictions mean that we can't thin and can't do management.
Instead, the bill would fund environmental volunteerism and provide N-95 masks and smoke inhalation equipment for homes, which I am sure will be of little comfort to people as their homes are burning to the ground.
Democrats will tell you this legislation raises wildland firefighter pay to $20 per hour. The only problem with that is that firefighters already make at least $20 per hour, meaning this so-called raise is an empty promise.
In the long term, the bill would write a check that it can't cash by setting up this new minimum pay rate with no actual money to back it up. The Forest Service has told us this means they would have to lay off over 610 wildland firefighters. Let me say that again: The Democrats' bill could result in the firing of more than 610 wildland firefighters who are putting their lives on the line to protect communities. This is a disgrace and will hurt our fire preparedness and response.
As if that weren't enough, the bill would create new pay disparities by leaving out 10,000 brave men and women fighting fires from receiving new benefits. That is roughly 40 percent of the Federal firefighting workforce.
Some of my Western colleagues will soon speak about the water provisions in this bill, but I want to say that the bill misses the mark on drought as well by proposing $4 billion in new authorizations and has unlimited mandatory spending.
Once again, the other side of the aisle is passing on more debt to our future generations, and we see what uncontrolled spending has done to our economy with inflation, high energy prices, high food prices, and, really, higher prices across the board.
According to conventional economics, we have had two quarters of economic decline, and we are in a recession. Why would we want to put more government funding and debt on our constituents? I do not understand.
It would also devote some of these dollars to studies, research, and environmental water restoration projects that will not provide any water in the near term.
It picks winners and losers in water projects, ignoring the need for expanded water storage reservoirs, the kind of infrastructure investment that has made the West what it is today and is necessary to ensure a drought-resilient future.
This bill offers a one-dimensional approach to solving the Western drought that has impacted the entire country through decreased agricultural production. Reservoirs operated by the Bureau of Reclamation provide needed water to 10 million acres of farmland that collectively grow 60 percent of the Nation's vegetables and one quarter of our fresh fruit and nut crops.
By throwing money at an issue and not recognizing that regulatory streamlining to expand water storage and efficiency of operations to promote drought resiliency should be part of this equation, this bill fails not only the West but everyone who buys food nationwide. Put another way, this bill fails every American household. This is bad policy and bad process.
Democrats cobbled together this 550-plus-page bill behind closed doors, and not one wildfire provision was marked up in the Committee on Natural Resources.
Republican Members made real attempts to provide alternatives and additions to this bill. Dozens of regulatory streamlining amendments that could have helped provide water or immediately prevented wildfires were submitted to the Rules Committee by Republicans, only to be ignored. Even the majority of bipartisan amendments were rejected.
This is an abomination of process, but it is nothing new that we are seeing on this House floor. If you were here last night, you know that a Senate NEPA streamlining bill was parachuted in at the last minute. It was put on the suspension calendar.
I hope this bill passes during the next voting series, but we should be doing NEPA revisions through hearings, through markups, and through regular order. If it takes getting one dropped in on the suspension calendar by the Senate, I guess we will have to take what we have got. But it would be nice if we could actually debate these and come up with more NEPA streamlining.
In the midst of historic drought conditions and what is on track to be the most devastating wildfire season on record, we simply cannot afford to confuse motion with action.
Madam Chair, I strongly urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to reject this partisan package and, instead, work together on real solutions to prevent wildfires.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I just want to point out those weren't my words. That was the information we got from the U.S. Forest Service that said there is no funding in this bill. If this bill passes without additional funding in the future, they will have to lay off 610 wildland firefighters.
Maybe there is going to be a bill in the future to pour more money into the Forest Service, but this bill doesn't do it.
Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson), the ranking member of the Committee on Agriculture.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I know there is a lot of talk about the IIJA and what a great bill it was. It was the largest infrastructure bill passed in the history of the world. It was so important that it never even went through a committee here in the House. It came right to the House floor, and it seems like all we are doing is fixing it. We have a suspension bill we will be voting on later that fixes a problem that was in the IIJA.
I am confused why my colleague is pushing this bill that would undo much of the core work in the IIJA, including the $170 million that would go to his district under the current 10-year strategy.
I think it is another example of why we have to do regular order and why we have to bring these bills to committee.
We want to solve these problems, but you have to have real solutions to solve a problem. There are examples of how we can do bipartisan work to fix forestry.
Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), who is working on bipartisan forestry legislation.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, many of the water and power users in the Colorado basin were not consulted on this $500 million Colorado River provision and don't even know what it would be used for. That is another reason why we should actually work on these issues in committee and have a bipartisan markup.
Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Moore).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Newhouse).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Fulcher).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rosendale).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Obernolte).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Bentz).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Herrell).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I know the distinguished gentleman, Mr. Hoyer, has left the Chamber, but I did want to personally thank him for putting the Senate NEPA streamlining bill on the suspension calendar today. I hope we can work on more issues like that in the future.
Madam Chair, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Valadao).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, may I inquire as to the time remaining on both sides.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
A poet named Joyce Kilmer wrote his most famous poem called ``Trees,'' and it begins with, ``I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.''
Trees and forests are poetic. They tug at our heartstrings. They evoke emotion. And I sincerely appreciate the emotion that my colleagues across the aisle have. I really believe we want to get to the same place of having healthy trees and healthy forests.
It was that that motivated me to go to forestry school and study forestry. Little did I know that I would have the honor and the huge responsibility of standing on the floor of this august body and speaking for the trees.
We want to do the right thing. We know how to do the right thing. We know how to take care of these trees and take care of these forests.
Unfortunately, what is in this bill doesn't do that. What is in this bill doesn't help the water situation. We should not pass this bill.
Let's work together, come up with real solutions, pass them out of this House, and get them signed into law to help our forests, our firefighters, and our drought conditions.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, as the designee of the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), I offer amendment No. 1.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I rise in support of the amendment.
Madam Chair, Leader McCarthy's amendment presents a commonsense solution. As he knows all too well from his efforts resolving water issues, communities in California and elsewhere in the West are running out of water for families, farms, communities, and many other needs thanks to natural and manmade drought.
This has a dramatic impact not only to those areas, but it negatively impacts food production which affects every one of us. In the case of some California communities, wells that are used to provide drinking water have or will run dry.
This amendment seeks to provide some relief to rural communities through the creation of a new grant program aimed at constructing new wells and waterlines designed to deliver drinking water to these communities. I thank Leader McCarthy for introducing this amendment and for his longstanding leadership on bringing balance back to western water policies.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I appreciate the gentleman's kind words about the amendment.
Madam Chair, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Conway).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, this is a commonsense, good amendment that the leader has offered. I urge its adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to Schrier amendment No. 2 which would fund additional research for post-fire weather assessments.
This amendment suffers from the same shortcomings as the underlying package because it is overly focused on wildfire response rather than even making an attempt at wildfire prevention.
We know what is causing catastrophic wildfires, and it is not a lack of government agencies studying wildfires, tracking weather, and producing additional reports. Our forests are burning now, and we need to focus on real solutions; namely, accelerating, thinning, and prescribed burning. Adding more duplicative bureaucracy and unnecessary research will do nothing to stop our forests from going up in flames year after year.
Madam Chair, the forests really don't care what we say in this body. They are out there doing what Teddy Roosevelt said they do. They are the lungs of the Earth. They breathe in the carbon dioxide and they breathe out oxygen. We produce a lot of carbon dioxide in this Chamber, but it is not doing anything to help our forests.
Frankly, it is unserious that, out of the dozens of substantive wildfire amendments that were offered to the Rules Committee, this is the only one that was made in order. The Rules Committee even rejected bipartisan amendments such as the bipartisan Save Our Sequoias Act. We have lost 20 percent of the world's giant sequoias in the last 2 years, and perhaps the most famous giant sequoia grove, the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park, was on fire earlier this month.
What saved that grove? It wasn't weather assessments. It was proactive treatments from land managers that we need to use as a model across all 76 giant sequoia groves.
Unfortunately, the underlying bill and amendment before us would do nothing to help protect our giant sequoias or move the needle on the wildfire crisis at all.
Therefore, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, more and more of or forests are going up in flames. More forests are being categorized as subject to catastrophic wildfire.
We are losing this fight. We need a new game plan. We need work on this in a bipartisan manner. There are a lot of areas that need to be addressed, but this bill, and this amendment doesn't address those.
I urge opposition to the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I claim time in opposition to this amendment, even though I might not necessarily oppose it.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Chair, I support this amendment and appreciate the solution it presents for a pressing problem. Currently, the Small Business Administration only requires collateral for disaster loans if the loan amount is above $25,000. This authority is set to sunset in November, and the minimum amount will revert to $14,000. This amendment would permanently lock in the amount at $25,000.
I thank the ranking member of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, Garret Graves, for his leadership on disaster issues. His home State of Louisiana has suffered through many disasters, and he has been an unwavering champion for his constituents.
And it is a good thing he is leading on this issue. Affordable disaster loans could be in high demand because the underlying bill does nothing to protect the landscape, people, or property from devastating wildfires. I would like to emphasize, the underlying bill would only respond to wildfires, not work to prevent them.
Throughout this debate, my colleagues have tried to claim that this is not the case and that their bill will actually support increased forest management practices like thinning and prescribed burning.
But look no further than their own one-pager, which says derisively: ``We can't simply cut our way out of wildfire risk.'' This should tell you everything you need to know about how they feel about scientific forest management.
The truth is that thinning is not only an essential tool to reduce wildfire risk, but there is a scientific consensus that we must increase thinning in our forests to turn the tide of this crisis.
The fact that this bill mentions thinning zero times is no mistake. It is because Democrats refuse to agree with the scientific consensus that both thinning and prescribed burning are essential tools to reduce wildfire risk.
Affordable disaster loans provided by this amendment will also be necessary because of the wildfires that will occur as a result of throwing out the Forest Service's current 10-year strategy.
My colleagues have claimed that their bill would simply codify this current 10-year strategy. They have also said that the infrastructure bill made historic investments in that strategy and have funded its initial projects.
This simply makes no sense. My colleagues think the infrastructure bill is so nice that they want to pass it twice, but that is not how any of this works. If we funded a project in the infrastructure bill, we don't need to authorize funding for it here because that money has already gone out the door.
And if the administration released a strategy 6 months ago and started implementing it, they don't need this bill to codify it.
Truth be told, the plain reading of the text shows that the current wildfire strategy is getting thrown out the window, and nothing in this text codifies it or even mentions the projects currently happening.
Unfortunately, if this bill passes, a lot of small business owners will be able to make good use of affordable disaster loans provided by this amendment as they recover their businesses from the impacts of catastrophic wildfire. The least we can do is help them with disaster loans after these fires inevitably occur.
Madam Chair, I support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, again, I support the amendment. It is going to be needed as these fires continue to rage, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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