Dear Representative:
As the House prepares to take up the Interior Appropriations Bill and its many attendant land management issues, now is an opportune time to consider current as well as future initiatives that may have an impact on the management of our national forest system. During these proceedings and in the months ahead, the 350,000 members of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) urge you to guide your deliberations with the following question in mind: should taxpayer funds be used to underwrite Forest Service activities that could be better performed by other private or public entities?
As you may know, for the past three decades NTU and its members have held that timber extraction efforts should be based on economic viability, not the availability of taxpayer subsidies. Of course, since the federal government owns an estimated 1/3 of all land in the United States, the debate over using taxpayer funds to build and maintain commercial logging infrastructure would be moot if citizens were permitted to purchase the land (and in the process return the proceeds from those sales to the Treasury). Private owners could thereby build their own forest roads, interact with concerned members of the community in their own way, and, most importantly take their own business risks.
While NTU strongly believes it is time for the timber companies to wean themselves from taxpayer funds in their national forest activities, the federal government in return should overhaul management practices that have created little benefit for private industry or our environment. The chain of heavier taxation and regulation on timber operations, which prompts the firms to demand federal assistance, which in turn adds to the budget deficit, has shackled the policy process to the point where employers, affected citizens, and environmental groups cannot come to a mutually beneficial agreement over the most effective use of public lands.
One way that Congress can begin to break our nation free from this entanglement is to enact Representative Steve Chabot's amendment to the Department of the Interior Appropriations Bill that would eliminate taxpayer subsidies given to the timber industry for logging in Tongass National Forest. Several other citizen groups, including Citizens Against Government Waste and Taxpayers for Common Sense, have likewise endorsed the Chabot Amendment. After so many years of debate over Tongass, however, we hope that Congress will turn to the larger issues of better federal stewardship, more local control, and greater respect for free-market economics that have so far eluded our entire national forest system. Forthcoming legislative language, which will offer pilot projects to demonstrate new and innovative forest management techniques, will be the next excellent opportunity to do so.
NTU strongly supports efforts to reduce taxes, bring federal spending under control, and foster greater economic freedom for all Americans. As such, NTU's annual Rating of Congress utilizes every roll call vote affecting fiscal policy, and weights those votes based on their impact on American taxpayers. Thus votes on the Chabot Amendment to the Interior Appropriations Bill and any impending forest management bills will be included in the Rating. If you have further questions or concerns, please contact NTU's Senior Government Affairs Manager, Kristina Rasmussen, at (703) 683-5700.
Sincerely,
John Berthoud
President