Dear Representative:
On behalf of our members and supporters, we write to ask you to support the effort by Rep. Steve Chabot’s (R-OH) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) to prohibit the U.S. Forest Service from conducting money-losing timber sales in the Tongass National Forest.
Rep. Chabot and Rep. Blumenauer are asking Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Calvert (R-CA) and Ranking Member McCollum (D-MN) to include language in the Fiscal Year 2016 Interior Appropriations Bill requiring the Forest Service to cover the federal government’s cost of timber sales with receipts from the sale. From 2008 through 2013, the Forest Service spent $139.1 million on timber sales (including road construction) in the Tongass and received $8.6 million in proceeds from these sales, a net loss of $130.5 million.
The Forest Service should not lose millions of dollars providing timber to the timber industry; that's simply good fiscal policy. Currently, the Forest Service loses an average of $21 million per year because it underestimates the cost of timber sales in the Tongass.
Our groups do not oppose the harvest of timber from our national forests, and this provision would not prevent that. It is time for the logging and timber companies to stop looking to the taxpayer to pick up the tab.
Please join Rep. Chabot and Rep. Blumenauer in signing the letter to Chairman Calvert to stop the continued loss of taxpayer dollars on the largest timber sales in the Tongass. To sign-on, contact Jonathan Lowe in Rep. Chabot’s office at jonathan.lowe@mail.house.gov by Friday, March 20 at noon.
Sincerely,
Taxpayers for Common SenseNational Taxpayers UnionCoalition to Reduce SpendingCouncil for Citizens Against Government WasteR Street InstituteTaxpayer Protection Alliance