Clinton Timber Flip-Flop Maddens Democrats Northwest Lawmakers Reeling Over President’s Signing Off On Logging Plan

President Clinton, the man both loggers and environmentalists love to hate, continues to give several Northwest Democrats heartburn with his handling of the region’s forest policy.

The political consternation usually hidden behind closed doors boiled over onto the House floor last week when Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., erupted with word the White House had cut a deal on a controversial logging plan.

Clinton’s flip-flop hit hardest on DeFazio; Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.; and Rep. Elizabeth Furse, D-Ore., who had taken plenty of heat from timber folks back home for standing with Clinton in opposition to the logging.

The House approved a comprehensive appropriations bill last Thursday containing language providing for salvage logging. But Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., pulled the bill off the floor Friday in a dispute with liberal Democrats over GOP-backed spending cuts.

Last month, the president went out of his way to single out logging language as a “very bad environmental provision” when he explained to reporters why he was vetoing a spending bill that included it - his first veto ever.

The fact that he changed his mind over the course of three weeks probably didn’t bother the liberal Democrats as much as that they had been left out of the loop.

DeFazio took to the House floor in an angry diatribe late Thursday night about the “secret agreement” between Clinton and GOP leaders as the House debated the appropriations bill.

“This is an outrage; this is an extraordinary outrage,” he shouted.

“I am being asked to accept on good faith that this is something that will both protect the environment and do what we need for forest health and salvage in the western United States, but it is not available in writing,” DeFazio said.

Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, responded that it was DeFazio’s own fault that he’d been left out of the negotiations.

“We have heard a lot of ranting and raving from the gentleman without a sense of humor about the fact that he has not had a chance to read this,” Livingston said. “If he has not had an opportunity to see what is going on, I would suggest to him that he is not doing his homework. He did not pick up the telephone and call the president of the United States to ask him what is going on.”

Clinton started causing political problems for Northwest Democrats shortly after his election when his administration adopted his forest policy, “Option 9,” dropping federal logging levels to onefourth or one-fifth the annual averages of the 1980s.

All along, Democrats had walked a thin line between the interests of environmentalists and timber workers but had managed to portray themselves as middle-of-the-road types advocating harvest levels much greater than the 1 billion board feet the president was projecting.

In exchange for their promise not to sue, the president promised leaders of a dozen of the largest conservation groups he would order all the logging done within the confines of existing laws. He would reject what had become annual attempts in Congress to insulate the logging from legal challenges.

Clinton repeated that pledge a month ago when he vetoed the comprehensive spending cuts bill. But last week, in a preview of partisan budget battles to come, he said he would accept a new version of the comprehensive legislation including the logging language.

Clinton explained that he still thinks it is a bad idea but that there have been some changes that make the logging plans more acceptable.