U.S. President Clinton Vs. Dole: Key Differences On Nw Issues, Including Endangered Species Act, Logging Limits

Bill Clinton and Bob Dole have paid scant attention to Northwest issues as they’ve debated and traded long-distance jabs on the campaign trail.

They usually stick to their national themes on a balanced budget, a tax cut and welfare reform.

That shortage of details on regional issues can be frustrating for voters in the Northwest, where the federal government owns much of the forest land, runs the power system, decides which animals are endangered and cleans up the nuclear messes it has made.

“We’re focusing on the broad-based policy issues facing the country,” said Kraig Naasz, a spokesman for the Washington state Dole-Kemp campaign.

Dole would bring his concept of returning power to the states to many of those regional issues - asking the region’s Republican members of Congress for their advice, Naasz said.

On an issue for which there is sharp disagreement, such as how to save wild salmon in the Columbia River system, “he’d probably let us fight it out until we reach some consensus,” said Sen. Slade Gorton, who is Dole’s campaign co-chairman for Washington state.

Clinton says as little about key regional issues as Dole in most of his appearances. But his campaign says that what you would see throughout a second term is what you are getting at the end of his first term.

Clinton and Dole are far apart on many environmental issues: Dole favors changing the Endangered Species Act to require that the costs of saving an endangered species be studied. Clinton wants to reauthorize the law.

Dole would probably support an extension of the Timber Salvage Rider, which suspends environmental regulations on federal forest lands that have been damaged by fire, insects or disease, Gorton said. Clinton has labeled that provision of the 1996 budget bill a major mistake and has promised not to renew it next year.

Clinton would continue his policy of increasing timber harvests in the Northwest to reach a goal of 1.1 billion board-feet from Northwest forests by 1998, said Brian Johnson, a spokesman for the administration’s Council on Environmental Quality. Dole would try to increase the harvest, possibly to 2 billion board feet, Gorton said.

Dole has promised to eliminate the Energy Department as a way to help cut $32 billion from the budget, but has given few details of how that would work. Nuclear waste cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation would be transferred to the Defense Department, but so would much of the money for that work, so even his strong supporters say there would be minimal savings there.

On national issues, Dole has promised a 15 percent, across-the-board tax cut that he wants to institute while balancing the budget by the year 2002. The tax cut would stimulate the economy, he contends, and increase revenues.

Clinton has called for some adjustments to the tax laws - mainly credits and deductions for education - but calls Dole’s plan a “tax scheme” that would increase the deficit. He points out that the deficit has gone down every year that he’s been in office, but seldom mentions that during the first two years, it decreased because of tax increases as well as spending cuts.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: THE JOB The president of the United States serves a four-year term and is paid $200,000 annually.