Kennedy Calls Federal Construction Of Logging Roads Corporate Welfare Republican Says Program Opens Forests For Average Citizens
To Democratic Reps. Elizabeth Furse and Joseph P. Kennedy II, the federal program that builds logging roads in national forests is a subsidy for the very profitable timber industry.
To Republican Rep. Ralph Regula, the subcommittee chairman in charge of the Forest Service budget, the program opens the national forests for the average citizen to camp, hunt, or just enjoy the wilderness.
The opposing sides will square off next month on whether the federal government should continue to build roads in national forests.
On Thursday, the day the House Appropriations Committee voted to keep paying for the roads, Kennedy announced he would try again to cut the road construction budget.
He said the money amounts to nothing more than corporate welfare for the timber industry, which gave $3.2 million in contributions to Congress in 1995-96, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
“We don’t need any new taxpayer-subsidized logging roads,” said Kennedy, D-Mass. “If new roads for logging purposes are warranted, practical and profitable, why shouldn’t these corporate giants build their own roads?”
But Regula, chairman of the House Appropriations Interior sub-committee, said the roads allow citizens to enjoy their national forests.
“It’s Joe Citizen welfare, that’s what it is,” Regula said. “Working people use those roads to hunt and fish and to camp out.”
Last June, Kennedy tried to cut $42 million for road construction from the Interior spending bill. After Kennedy initially won by one vote, the measure came up for a revote and he lost on a tie.
But he said the multimillion-dollar subsidies for logging roads are an inviting target as Congress tries to cut the federal budget.
“In this era of fiscal restraint, it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said.
Opponents of the roads say they destroy the environment, increasing mudslides and allowing silt to run off into formerly pristine streams. They question why there needs to be 379,000 miles of roads in national forests - more than eight times the size of the interstate highway system, which is fewer than 45,000 miles.
But Regula, R-Ohio, argued that the roads help the forests by allowing firefighters to come in and put out blazes, and forest crews to come in and fight diseases.