From: [Clinton HQ] at [Campaign92.Org] (The White House)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: CLINTON: President's Remarks at Forrest Conference 7.1.93
Date: 2 Jul 1993 04:35:34 -0400
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release July 1, 1993
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
IN FOREST ANNOUNCEMENT
Old Executive Office Building
10:34 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Ladies and gentlemen, this issue has
been one which has bedeviled the people of the Pacific Northwest for
some years now. It has been one that has particularly moved me for
two reasons: First of all, because so many people in that part of
the country brought their concerns to me in the campaign on all sides
of this issue -- the timber workers and companies, the
environmentalists, the Native Americans, the people who live in those
areas who just wanted to see the controversy so they could get on
with their lives. And secondly, because I grew up in a place with a
large timber industry and a vast amount of natural wilderness,
including a large number of national forests. So I have a very close
identity with all the forces at play in this great drama that has
paralyzed the Pacific Northwest for too long.
We're announcing a plan today which we believe will
strengthen the long-term economic and environmental health of the
Pacific Northwest and northern California. The plan provides an
innovative approach to forest management to protect the environment
and to produce a predictable and sustainable level of timber sales.
It offers a comprehensive, long-term plan for economic development.
And it makes sure that federal agencies for a change will be working
together for the good of all the people of the region.
The plan is a departure from the failed policies of the
past, when as many as six different federal agencies took different
positions on various interpretations of federal law and helped to
create a situation in which, at length, no timber cutting at all
could occur because of litigation, and still environmentalists
believed that the long-term concerns of the environment were not
being addressed.
The plan is more difficult than I had thought it would
be in terms of the size of the timber cuts, in part because during
this process the amount of timber actually in the forest and
available for cutting was revised downward sharply, in no small
measure because of years of overcutting, and in a way that provides
an annual yield smaller than timber interests had wanted, and a plan
without some of the protections that environmentalists had sought. I
can only say that as with every other situation in life, we have to
play the hand we were dealt. Had this crisis been dealt with years
ago we might have a plan with a higher yield and with more
environmentally protected areas. We are doing the best we can with
the facts as they now exist in the Pacific Northwest.
I believe the plan is fair and balanced. I believe it
will protect jobs and offer new job opportunities where they must be
found. It will preserve the woodlands, the rivers, the streams that
make the Northwest an attractive place to live and to visit. We
believe in this case it is clear that the Pacific Northwest requires
both a healthy economy and a healthy environment and that one cannot
exist without the other.
I want to say a special word of thanks to the Vice
President, to the Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, to Agriculture
Secretary Mike Espy, to Labor Secretary Reich, Commerce Secretary
Brown, Environmental Protection Administrator Browner, Environmental
Policy Director Katie McGinty, and many others in our administration
who work together to bring all the forces of the federal government
into agreement not because they all agreed on every issue at every
moment, but because they knew that we owed the people of the Pacific
Northwest at least a unified federal position that would break the
logjam of the past several years.
This shows that people can work together and make tough
choices if they have the will and courage to do so. Too often in the
past the issues which this plan addressed have simply wound up in
court while the economy, the environment and the people suffered.
These issues are clearly difficult and divisive; you will see that in
the response to the position that our administration has taken. If
they were easy they would have been answered long ago. The main
virtue of our plan besides being fair and balanced, is that we
attempt to answer the questions and let people get on with their
lives.
We could not, we could not permit more years of the
status quo to continue where everything was paralyzed in the courts.
We reached out to hundreds of people, from lumber workers and
fishermen to environmentalists, scientists, businesspeople, community
leaders and Native American tribes. We've worked hard to balance all
their interests and to understand their concerns. We know that our
solutions will not make everybody happy. Indeed, they may not make
anybody happy. But we do understand that we're all going to be
better off if we act on the plan and end the deadlock and
divisiveness.
We started bringing people together at the Forest
Conference in April. In the words of Archbishop Thomas Murphy then,
we began to find common ground for the common good. As people
reasoned together in a conference room instead of confronting each
other in a courtroom, they found at least that they shared common
values: work and family, faith and a reverence for the majestic
beauty of the natural environment God has bequeathed to that gifted
part of our nation.
This plan meets the standards that I set as the
conference concluded. It meets the need for year-round, high-wage,
high-skilled jobs and a sustained, predictable level of economic
activity in the forests. It protects the long-term health of the
forests, our wildlife and our waterways. It is clearly
scientifically sound, ecologically credible, and legally defensible.
By preserving the forests and setting predictable and
sustainable levels of timber sales, it protects jobs not just in the
short term, but for years to come.
We offer new assistance to workers and to families for
job training and retraining where that will inevitably be needed as a
result of the sustainable yield level set in the plan; new assistance
to businesses and industries to expand and create new family wage
jobs for local workers; new assistance to communities to build the
infrastructure to support new and diverse sources of economic growth;
and new initiatives to create jobs by investing in research and
restoration in the forests themselves. And we end the subsidies for
log exports that end up exporting American jobs.
This plan offers an innovative approach to conservation,
protecting key watersheds and the most valuable of our old-growth
forests. It protects key rivers and streams while saving the most
important groves of ancient trees and providing habitat for salmon
and other endangered species. And it establishes new adapted
management areas to develop new ways to achieve economic and
ecological goals, and to help communities to shape their own future.
Today I am signing a bill sponsored by Senator Patty
Murray and Congresswoman Jolene Unsoeld of Washington and supported
by the entire Northwest congressional delegation to restore the ban
of export of raw logs from state-owned lands and other publicly owned
lands. This act alone will save thousands of jobs in the Northwest,
including over 6,000 in Washington State alone.
Today, Secretary Babbitt and Secretary Espy are going to
the Northwest to talk to state and local officials about how to
implement the plan and give to workers, companies and communities the
help they need and deserve. And soon we will deliver an
environmental impact statement based on the plan to the federal
district court in Washington State. We will do all we can to resolve
the legal actions that have halted timber sales, and we will continue
to work with all those who share our commitment to achieve these
goals and move the sales forward.
Together, we can build a better future for the families
of the Northwest, for their children and for their children's
children. We can preserve the jobs in the forest and we can preserve
the forest. The time has come to act to end the logjam, to end the
endless delay and bickering and to restore some genuine security and
rootedness to the lives of the people who have for too long been torn
from pillar to post in this important area of the United States.
I believe this plan will do that, and this
administration is committed to implementing it.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END10:44 A.M. EDT