Copyright © 2002 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, the Democrat leader of the U.S. Senate, is playing politics while our forests continue to burn. This week he pushed a legislative rider through Congress that would allow for sensible and expedited forest management and timber harvests - but only in the Black Hills National Forest, located almost entirely in South Dakota.

Perhaps Sen. Daschle believes that South Dakota is the only state battling a vicious fire season this year. Or, more likely, perhaps he is playing politics with the lives and property of the people of the western United States.

Several of my western colleagues and I are currently working on legislation to extend to the rest of America the same benefits afforded to the people of South Dakota. Our bill will bar frivolous appeals that endanger lives, homes and wildlife. The bill will also authorize the Forest Service to take immediate action to reduce insect infestation or fire hazard. This bill provides Sen. Daschle with the opportunity to redeem himself if he will help us work for its passage. To do otherwise would be to engage in the rankest sort of hypocrisy, and would bring shame on him and his office.

Daschle's action, while finally bringing a bit of common sense to forest management policy, is based more on political science than on sound science. His protege, embattled Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), is on the verge of losing his seat to Representative John Thune (R-SD) in the coming election, an outcome that could ruin Daschle's presidential ambitions. Rep. Thune and I have been pushing this type of legislation for months, but were blocked at every turn by Sen. Daschle and his election year pandering to environmental groups on behalf of Sen. Johnson.

Prompt relief, like the provision for the Black Hills National Forest, is urgently needed for other communities at risk. After crafting an expedited solution for the Black Hills, opposing similar solutions for other vulnerable forests in the West would smack of hypocrisy. In one case, a single thinning project had to go through 800 steps to be approved. After all that, the project was tied-up in appeals for nearly nine months. In all, this single project took nearly three years to work its way through the Forest Service's decision-making pipeline. Today, the area slated for treatment is a blackened moonscape, scorched for decades to come by Colorado's Hayman Fire. The project was never fully implemented.

Forest fires are not partisan issues. They are public safety issues. More than three million acres have burned already this year. Thousands of homes have been destroyed and dozens of lives have been lost. Not one more family should see their home burn before Sen. Daschle acknowledges that what is good for the people of South Dakota is good for the citizens of the American West.

Our forests and grasslands should not be left to burn because of unreasonable regulations and lawsuits. I hope that Sen. Daschle will no longer leave the people of Wyoming and the West under the yoke of his hypocrisy and that he will help us to extend to the rest of America the South Dakota forest reforms that he now champions.

The West is burning, Senator Daschle. You can help us bring it under control.

Barbara Cubin, a Republican, is currently serving her fourth term, was first elected in 1994 to represent Wyoming in the United States House of Representatives. Cubin was selected by her peers as Republican Conference Secretary, the sixth-ranking Republican leadership position in the House, for the 107th Congress.