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Vaagen Brothers Lumber, Inc. 9/14/92 [OA 5812]
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18
4
7
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
2 SEP 12 P9: 14
September 12, 1992
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
THROUGH:
STEVEN PROVOST sp
FROM:
BOB GRADY RG
SUBJECT:
REMARKS IN COLVILLE, WASHINGTON
On Monday, September 14 at 6:10 p.m., you will address an
audience of 7,000, which includes lumber workers, their families,
and the Colville community at Vaagen Brothers Lumber, Inc. Your
remarks are fifteen minutes in length and will be on
teleprompter.
((Grady))
9/12/92
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
VISIT TO VAAGEN BROS. LUMBER, INC.
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON
Monday, September 14, 1992
2 SEP 12 P8: 54
Thank you, Senator Slade Gorton, for that introduction. And
thanks Dwayne Vaagen and all of you for letting me visit today.
Last week in Detroit, I released my Agenda for American
Renewal. I hope you'll call us and ask for a copy. The agenda
was based on a fundamental premise: that the challenges America
faces --- foreign, domestic, economic, and, yes, environmental --
are connected. The solution to one cannot be divorced from the
solution to the other. We need an integrated approach.
We need to bring this integrated approach to the
relationship between the economy and the environment, too.
Environmental protection and economic growth must go hand in
hand, they cannot be divorced from each other. This morning, I
spoke in California about ways to bring them together --
partnerships, market mechanisms, and new technology, instead of
regulation, litigation, and paralysis. But frankly, I believe
that when it comes to the Endangered Species Act and its
application here in the Northwest, the balance has been lost.
when
Like many of you, I love to camp and hunt and fish. And
like you, I have learned through a lifetime of experience to
appreciate and respect the wilderness.
I know that you -- you who have chosen to live in these
woods -- respect and revere these forests as others never can.
And you resent the implication that earning your livelihood
here -- with sound management of the forest -- makes you less of
7
2
an conservationist than the city dweller or the suburbanite.
For the last four years, we have worked hard to protect the
environment -- and we have accomplished a great deal.
Four years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act.
For over a decade, no one could get it done. But I got it done.
My Clean Air Act will cut acid rain in half, reduce smog in our
cities, and get toxic pollutants out of the air.
Four years ago, I promised that I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas of our coasts from offshore
drilling. And today, there will be no drilling off the coast of
California, off the coasts of Washington and Oregon not far from
here, off the Florida Keys, off the New England coast, because we
have placed those areas under a moratorium until the year 2000.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we have added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors; we are reopening and
upgrading campsites all across America; and we have added 1 1/2
million acres to our National Parks, Wildlife Areas, Forests and
recreation lands.
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists.
That is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. Yet
Americans today realize that we can protect our lands while also
using them for the benefit of the people. They understand the
need for wild areas and recreation areas, as well as the need for
paper for our schools and offices and timber for new homes.
acmess (7)
7
3
Being out here in the great Pacific Northwest, I cannot help
but think of Teddy Roosevelt -- the first President to focus the
attention of the Nation on the condition of our natural
resources. Teddy Roosevelt once said: "wise forest protection
does not mean the withdrawal of forest resources... from
contributing their full share to the welfare of the people..."
What President Roosevelt had in mind, and what the American
people have always wanted, is balance.
Not far from here is a timber town called Forks. Like
Colville, Forks supported a mill, and the mill supported a
community. Because of a lack of timber, the mill had to close.
Today unemployment in Forks is at 20 percent. The car dealership
has closed. The clothing store is gone. The movie theater --
shut down. Domestic violence complaints have doubled, just in
the last year. The community has been ravaged.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance has
been lost. My friends, I have come here because we must restore
the balance.
I want to quote you something from Oregon's Senator Mark
Hatfield, who was a cosponsor of the original Endangered Species
Act back in 1972. Not (This year) long ago, he wrote: "There is no question
that the Act is being applied in a manner far beyond what any of
us envisioned when we wrote it twenty years ago."
The fact is that the Endangered Species Act was intended as
a shield for species against the effects of major construction
7
4
projects like highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs,
families, and communities of entire regions like the Northwest.
But today, when harvesting on Federal timberland is stopped
outright by 11 different lawsuits -- under 5 different statutes,
each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has been lost.
It's time to fight for jobs, families and communities.
When hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
timber workers have been thrown out of work, and revenues to
communities for schools and other local services have been
slashed, the balance has been lost. It's time to fight for jobs,
families, and communities.
When a class project at a small college in Connecticut can
mail in appeals to stop people from earning a living in the
Northwest -- when students get college credit for playing games
with people's lives -- the balance has been lost. It's time to
fight for jobs, families, and communities.
It's gone too far.
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered Species
Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because after all, people and their jobs deserve some
protection
too.
Let me be clear: the basic purpose of the Endangered
Species Act is a good and noble one -- to save the rare and
threatened species of this country.
But today, the Act and other laws are being used by people
with extreme views, particularly here in Washington and Oregon,
7
5
to achieve in the courts what no sane elected official would ever
vote for -- the complete lock-up of the most productive forests
in the entire United States.
The Endangered Species Act, as rigidly interpreted by some
courts and as driven by the Congress, has forced an extreme
approach and created an unnecessarily tragic situation here in
the Northwest. Massive areas of Federal land are being set aside
for the owl -- virtually ignoring the fact that two-thirds of the
Northwest's old growth forests are already designated as parks,
wilderness, or other classifications that prevent harvesting.
Each pair of owls gets 3,500 acres to itself! Meanwhile, jobs,
families and communities are being wiped out in the process.
The other side has been talking about a "false choice.'
They claim that this timber crisis is just politics. The simple
fact is this: the false choice is being driven by extremists who
are twisting the Endangered Species Act and its application to
the Northern Spotted Owl.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
within the parameters of the law to address this problem -- but I
can tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed.
We have asked Congress for funds to cut enough timber in
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting laws
allow challenge after challenge.
So this year, we sent Congress an alternative plan: a
preservation plan that would save 17,000 jobs compared to the
recovery plan required by the Act. Congress has failed to act.
7
6
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people
first" -- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, it's time to face one fact: the situation is out of
control, and it must be addressed -- because the balance must be
restored.
So here is what I propose:
First, I will not sign an extension of the Endangered
Species Act unless it gives greater consideration to jobs,
families, and communities. And I will not sign it without a
specific plan in place to harvest enough timber to keep timber
families working in 1993 and beyond. It's time to make people
just as important as owls.
Second, I will fight to end the injunctions that have put an
economic strangle-hold on the Northwest, in order to free up the
timber that we need today -- because the families and the timber
communities of the Pacific Northwest need relief now.
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to produce 2.6 billion
board feet of timber from Forest Service lands in the Northwest
Region next year -- and to pass language that prevents procedural
lawsuits from stopping reasonable harvests with reasonable
species protection. It's time to put people ahead of process.
Third, my Administration will speed up the harvesting of
dead or dying timber that has been dangerously building up during
a 7 year drought. One step is our new rule to allow more timber
salvage operations to occur without triggering some of the time-
7
7
consuming requirements that are blocking progress.
This will
reduce the risk of fire, and it will provide up to 450 million
board feet of timber for the mills in the near term. It's time
to protect jobs with timber that's available now.
Fourth, we will make sure that 100 percent of the raw logs
from Washington State-owned public lands are processed here.
It's time to put the mills back to work.
Finally, I call upon Congress today to pass the Spotted Owl
Preservation Plan -- Senator Gorton's bill. It's time to
preserve both owls and jobs.
Now, my opponents' approach to this problem -- to your
jobs -- is doublespeak. When Bill Clinton spoke in Pennsylvania,
he pandered to the Sierra Club, which concluded that he was --
quote -- "promising the protection of old growth forests in the
Pacific Northwest." Then, when he heard I was coming here, Mr.
Clinton cynically held out false hope to timber families by
promising, get this, a meeting. That's doublespeak.
There have been more than 40 bipartisan meetings of the
Northwest Congressional delegation on this issue for three years.
[We've produced a pile of studies and proposals this high.] The
conclusion is the same: we need a change in law.
And the difference on this is clear: I will fight to change
the law to restore balance. My opponent will not.
Now I know that Mr. Clinton, Governor Doublespeak, is
getting famous for being on both sides of every issue.
7
8
Do you want to know the real views of the other ticket?
Senator Gore wrote it in black and white in his book, before he
knew he'd be pandering for votes.
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and I quote: "I helped
lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections for the spotted owl." Senator Gore wrote, and I
quote:
"
the jobs will be lost anyway."
It's time we worried not only about endangered species --
but about endangered jobs.
I have come here to tell you that I am the candidate
who will respect wildlife, yes -- but who will also fight for
jobs, families, and communities.
I have come here to tell you that I will not stand for a
solution that puts 32,000 people out of work. It will not stand.
I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten about
the human factor -- because in the end, that's the most important
factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United
States of America.
#
#
#
#
7
Document No.
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE: 9/12/92
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
---
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: VISIT TO VAAGEN BROS. LUMBER, INC.
SUBJECT:
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON - MONDAY 9/14/92
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCBRIDE
BAKER
MOORE
SCOWCROFT
MULLINS
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BATES
PORTER
BRADY
PROVOST
BROMLEY
ROSS
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
TUTWILER
FITZWATER
ZOELLICK
GRAY
DELAND
HOLIDAY
KAUFMAN
HORNER
GROOMES
MCGROARTY
REMARKS:
The attached has been forwarded to the President.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
((Grady))
9/12/92
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
VISIT TO VAAGEN BROS. LUMBER, INC.
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON
Monday, September 14, 1992
02 SEP 12 P8: 54
Thank you, Senator Slade Gorton, for that introduction. And
thanks Dwayne Vaagen and all of you for letting me visit today.
Last week in Detroit, I released my Agenda for American
Renewal. I hope you'll call us and ask for a copy. The agenda
was based on a fundamental premise: that the challenges America
faces -- foreign, domestic, economic, and, yes, environmental --
are connected. The solution to one cannot be divorced from the
solution to the other. We need an integrated approach.
We need to bring this integrated approach to the
relationship between the economy and the environment, too.
Environmental protection and economic growth must go hand in
hand, they cannot be divorced from each other. This morning, I
spoke in California about ways to bring them together --
partnerships, market mechanisms, and new technology, instead of
regulation, litigation, and paralysis. But frankly, I believe
that when it comes to the Endangered Species Act and its
application here in the Northwest, the balance has been lost.
Like many of you, I love to camp and hunt and fish. And
like you, I have learned through a lifetime of experience to
appreciate and respect the wilderness.
I know that you -- you who have chosen to live in these
woods -- respect and revere these forests as others never can.
And you resent the implication that earning your livelihood
here -- with sound management of the forest -- makes you less of
7
2
an conservationist than the city dweller or the suburbanite.
For the last four years, we have worked hard to protect the
environment -- and we have accomplished a great deal.
Four years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act.
For over a decade, no one could get it done. But I got it done.
My Clean Air Act will cut acid rain in half, reduce smog in our
cities, and get toxic pollutants out of the air.
Four years ago, I promised that I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas of our coasts from offshore
drilling. And today, there will be no drilling off the coast of
California, off the coasts of Washington and Oregon not far from
here, off the Florida Keys, off the New England coast, because we
have placed those areas under a moratorium until the year 2000.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we have added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors; we are reopening and
upgrading campsites all across America; and we have added 1 1/2
million acres to our National Parks, Wildlife Areas, Forests and
recreation lands.
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists.
That is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. Yet
Americans today realize that we can protect our lands while also
using them for the benefit of the people. They understand the
need for wild areas and recreation areas, as well as the need for
paper for our schools and offices and timber for new homes.
7
3
Being out here in the great Pacific Northwest, I cannot help
but think of Teddy Roosevelt -- the first President to focus the
attention of the Nation on the condition of our natural
resources. Teddy Roosevelt once said: "wise forest protection
does not mean the withdrawal of forest resources
from
contributing their full share to the welfare of the people
=
What President Roosevelt had in mind, and what the American
people have always wanted, is balance.
Not far from here is a timber town called Forks. Like
Colville, Forks supported a mill, and the mill supported a
community. Because of a lack of timber, the mill had to close.
Today unemployment in Forks is at 20 percent. The car dealership
has closed. The clothing store is gone. The movie theater --
shut down. Domestic violence complaints have doubled, just in
the last year. The community has been ravaged.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance has
been lost. My friends, I have come here because we must restore
the balance.
I want to quote you something from Oregon's Senator Mark
Hatfield, who was a cosponsor of the original Endangered Species
Act back in 1972. Not long ago, he wrote: "There is no question
that the Act is being applied in a manner far beyond what any of
us envisioned when we wrote it twenty years ago. "
The fact is that the Endangered Species Act was intended as
a shield for species against the effects of major construction
7
4
projects like highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs,
families, and communities of entire regions like the Northwest.
But today, when harvesting on Federal timberland is stopped
outright by 11 different lawsuits -- under 5 different statutes,
each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has been lost.
It's time to fight for jobs, families and communities.
When hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
timber workers have been thrown out of work, and revenues to
communities for schools and other local services have been
slashed, the balance has been lost. It's time to fight for jobs,
families, and communities.
When a class project at a small college in Connecticut can
mail in appeals to stop people from earning a living in the
Northwest -- when students get college credit for playing games
with people's lives -- the balance has been lost. It's time to
fight for jobs, families, and communities.
It's gone too far.
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered Species
Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because after all, people and their jobs deserve some
protection too.
Let me be clear: the basic purpose of the Endangered
Species Act is a good and noble one -- to save the rare and
threatened species of this country.
But today, the Act and other laws are being used by people
with extreme views, particularly here in Washington and Oregon,
7
5
to achieve in the courts what no sane elected official would ever
vote for -- the complete lock-up of the most productive forests
in the entire United States.
The Endangered Species Act, as rigidly interpreted by some
courts and as driven by the Congress, has forced an extreme
approach and created an unnecessarily tragic situation here in
the Northwest. Massive areas of Federal land are being set aside
for the owl -- virtually ignoring the fact that two-thirds of the
Northwest's old growth forests are already designated as parks,
wilderness, or other classifications that prevent harvesting.
Each pair of owls gets 3,500 acres to itself! Meanwhile, jobs,
families and communities are being wiped out in the process.
The other side has been talking about a "false choice."
They claim that this timber crisis is just politics. The simple
fact is this: the false choice is being driven by extremists who
are twisting the Endangered Species Act and its application to
the Northern Spotted Owl.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
within the parameters of the law to address this problem -- but I
can tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed.
We have asked Congress for funds to cut enough timber in
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting laws
allow challenge after challenge.
So this year, we sent Congress an alternative plan: a
preservation plan that would save 17,000 jobs compared to the
recovery plan required by the Act. Congress has failed to act.
7
6
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people
first" -- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, it's time to face one fact: the situation is out of
control, and it must be addressed -- because the balance must be
restored.
So here is what I propose:
First, I will not sign an extension of the Endangered
Species Act unless it gives greater consideration to jobs,
families, and communities. And I will not sign it without a
specific plan in place to harvest enough timber to keep timber
families working in 1993 and beyond. It's time to make people
just as important as owls.
Second, I will fight to end the injunctions that have put an
economic strangle-hold on the Northwest, in order to free up the
timber that we need today -- because the families and the timber
communities of the Pacific Northwest need relief now.
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to produce 2.6 billion
board feet of timber from Forest Service lands in the Northwest
Region next year -- and to pass language that prevents procedural
lawsuits from stopping reasonable harvests with reasonable
species protection. It's time to put people ahead of process.
Third, my Administration will speed up the harvesting of
dead or dying timber that has been dangerously building up during
a 7 year drought. One step is our new rule to allow more timber
salvage operations to occur without triggering some of the time-
?
7
consuming requirements that are blocking progress.
This will
reduce the risk of fire, and it will provide up to 450 million
board feet of timber for the mills in the near term. It's time
to protect jobs with timber that's available now.
Fourth, we will make sure that 100 percent of the raw logs
from Washington State-owned public lands are processed here.
It's time to put the mills back to work.
Finally, I call upon Congress today to pass the Spotted Owl
Preservation Plan -- Senator Gorton's bill. It's time to
preserve both owls and jobs.
Now, my opponents' approach to this problem -- to your
jobs -- is doublespeak. When Bill Clinton spoke in Pennsylvania,
he pandered to the Sierra Club, which concluded that he was --
quote -- "promising the protection of old growth forests in the
Pacific Northwest." Then, when he heard I was coming here, Mr.
Clinton cynically held out false hope to timber families by
promising, get this, a meeting. That's doublespeak.
There have been more than 40 bipartisan meetings of the
Northwest Congressional delegation on this issue for three years.
[We've produced a pile of studies and proposals this high.] The
conclusion is the same: we need a change in law.
And the difference on this is clear: I will fight to change
the law to restore balance. My opponent will not.
Now I know that Mr. Clinton, Governor Doublespeak, is
getting famous for being on both sides of every issue.
8
Do you want to know the real views of the other ticket?
Senator Gore wrote it in black and white in his book, before he
knew he'd be pandering for votes.
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and I quote: "I helped
lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections for the spotted owl." Senator Gore wrote, and I
quote:
" the jobs will be lost anyway."
It's time we worried not only about endangered species --
but about endangered jobs.
I have come here to tell you that I am the candidate
who will respect wildlife, yes -- but who will also fight for
jobs, families, and communities.
I have come here to tell you that I will not stand for a
solution that puts 32,000 people out of work. It will not stand.
I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten about
the human factor -- because in the end, that's the most important
factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United
States of America.
#
#
#
#
7
Document No. 349720ss
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
9/11/92
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: SAT. 9/12/92 10:00 a.m.
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
SUBJECT:
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON - MONDAY, 9/14/92
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCBRIDE
BAKER
X
MOORE
SCOWCROFT
x
MULLINS
X
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BATES
PORTER
BRADY
KPROVOST
BROMLEY
ROSS
CALIO
SMITH
with N/C
DEMAREST
TUTWILER
FITZWATER
X
ZOELLICK
GRAY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
MCGROARTY
HORNER
x DELAND
GROOMES
Please forward your comments MASTER directly to Dan McGroarty, Rm. 122, x2930,
REMARKS:
no later than 10:00 a.m., SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, with a copy to this
office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
called 3:50 9/11
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
4:50 9/11
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
10:00 9/12
11:00 9/12
9/11/92
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
2 SEP II P3:14
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON
Monday, September 14, 1992
Thank you, Dwayne Vaagan, for that introduction. And thanks
to all of you for letting me visit with you today. Being out
here in the great Pacific Northwest, I cannot help but think of
Teddy Roosevelt.
He was the first President to really focus the attention of
the Nation on the condition of our natural resources and the need
present and (CEQ)
to manage these treasures for the benefit of, future generations,
He said: "Neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing
(CEQ)
with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future.' And
is
Deleta "and"
(Porter) he was right
perRoss
Pres. Roosevelt
(CEQ) But Teddy Roosevelt said something else: In the West," he ^
said, "the forests should be so handled as to be in the interests
of the actual home-maker. He should be encouraged to use them at
once, but in such a way as to preserve and not exhaust them."
For the past four years, my Administration had State devoted a (ROSS)
great deal of thought and effort to protecting our environment.
Like many of you, I love the outdoors and love to hunt and fish,
And like you, I have learned through a lifetime of experience to
appreciate and respect the beauty of the wilderness.
I know that you -- you who have chosen to live in these
woods -- respect and revere these forests as others cannot. And
you resent the implication that earning your livelihood here --
with sound management of the forest -- makes you less of an
2
environmentalist than the city dweller or the suburbanite. I
have come here today because I understand.
For the last four years, we have worked to protect the
environment -- and we have accomplished a great deal.
Four years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act.
(CEQ)
We Wealwayslead lead
For 13 years, the Congress was stuck in gridlock and had passed
w/thecAA--it's it's
a yawner now.
no clean air law. But we proposed a new one, we negotiated it
Howabout insert
A
?
through a divided Congress, and I proudly signed it into law.
That law will cut acid rain in half, reduce smog in our cities,
and get toxic pollutants out of the air.
Four years ago, I promised that I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas of our coasts from offshore
(Ross)
drilling. And today, there will be no drilling off the coast of
California, off the coasts of Washington and Oregon not far from
here, off the Florida Keys, off the New England coast, because we
have placed those areas under a moratorium until the next
century.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we have added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors, we are reopening and
upgrading campsites all across America, and we have added over a (OMB)
a
Gilman
million and half acres to our National Parks and Wildlife Refuges
$
Morin
and Forests and recreation lands.
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists.
That is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. But
A
Four years ago, I promised to make the polluter
pay. The most So much could be accomplished
if are would just enforce The laws already on
the books. And we have secured more penalties
and prison terms for polluters in the last Three
years, than in the previous 18 years combined.
(also responds to yesterday's
Dingell heaving)
3
Americans today, like Teddy Roosevelt three quarters of a century
we can
while also using them the benefit
ago, realize that the protection of our lands is not inconsistent
Fthe people. They understand the need for wild areas, and recreation areas, aswell the need for paper forschools
with their use ^ They care about the growth of our country, and and offices, $
tim ber fornew
about the ability of Americans to make a living. They
homes.
(CEQ)
understandy that stewardship does not mean stopping all progress.
As Teddy Roosevelt said: "wise protection of resources does
not mean the withdrawal of those resources from contributing
INSERT
OVER
their full share to the welfare of the people. "
(CEQ)
What President Roosevelt had in mind, and what the American
people have always wanted, is balance. But in these ancient
forests, the balance has been lost.
Not far from here is a timber town called Forks. Like
Corville, 12 Forks supported a mill, and the mill supported the
town. And the town gave life to a community. Today,
unemployment in Forks is at 20 percent -- more than double what
it was just two years ago. The car dealership has closed. The
clothing store is gone. The movie theatre -- shut down.
Domestic violence complaints have doubled, just in the last year.
The community has been ravaged.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance has
been lost.
My friends, I have come here because we must restore the
balance.
I want to quote you something from Oregon's Senator Mark
(Porter) Hatfield. of Oregon who has served in the Senate long enough to remember
the creation of the Endangered Species Act. Not long ago, he
B
Just this morning, I visited a place
southern California where people are dem
that ideal. Private land owners, develope
conservationists, and local officials are wore
make 100
together to protect wildlife habitat and ensure
economic growth in that growth region. By
doing so, They're trying to avoid the kind of
Federal intervention and economic paralysis
that increasingly results from the Endangered
Species Act.
4
wrote: "There is no question that the Act is being applied in
manner far beyond what any of us envisioned when we wrote it
twenty years ago."
The application of the Endangered Species Act to these
forests has gone far beyond what the drafters intended. The
balance has been lost. (CEQ)
The fact is that the Endangered Species Act was intended as (applied to
federal &
a shield for species against the effects of major Federal construction
private
(CEQ) projects
projects like highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs,
families, and communities of the Northwest. (CEQ)
entire regions
But today, when (nottrue! ced all harvesting on Federal timberland is
stopped outright by 11 different lawsuits, the balance has been
(Porter) lost. It's time to factor in the worries about jobs, families and
concerns
communities.
When hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
(Porter)
have been
timber workers thrown out of work, and revenues to communities
(CEQ)
for schools and other local services slashed as a result, the (counsel's)
have been (CEQ)
balance has been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families,
and communities.
Today, when interest groups can tie our Federal agencies up
in knots by suing them under five different statutes enacted by
Congress -- each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has
been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families, and
communities.
Today, when a class project at Wesleyan University in
Connecticut is to come up with lawsuits to stop people from
suits
filed (CED)
5
earning a living in the Northwest -- when students can play games
with people's lives -- the balance has been lost. It's time to
worry about jobs, families, families, and communities. ))
I have come to this great Pacific Northwest, to these
beautiful and productive forests, to join you in saying: we must
restore the balance. We must worry about jobs, families and
communities. Enough is enough. (Ross)
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered Species
Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because after all, people and their jobs deserve some
(Porter)
protection too.
Let me be clear: I care about protecting the environment. see insert over C
(CEQ)
The basic purpose of the Endangered Species Act is a good and
those rare and threatened
(Porter)
noble one: to save the species of this country.
see other side for insert
(Porter)
But today, the Act is being used, particularly here in
through legal acrobatics (?)
Washington and Oregon, to achieve in the courts, what can't be
(Porter)
achieved through legislation or admins trative procedure -- the
complete lock-up of the most productive forests in the entire
United States.
(Counsel's)
The Endangered Species Act, in its current form as
rigidly. interpreted by some courts and as driven by the Democrats in
Some
(Ross)
(Porter)
Congress, has forced a radical approach and created an
unnecessarily tragic situation here in the Northwest. Massive
it was a
scientific panet for the owl. And jobs, families and communities are being wiped
federal
and unnecessarily large areas of Federal land are being set aside
hat
the larguarea.
out in the process.
(CEQ)
C
In my efforts to strike the night balance,
I've sponsored programs that planted 225 million
trees, brought new funds to the cleanup of Puget
sand, and reached out to share American
expertise with other nations. (EQ)
The Act was originally designed to keep antelope and bison
from being hunted to extiction -- to keep bald eagles and
wolves from being senselessly shot or trapped. (Porter)
6
You know, the other side has been talking lately about a
"false choice." They claim that this timber crisis is just
politics. The simple fact is this: the false choice is being
driven by the Endangered Species Act and its application to the
Northern Spotted Owl. It is being driven by those in Congress
who have permitted this crisis to go unresolved.
The simple fact is that when it comes to the Owl, the Act is
too rigid -- and Congress is too timid.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
within the paramaters of the law to address this problem -- and but I (Porter)
can tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed. ^ There has to bea
better way. (CEQ
We have asked Congress for funds to cut enough timber in
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting laws
allow challenge after challenge.
So this year, we asked Congress to make a choice. We showed
them the Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, as required by the Endangered
32,000
Species Act -- a plan that would cost this region 30,000 jobs.
(OMB)
And, because that plan imposes too great a cost on the families
and communities of the Pacific Northwest, we asked them to
consider instead an alternative: a preservation plan that would
cut that job loss in half.
17,000
We sent Congress a bill that would help save 15,000 jobs.
(OMB)
And Congress has failed to act. So while the gridlock Congress (Counsel's)
stalls, no timber is being cut -- and your jobs are disappearing
(Porter) alot faster than the any owl.
I spoke before about balance.
7
It is not balance when mills that have operated responsibly
for generations are threatened with extinction because of a lack
(Porter)
Hmber(?)
of fiber from our public lands.
It is not balance when the Act prevents the mere
consideration, at key points in the process, of costs that
directly affect people and their livelihood -- of the human
factor.
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people
first" -- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, it's time to face one fact: the situation is out of
control -- and it must be addressed because the balance must be
restored.
here is what I propose: (CEQ)
So let me say this:
First, ^ I will not sign an a extension of the Endangered Species Act unless it
reauthorization (CEQ)
that does not allow economics to be consideredy and that is not
(CEQ)
accompanied buy a specific plan to harvest enough timber to keep
timber families working. in 1993 and beyond It's time to make
people just as important as owls.
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to cut 2.6 billion
on Federal lands
(Porter)
(CEQ)
board feet in the Forest Service Pacific Northwest region next
prevents lawsuits
year -- and to tie that plan to language which makes sure that a
reasonable cut that provides protection for species cannot be
(CEQ)
blocked on procedural grounds Y It's time to put people ahead of
process
see insert
Y
from
see insert(
X
from
p.8. put inhere.
p.8. Putin here.
8
Third, ^ My administration has recently announced several steps to
speed up the harvesting of dead or dying timber. We will shortly
CEQ thinks
more of
it has alread
issue a rule to allow these timber salvage operations to occur
been issued
(CEQ)
without triggering some of the restrictive and time-consuming docum entation
laws that are disrupting the balance today.
13 slowing down theses sales
This will help in two ways: by reducing the risk of fire
from the large volume of dead and or dying trees on our forest floor; (CEQ)
in the
and by providing up to 450 million board feedt of timber for the
mills in the near term. It's time to protect jobs and put people
back to work.
INSERT
Second,
^
I will fight for legislative language to end the injunctions
X
that have put an economic strangle-hold on hte Northwest. in
(CEQ)
I'll fight
order to free up the timber that we need today -- because the
INSERT
families and the timber communities of the Pacific Northwest need
Y
relief now.
[Porter)
And I call upon Congress today to pass the Spotted Owl
Preservation Plan -- Senator Gorton's bill -- because we must notjust (Porter)
? (Ross)
this
preserve the owl; we must preserve the livelihood of the Pacific
onsistent
nd/or redundant Northwest; and we must preserve the jobs of the American people.
" bottomof 7?
Finally, Fourth I am today directing the Secretary of Commerce to
(CEQ)
increase the Federal ban on the export of raw logs from
Protectionist?
(counsel's)
Washington State lands from 75 percent to 100 percent. It is
kwl Bellick (Ross)
time to make sure that mills in Washington have an opportunity to
process timber grown on their state lands.
Where are logs currently going Foreign
or to other states? (Porter)
Now, my opponents would have you believe that they, too are
in favor of balance. ((They won't commit to any specific action to
see
And fifth, I'll work to bring people together, to encourage
p.9
local initiatives that might avoid these tragic crises.
He's trying to punt this issue
down the road to have his
cake and eatih too, until
ele ction day. (Ross)
9
solve the problem. Their idea of balance is doublespeak --
promise both sides exactly what they want to hear.
When Bill Clinton spoke on Earth Day back in Pennsylvania,
he earned the praise of the Sierra Club for "promising the
protection of Old Growth forests in the Pacific Northwest." He
wanted their endorsement, and he got it.
Now, just recently, with the election nearing, he has come
to Oregon to hold out false hope to timber families by promising
a meeting. Classic doublespeak. But we. should face one fact.
This problem isn't going to be solved with one meeting. We've
had enough meetings, it's time for action.
Bill Clinton says that he'll have his meeting within 100
days. Well, we've been meeting for two years. What's needed is
a change in law. I will fight for it. Bill Clinton will not.
Now I know that the Governor of Arkansas is famous for being
on both sides of every issue. But I hope you'll ask him -- for
once -- to stop the rhetoric and take a stand. Families are in
the Northwest are at risk. So this is one issue where sincerity
(Porter)
is
would be better than slickness.
The plain truth is that the ((other ticket is on the record) on inconsistent sounds
w/ bottom of
this problem, and here is what they have said.
p.8.
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and I quote: "I helped
lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections for the spotted owl." The reasoning offered was
simple. The Senator said: "The jobs will be lost anyway. anyway." The
This sounds more insensitive and
the second line is actually true.
(CEQ)
10
only question is whether the effort to create new jobs will begin
now or later. (Porter) (Counsel's) add Thejobs will be lost anyway ?!?
(CEQ)
Senator Gore and Governor Clinton don't realize that
generation after generation of families -- families like the
Vaagen brothers -- have made a living for their family, for their
neighbors, and for their community -- not by locking these
forests up, but by managing them wisely. By restoring what they
take, so that the land can sustain the next generation and the
accident (CEQ)
one after that. After all, it's no mistake that America today is has
(CEQ)
home to more forest land than it was when Teddy Roosevelt was
President. ^ Iwant to keep people working and have more forest lands in America
in the 21st Century. (CEQ)
[The The other side doesn't understand that leading the fight
harsh!
against any change in the tangled web of conflicting laws means
(CEQ)
leading the fight against your job and your family and your
community and your way of life. ]
But I understand.
And
Or maybe they do understand. But I ask you only to do this:
let them know that you understand, too. And do not be fooled by
this doublespeak.
It's time we worried not only about endangered species --
also (CEQ)
but about endangered jobs.
You know, the father of our national forest system, and one
of America's great conservationists, Gifford Pinchot, once
defined conservation this way: "Conservation means the wise use
of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men."
I have come here today to tell you that I am the candidate
who will worry about jobs, families, and communities.
11
I have come here today to tell you that I will not stand for
a solution that puts 30,000 people out of work. That is a non-
solution. And on my watch, it will not stand (Ross)
I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten about
the human factor -- because in the end, that's the most important
factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United
States of America.
#
#
#
#
Document No. 349720ss
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
9/11/92
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: SAT. 9/12/92 10:00 a.m.
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
SUBJECT:
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON - MONDAY, 9/14/92
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCBRIDE
BAKER
MOORE
SCOWCROFT
MULLINS
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BATES
PORTER
BRADY
PROVOST
BROMLEY
ROSS
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
TUTWILER
FITZWATER
ZOELLICK
GRAY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
MCGROARTY
HORNER
DELAND
GROOMES
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Dan McGroarty, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 10:00 a.m., SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, with a copy to this
office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
see Comments
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
9/11/92
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
2 SEP 11 P3:14
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON
Monday, September 14, 1992
Senator Gordon
Thank you, Dwayne Vaagan, for that introduction. And thanks
to all of you for letting me visit with you today. Being out
here in the great Pacific Northwest, I cannot help but think of
Teddy Roosevelt.
He was the first President to really focus the attention of
the Nation on the condition of our natural resources and the need
to manage these treasures for the benefit of future generations.
He said: "Neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing
with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future." And
he was right.
But Teddy Roosevelt said something else: "In the West," he
said, "the forests should be so handled as to be in the interests
of the actual home-maker. He should be encouraged to use them at
once, but in such a way as to preserve and not exhaust them." "
For the past four years, my Administration had devoted a
great deal of thought and effort to protecting our environment.
Like many of you, I love the outdoors and love to hunt and fish,
And like you, I have learned through a lifetime of experience to
appreciate and respect the beauty of the wilderness.
I know that you -- you who have chosen to live in these
woods -- respect and revere these forests as others cannot. And
you resent the implication that earning your livelihood here --
with sound management of the forest -- makes you less of an
2
environmentalist than the city dweller or the suburbanite. I
have come here today because I understand.
For the last four years, we have worked to protect the
environment -- and we have accomplished a great deal.
Four years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act.
For 13 years, the Congress was stuck in gridlock and had passed
no clean air law. But we proposed a new one, we negotiated it
through a divided Congress, and I proudly signed it into law.
That law will cut acid rain in half, reduce smog in our cities,
and get toxic pollutants out of the air.
Four years ago, I promised that I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas of our coasts from offshore
drilling. And today, there will be no drilling off the coast of
California, off the coasts of Washington and Oregon not far from
here, off the Florida Keys, off the New England coast, because we
have placed those areas under a moratorium until the next
century.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we have added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors, we are reopening and
upgrading campsites all across America, and we have added over a
million and half acres to our National Parks and Wildlife Refuges
and Forests and recreation lands.
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists.
That is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. But
3
Americans today, like Teddy Roosevelt three quarters of a century
ago, realize that the protection of our lands is not inconsistent
with their use. They care about the growth of our country, and
about the ability of Americans to make a living. They
understand, that stewardship does not mean stopping all progress.
As Teddy Roosevelt said: "wise protection of resources does
not mean the withdrawal of those resources from contributing
their full share to the welfare of the people."
What President Roosevelt had in mind, and what the American
people have always wanted, is balance. But in these ancient
forests, the balance has been lost.
Not far from here is a timber town called Forks. Like
Corville, Colville Forks supported a mill, and the mill supported the
town. And the town gave life to a community. Today,
unemployment in Forks is at 20 percent -- more than double what
it was just two years ago. The car dealership has closed. The
clothing store is gone. The movie theatre -- shut down.
Domestic violence complaints have doubled, just in the last year.
The community has been ravaged.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance has
been lost.
My friends, I have come here because we must restore the
balance.
I want to quote you something from Oregon's Senator Mark
Hatfield, who has served in the Senate long enough to remember
the creation of the Endangered Species Act. Not long ago, he
4
wrote: "There is no question that the Act is being applied in
manner far beyond what any of us envisioned when we wrote it
twenty years ago."
The application of the Endangered Species Act to these
forests has gone far beyond what the drafters intended. The
balance has been lost.
The fact is that the Endangered Species Act was intended as
a shield for species against the effects of major Federal
projects like highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs,
families, and communities of the Northwest.
But today, when all harvesting on Federal timberland is
stopped outright by 11 different lawsuits, the balance has been
lost. It's time factor in the worries about jobs, families and
communities.
When hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
timber workers thrown out of work, and revenues to communities
for schools and other local services slashed as a result, the
balance has been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families,
and communities.
Today, when interest groups can tie our Federal agencies up
in knots by suing them under five different statutes enacted by
Congress -- each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has
been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families, and
communities.
Today, when a class project at Wesleyan University in
Connecticut is to come up with lawsuits to stop people from
5
earning a living in the Northwest -- when students can play games
with people's lives -- the balance has been lost. It's time to
worry about jobs families and communities.
I have come to this great Pacific Northwest, to these
beautiful and productive forests, to join you in saying: we must
restore the balance. We must worry about jobs, families and
communities. Enough is enough.
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered Species
Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because after all, people and their jobs deserve some
protection too.
Let me be clear: I care about protecting the environment.
The basic purpose of the Endangered Species Act is a good and
noble one: to save the species of this country.
But today, the Act is being used, particularly here in
Washington and Oregon, to achieve in the courts what can't be
achieved through legislation or adminsitrative procedure -- the
complete lock-up of the most productive forests in the entire
United States.
The Endangered Species Act, in its current form as
interpreted by some courts and as driven by the Democrats in
Congress, has forced a radical approach and created an
unnecessarily tragic situation here in the Northwest. Massive
and unnecessarily large areas of Federal land are being set aside
for the owl. And jobs, families and communities are being wiped
out in the process.
6
You know, the other side has been talking lately about a
"false choice." They claim that this timber crisis is just
politics. The simple fact is this: the false choice is being
driven by the Endangered Species Act and its application to the
Northern Spotted Owl. It is being driven by those in Congress
who have permitted this crisis to go unresolved.
The simple fact is that when it comes to the Owl, the Act is
too rigid -- and Congress is too timid.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
within the paramaters of the law to address this problem -- but I
can tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed.
We have asked Congress for funds to cut enough timber in
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting laws
allow challenge after challenge.
So this year, we asked Congress to make a choice. We showed
them the Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, as required by the Endangered
Species Act -- a plan that would cost this region 30,000 jobs.
And, because that plan imposes too great a cost on the families
and communities of the Pacific Northwest, we asked them to
consider instead an alternative: a preservation plan that would
cut that job loss in half.
We sent Congress a bill that would help save 15,000 jobs.
And Congress has failed to act. So while the gridlock Congress
stalls, no timber is being cut -- and your jobs are disappearing
alot faster than the owl.
I spoke before about balance.
7
It is not balance when mills that have operated responsibly
for generations are threatened with extinction because of a lack
of fiber from our public lands.
It is not balance when the Act prevents the mere
consideration, at key points in the process, of costs that
directly affect people and their livelihood -- of the human
factor.
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people
first" -- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, it's time to face one fact: the situation is out of
control -- and it must be addressed
because the balance must be
restored.
So let me say this:
I will not sign an extension of the Endangered Species Act
that does not allow economics to be considered, and that is not
accompanied buy a specific plan to harvest enough timber to keep
timber families working in 1993 and beyond. It's time to make
people just as important as owls.
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to cut 2.6 billion
board feet in the Forest Service Pacific Northwest region next
year -- and to tie that plan to language which makes sure that a
reasonable cut that provides protection for species cannot be
blocked on procedural grounds. It's time to put people ahead of
process.
8
My administration has recently announced several steps to
speed up the harvesting of dead or dying timber. We will shortly
issue a rule to allow these timber salvage operations to occur
without triggering some of the restrictive and time-consuming
laws that are disrupting the balance today.
This will help in two ways: by reducing the risk of fire
from the large volume of dead or dying trees on our forest floor;
and by providing up to 450 million board feedt of timber for the
mills in the near term. It's time to protect jobs and put people
back to work.
I will fight for legislative language to end the injunctions
that have put an economic strangle-hold on hte Northwest, in
order to free up the timber that we need today -- because the
families and the timber communities of the Pacific Northwest need
relief now.
And I call upon Congress today to pass the Spotted Owl
Preservation Plan -- Senator Gorton's bill -- because we must
preserve the owl; we must preserve the livelihood of the Pacific
Northwest; and we must preserve the jobs of the American people.
Finally, I am today directing the Secretary of Commerce to
increase the Federal ban on the export of raw logs from
Washington State lands from 75 percent to 100 percent. It is
time to make sure that mills in Washington have an opportunity to
process timber grown on their state lands.
Now, my opponents would have you believe that they, too are
in favor of balance. They won't commit to any specific action to
9
solve the problem. Their idea of balance is doublespeak --
promise both sides exactly what they want to hear.
When Bill Clinton spoke on Earth Day back in Pennsylvania,
he earned the praise of the Sierra Club for "promising the
protection of Old Growth forests in the Pacific Northwest." He
wanted their endorsement, and he got it.
Now, just recently, with the election nearing, he has come
to Oregon to hold out false hope to timber families by promising
a meeting. Classic doublespeak. But we. should face one fact.
This problem isn't going to be solved with one meeting. We've
had enough meetings, it's time for action.
Bill Clinton says that he'll have his meeting within 100
days. Well, we've been meeting for two years. What's needed is
a change in law. I will fight for it. Bill Clinton will not.
Now I know that the Governor of Arkansas is famous for being
on both sides of every issue. But I hope you'll ask him -- for
once -- to stop the rhetoric and take a stand. Families are in
the Northwest are at risk. So this is one issue where sincerity
would be better than slickness.
The plain truth is that the other ticket is on the record on
this problem, and here is what they have said.
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and I quote: "I helped
lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections for the spotted owl." The reasoning offered was
simple. The Senator said: "The jobs will be lost anyway. The
10
only question is whether the effort to create new jobs will begin
now or later."
Senator Gore and Governor Clinton don't realize that
generation after generation of families -- families like the
Vaagen brothers -- have made a living for their family, for their
neighbors, and for their community -- not by locking these
forests up, but by managing them wisely. By restoring what they
take, so that the land can sustain the next generation and the
one after that. After all, it's no mistake that America today is
home to more forest land than it was when Teddy Roosevelt was
President.
The other side doesn't understand that leading the fight
against any change in the tangled web of conflicting laws means
leading the fight against your job and your family and your
community and your way of life.
Or maybe they do understand. But I ask you only to do this:
let them know that you understand, too. And do not be fooled by
this doublespeak.
It's time we worried not only about endangered species --
but about endangered jobs.
You know, the father of our national forest system, and one
of America's great conservationists, Gifford Pinchot, once
defined conservation this way: "Conservation means the wise use
of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men."
I have come here today to tell you that I am the candidate
who will worry about jobs, families, and communities.
11
I have come here today to tell you that I will not stand for
a solution that puts 30,000 people out of work. That is a non-
solution. And on my watch, it will not stand.
I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten about
the human factor -- because in the end, that's the most important
factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United
States of America.
#
#
#
#
Should include quite from Packwood- leader of endanger frees uses
Someof the best Stuards of our lands
349775
Document No.
arether people who work woods." in the
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE: 9/11/92
A.S.A.P.
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: BURRILL LUMBER COMPANY, MEDFORD OREGON
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1992
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCBRIDE
BAKER
MOORE
SCOWCROFT
MULLINS
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BATES
PORTER
BRADY
PROVOST
BROMLEY
ROSS
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
TUTWILER
FITZWATER
ZOELLICK
GRAY
MCGROARTY
HOLIDAY
KAUFMAN
HORNER
GROOMES
BOSKIN
DELAND
REMARKS:
Please forward comments directly to Dan McGroarty, Rm. 122, x2930, A.S.A.P.,
with a copy to this office.
Also, these remarks are similar to the ones staffed for the Colville, WA
event. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
Comments at top of
PHILLIP D. BRADY
page
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
9/11/92
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BURRILL LUMBER COMPANY
MEDFORD, OREGON
Monday, September 14, 1992
Thank you, Senator Bob Packwood, for that introduction. And
thanks to all of you for letting me visit with you today. Being
out here in the great Pacific Northwest, I cannot help but think
of Teddy Roosevelt.
He was the first President to really focus the attention of
the Nation on the condition of our natural resources and the need
to manage these treasures for the benefit of future generations.
He said: "Neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing
with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future." And
he was right.
But Teddy Roosevelt said something else: "In the West," he
said, "the forests should be so handled as to be in the interests
of the actual home-maker. He should be encouraged to use them at
once, but in such a way as to preserve and not exhaust them."
For the past four years, my Administration had devoted a
great deal of thought and effort to protecting our environment.
Like many of you, I love the outdoors and love to hunt and fish,
And like you, I have learned through a lifetime of experience to
appreciate and respect the beauty of the wilderness.
I know that you -- you who have chosen to live in these
woods -- respect and revere these forests as others cannot. And
you resent the implication that earning your livelihood here --
with sound management of the forest -- makes you less of an
2
environmentalist than the city dweller or the suburbanite. I
have come here today because I understand.
For the last four years, we have worked to protect the
environment -- and we have accomplished a great deal.
Four years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act.
For 13 years, the Congress was stuck in gridlock and had passed
no clean air law. But we proposed a new one, we negotiated it
through a divided Congress, and I proudly signed it into law.
That law will cut acid rain in half, reduce smog in our cities,
and get toxic pollutants out of the air.
Four years ago, I promised that I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas of our coasts from offshore
drilling. And today, there will be no drilling off the coast of
California, off the coasts of Washington and Oregon not far from
here, off the Florida Keys, off the New England coast, because we
have placed those areas under a moratorium until the year 2000.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we have added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors, we are reopening and
upgrading campsites all across America, and we have added over a
million and half acres to our National Parks and Wildlife Refuges
and Forests and recreation lands.
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists.
That is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. But
Americans today, like Teddy Roosevelt three quarters of a century
3
ago, realize that the protection of our lands is not inconsistent
with their use. They care about the growth of our country, and
about the ability of Americans to make a living. They
understand, that stewardship does not mean stopping all progress.
As Teddy Roosevelt said: "wise protection of resources does
not mean the withdrawal of those resources from contributing
their full share to the welfare of the people."
What President Roosevelt had in mind, and what the American
people have always wanted, is balance. But in these ancient
forests, the balance has been lost.
Not far from here, in the state of Washington, is a timber
town called Forks. Forks supported a mill, and the mill
supported the town. And the town gave life to a community.
Today, unemployment in Forks is at 20 percent -- more than double
what it was just two years ago. The car dealership has closed.
The clothing store is gone. The movie theatre -- shut down.
Domestic violence complaints have doubled, just in the last year.
The community has been ravaged.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance has
been lost.
My friends, I have come here because we must restore the
balance.
I want to quote you something from Oregon's own Senator Mark
Hatfield, who has served in the Senate long enough to remember
the creation of the Endangered Species Act. Not long ago, he
wrote: "There is no question that the Act is being applied in
4
manner far beyond what any of us envisioned when we wrote it
twenty years ago."
The application of the Endangered Species Act to these
forests has gone far beyond what the drafters intended. The
balance has been lost.
The fact is that the Endangered Species Act was intended as
a shield for species against the effects of major Federal
projects like highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs,
families, and communities of the Northwest.
But today, when all harvesting on Federal timberland is
stopped outright by 11 different lawsuits, the balance has been
lost. It's time factor in the worries about jobs, families and
communities.
When hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
timber workers thrown out of work, and revenues to communities
for schools and other local services slashed as a result, the
balance has been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families,
and communities.
Today, when interest groups can tie our Federal agencies up
in knots by suing them under five different statutes enacted by
Congress -- each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has
been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families, and
communities.
Today, when a class project at Wesleyan University in
Connecticut is to come up with lawsuits to stop people from
earning a living in the Northwest -- when students can play games
5
with people's lives -- the balance has been lost. It's time to
worry about jobs families and communities.
I have come to this great Pacific Northwest, to these
beautiful and productive forests, to join you in saying: we must
restore the balance. We must worry about jobs, families and
communities. Enough is enough.
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered Species
Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because after all, people and their jobs deserve some
protection too.
Let me be clear: I care about protecting the environment.
The basic purpose of the Endangered Species Act is a good and
noble one: to save the species of this country.
But today, the Act is being used, particularly here in
Washington and Oregon, to achieve in the courts what can't be
achieved through legislation or adminsitrative procedure -- the
complete lock-up of the most productive forests in the entire
United States.
The Endangered Species Act, in its current form as
interpreted by some courts and as driven by the Democrats in
Congress, has forced a radical approach and created an
unnecessarily tragic situation here in the Northwest. Massive
and unnecessarily large areas of Federal land are being set aside
for the owl. And jobs, families and communities are being wiped
out in the process.
6
You know, the other side has been talking lately about a
"false choice." They claim that this timber crisis is just
politics. The simple fact is this: the false choice is being
driven by the Endangered Species Act and its application to the
Northern Spotted Owl. It is being driven by those in Congress
who have permitted this crisis to go unresolved.
The simple fact is that when it comes to the Owl, the Act is
too rigid -- and Congress is too timid.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
within the paramaters of the law to address this problem -- but I
can tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed.
We have asked Congress for funds to cut enough timber in
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting laws
allow challenge after challenge.
I endorsed and signed into law a provision which would ban
the export of raw logs taken from Federal land. This will mean
more work in Oregon's mills.
This year, we asked Congress to make a choice. We showed
them the Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, as required by the Endangered
Species Act -- a plan that would cost this region 30,000 jobs.
And, because that plan imposes too great a cost on the families
and communities of the Pacific Northwest, we asked them to
consider instead an alternative: a preservation plan that would
cut that job loss in half.
We sent Congress a bill that would help save 15,000 jobs.
And Congress has failed to act. So while the gridlock Congress
7
stalls, no timber is being cut -- and your jobs are disappearing
alot faster than the owl.
I spoke before about balance.
It is not balance when mills that have operated responsibly
for generations are threatened with extinction because of a lack
of fiber from our public lands.
It is not balance when the Act prevents the mere
consideration, at key points in the process, of costs that
directly affect people and their livelihood -- of the human
factor.
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people
first" -- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, it's time to face one fact: the situation is out of
control -- and it must be addressed
because the balance must be
restored.
So let me say this:
I will not sign an extension of the Endangered Species Act
that does not allow economics to be considered [in the listing
process], and that is not accompanied buy a specific plan to
harvest enough timber to keep timber families working in 1993 and
beyond. It's time to make people just as important as owls.
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to cut 2.6 billion
board feet in the Forest Service Pacific Northwest region next
year -- and at least 500 million board feet on BLM land. And I
ask Congress to tie that plan to language which makes sure that a
8
reasonable cut that provides protection for species cannot be
blocked on procedural grounds. It's time to put people ahead of
process.
My Administration has recently announced several steps to
speed up the harvesting of dead or dying timber. We will shortly
issue a rule to allow these timber salvage operations to occur
without triggering some of the restrictive and time-consuming
laws that are disrupting the balance today.
This will help in two ways: by reducing the risk of fire
from the large volume of dead or dying trees on our forest floor;
and by providing up to 450 million board feet of timber for the
mills in the near term. It's time to protect jobs and put people
back to work.
I will fight for legislative language to end the injunctions
that have put an economic strangle-hold on hte Northwest, in
order to free up the timber that we need today -- because the
families and the timber communities of the Pacific Northwest need
relief now.
And I call upon Congress today to pass the Spotted Owl
Preservation Plan -- Senator Slade Gorton's bill -- because we
must preserve the owl; we must preserve the livelihood of the
Pacific Northwest; and we must preserve the jobs of the American
people.
Now, my opponents would have you believe that they, too are
in favor of balance. They won't commit to any specific action to
9
solve the problem. Their idea of balance is doublespeak --
promise both sides exactly what they want to hear.
When Bill Clinton spoke on Earth Day back in Pennsylvania,
he earned the praise of the Sierra Club for "promising the
protection of Old Growth forests in the Pacific Northwest." He
wanted their endorsement, and he got it.
Now, just recently, with the election nearing, he has come
to Oregon to hold out false hope to timber families by promising
a meeting. Classic doublespeak. But we should face one fact.
This problem isn't going to be solved with one meeting. We've
had enough meetings, it's time for action.
Bill Clinton says that he'll have his meeting within 100
days. Well, we've been meeting for two years. What's needed is
a change in law. I will fight for it. Bill Clinton will not.
Now I know that the Governor of Arkansas is famous for being
on both sides of every issue. But I hope you'll ask him -- for
once -- to stop the rhetoric and take a stand. Families are in
the Northwest are at risk. So this is one issue where sincerity
would be better than slickness.
The plain truth is that the other ticket is on the record on
this problem, and here is what they have said.
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and I quote: "I helped
lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections for the spotted owl." The reasoning offered was
simple. The Senator said: "The jobs will be lost anyway. The
10
only question is whether the effort to create new jobs will begin
now or later."
Senator Gore and Governor Clinton don't realize that
generation after generation of families -- families like Mike
Burrill's -- have made a living for their family, for their
neighbors, and for their community -- not by locking these
forests up, but by managing them wisely. By restoring what they
take, so that the land can sustain the next generation and the
one after that. After all, it's no mistake that America today is
home to more forest land than it was when Teddy Roosevelt was
President.
The other side doesn't understand that leading the fight
against any change in the tangled web of conflicting laws means
leading the fight against your job and your family and your
community and your way of life.
or maybe they do understand. But I ask you only to do this:
let them know that you understand, too. And do not be fooled by
this doublespeak.
It's time we worried not only about endangered species --
but about endangered jobs.
You know, the father of our national forest system, and one
of America's great conservationists, Gifford Pinchot, once
defined conservation this way: "Conservation means the wise use
of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men."
I have come here today to tell you that I am the candidate
who will worry about jobs, families, and communities.
11
I have come here today to tell you that I will not stand for
a solution that puts 30,000 people out of work. That is a non-
solution. And on my watch, it will not stand.
I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten about
the human factor -- because in the end, that's the most important
factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United
States of America.
#
#
#
#
OK ml changes. Ae
Document No. 349720ss
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
9/11/92
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: SAT. 9/12/92 10:00 a.m.
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
SUBJECT:
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON MONDAY, 9/14/92
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCBRIDE
BAKER
MOORE
SCOWCROFT
MULLINS
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BATES
PORTER
BRADY
PROVOST
BROMLEY
ROSS
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
TUTWILER
FITZWATER
ZOELLICK
GRAY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
MCGROARTY
HORNER
DELAND
GROOMES
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Dan McGroarty, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 10:00 a.m., SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, with a copy to this
office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
9/11/92
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
2 SEP II P3:14
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON
Monday, September 14, 1992
Thank you, Dwayne Vaagan, for that introduction. And thanks
to all of you for letting me visit with you today. Being out
here in the great Pacific Northwest, I cannot help but think of
Teddy Roosevelt.
He was the first President to really focus the attention of
the Nation on the condition of our natural resources and the need
to manage these treasures for the benefit of future generations.
He said: "Neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing
with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future."
And
he was right.
But Teddy Roosevelt said something else: "In the West," he
said, "the forests should be so handled as to be in the interests
of the actual home-maker. 16 He should be encouraged to use them at
once, but in such a way as to preserve and not exhaust them."
For the past four years, my Administration had devoted a
great deal of thought and effort to protecting our environment.
Like many of you, I love the outdoors and love to hunt and fish,
And like you, I have learned through a lifetime of experience to
appreciate and respect the beauty of the wilderness.
I know that you -- you who have chosen to live in these
woods -- respect and revere these forests as others cannot. And
you resent the implication that earning your livelihood here --
with sound management of the forest -- makes you less of an
2
environmentalist than the city dweller or the suburbanite. I
have come here today because I understand.
For the last four years, we have worked to protect the
environment -- and we have accomplished a great deal.
Four years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act.
For 13 years, the Congress was stuck in gridlock and had passed
no clean air law. But we proposed a new one, we negotiated it
through a divided Congress, and I proudly signed it into law.
That law will cut acid rain in half, reduce smog in our cities,
and get toxic pollutants out of the air.
Four years ago, I promised that I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas of our coasts from offshore
drilling. Today, there will be no drilling off the coast of
California, off the coasts of Washington and Oregon not far from
here, off the Florida Keys, off the New England coast, because we
have placed those areas under a moratorium until the next
century.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we have added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors, we are reopening and
upgrading campsites all across America, and we have added over a
million and half acres to our National Parks and Wildlife Refuges
and Forests and recreation lands.
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists.
That is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. But
3
Americans today, like Teddy Roosevelt three quarters of a century
ago, realize that the protection of our lands is not inconsistent
with their use. They care about the growth of our country, and
about the ability of Americans to make a living. They
understand, that stewardship does not mean stopping all progress.
As Teddy Roosevelt said: "wise protection of resources does
not mean the withdrawal of those resources from contributing
their full share to the welfare of the people."
What President Roosevelt had in mind, and what the American
people have always wanted, is balance. But in these ancient
forests, the balance has been lost.
Not far from here is a timber town called Forks. Like
Corville, Forks supported a mill, and the mill supported the
town. And the town gave life to a community. Today,
unemployment in Forks is at 20 percent -- more than double what
it was just two years ago. The car dealership has closed. The
clothing store is gone. The movie theatre -- shut down.
Domestic violence complaints have doubled, just in the last year.
The community has been ravaged.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance has
been lost.
My friends, I have come here because we must restore the
balance.
I want to quote you something from Oregon's Senator Mark
Hatfield, who has served in the Senate long enough to remember
the creation of the Endangered Species Act. Not long ago, he
4
wrote: "There is no question that the Act is being applied in
manner far beyond what any of us envisioned when we wrote it
twenty years ago."
The application of the Endangered Species Act to these
forests has gone far beyond what the drafters intended. The
balance has been lost.
The fact is that the Endangered Species Act was intended as
a shield for species against the effects of major Federal
projects like highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs,
families, and communities of the Northwest.
But today, when all harvesting on Federal timberland is
stopped outright by 11 different lawsuits, the balance has been
lost. It's time factor in the worries about jobs, families and
communities.
When hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
timber workers thrown out of work, and revenues to communities
for schools and other local services slashed as a result, the
balance has been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families,
and communities.
Today, when interest groups can tie our Federal agencies up
in knots by suing them under five different statutes enacted by
Congress -- each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has
been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families, and
communities.
stet.
Today when a class project at Wesleyan University in
Connecticut is to come up with lawsuits to stop people from
5
earning a living in the Northwest -- when students can play games
with people's lives -- the balance has been lost. It's time to
worry about jobs families and communities.
I have come to this great Pacific Northwest, to these
beautiful and productive forests, to join you in saying: we must
restore the balance. We must worry about jobs, families and
communities. Enough is enough
Prop. This vill sound
veryshr.71.
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered Species
Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because after all, people and their jobs deserve some
protection too.
Let me be clear: I care about protecting the environment.
The basic purpose of the Endangered Species Act is a good and
noble one: to save the species of this country.
But today, the Act is being used, particularly here in
Washington and Oregon, to achieve in the courts what can't be
achieved through legislation or adminsitrative procedure -- the
complete lock-up of the most productive forests in the entire
United States.
The Endangered Species Act, in its current form as regidly
interpreted by some courts and as driven by the Democrats in
Congress, has forced a radical approach and created an
unnecessarily tragic situation here in the Northwest. Massive
and unnecessarily large areas of Federal land are being set aside
for the owl. And jobs, families and communities are being wiped
out in the process.
6
You know, the other side has been talking lately about a
"false choice." They claim that this timber crisis is just
politics. The simple fact is this: the false choice is being
driven by the Endangered Species Act and its application to the
Northern Spotted Owl. It is being driven by those in Congress
who have permitted this crisis to go unresolved.
The simple fact is that when it comes to the Owl, the Act is
too rigid -- and Congress is too timid.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
within the paramaters of the law to address this problem -- but I
can tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed.
We have asked Congress for funds to cut enough timber in
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting laws
allow challenge after challenge.
So this year, we asked Congress to make a choice. We showed
them the Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, as required by the Endangered
Species Act -- a plan that would cost this region 30,000 jobs.
And, because that plan imposes too great a cost on the families
and communities of the Pacific Northwest, we asked them to
consider instead an alternative: a preservation plan that would
cut that job loss in half.
We sent Congress a bill that would help save 15,000 jobs.
And Congress has failed to act. So while the gridlock Congress
stalls, no timber is being cut -- and your jobs are disappearing
alot faster than the owl.
I spoke before about balance.
7
It is not balance when mills that have operated responsibly
for generations are threatened with extinction because of a lack
of fiber from our public lands.
It is not balance when the Act prevents the mere
consideration, at key points in the process, of costs that
directly affect people and their livelihood -- of the human
factor.
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people
first" -- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, it's time to face one fact: the situation is out of
control -- and it must be addressed because the balance must be
restored.
So let me say this:
I will not sign an extension of the Endangered Species Act
that does not allow economics to be considered, and that is not
accompanied buy a specific plan to harvest enough timber to keep
timber families working in 1993 and beyond. It's time to make
people just as important as owls.
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to cut 2.6 billion
board feet in the Forest Service Pacific Northwest region next
year -- and to tie that plan to language which makes sure that a
reasonable cut that provides protection for species cannot be
blocked on procedural grounds. It's time to put people ahead of
process.
8
My administration has recently announced several steps to
speed up the harvesting of dead or dying timber. We will shortly
issue a rule to allow these timber salvage operations to occur
without triggering some of the restrictive and time-consuming
laws that are disrupting the balance today.
This will help in two ways: by reducing the risk of fire
from the large volume of dead or dying trees on our forest floor;
and by providing up to 450 million board feedt of timber for the
mills in the near term. It's time to protect jobs and put people
back to work.
I will fight for legislative language to end the injunctions
that have put an economic strangle-hold on the hte Northwest, in
order to free up the timber that we need today -- because the
families and the timber communities of the Pacific Northwest need
relief now.
And I call upon Congress today to pass the Spotted Owl
Preservation Plan -- Senator Gorton's bill -- because we must
preserve the owl; we must preserve the livelihood of the Pacific
Northwest; and we must preserve the jobs of the American people.
Finally, I am today directing the Secretary of Commerce to
In/zaket
increase the Federal ban on the export of raw logs from
Washington State lands from 75 percent to 100 percent. It is
time to make sure that mills in Washington have an opportunity to
process timber grown on their state lands.
Now, my opponents would have you believe that they, too are
in favor of balance. They won't commit to any specific action to
He's try ing to punt this
Issue doun the vond to
have his cake and entit,
too, 9 until election day.
solve the problem. Their idea of balance is doublespeak --
promise both sides exactly what they want to hear.
When Bill Clinton spoke on Earth Day back in Pennsylvania,
he earned the praise of the Sierra Club for "promising the
protection of Old Growth forests in the Pacific Northwest." He
wanted their endorsement, and he got it.
Now, just recently, with the election nearing, he has come
to Oregon to hold out false hope to timber families by promising
stat.
a meeting. Classic deublespeak But we should face one fact.
This problem isn't going to be solved with one meeting. We've
had enough meetings, it's time for action.
Bill Clinton says that he'll have his meeting within 100
days. Well, we've been meeting for two years What's needed is
a change in law. I will fight for it. Bill Clinton will not.
Now I know that the Governor of Arkansas is famous for being
on both sides of every issue. But I hope you'll ask him -- for
once -- to stop the rhetoric and take a stand. Families are in
the Northwest are at risk. So this is one issue where sincerity
would be better than slickness.
The plain truth is that the other ticket is on the record on
this problem, and here is what they have said.
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and I quote: "I helped
lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections for the spotted owl." The reasoning offered was
simple. The Senator said: "The jobs will be lost anyway. The
10
only question is whether the effort to create new jobs will begin
now or later."
Senator Gore and Governor Clinton don't realize that
generation after generation of families -- families like the
Vaagen brothers -- have made a living for their family, for their
neighbors, and for their community -- not by locking these
forests up, but by managing them wisely. By restoring what they
take, so that the land can sustain the next generation and the
one after that. After all, it's no mistake that America today is
home to more forest land than it was when Teddy Roosevelt was
President.
The other side doesn't understand that leading the fight
against any change in the tangled web of conflicting laws means
leading the fight against your job and your family and your
community and your way of life.
Or maybe they do understand. But I ask you only to do this:
let them know that you understand, too. And do not be fooled by
this doublespeak.
It's time we worried not only about endangered species --
but about endangered jobs.
You know, the father of our national forest system, and one
of America's great conservationists, Gifford Pinchot, once
defined conservation this way: "Conservation means the wise use
of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men. "
I have come here today to tell you that I am the candidate
who will worry about jobs, families, and communities.
11
I have come here today to tell you that I will not stand for
a solution that puts 30,000 people out of work. That is a non-
solution. And on my watch, it will not stand.
I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten about
the human factor -- because in the end, that's the most important
factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United
States of America.
#
#
#
#
BUDGET CRUND CENTER
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20503
9-11-92
NOTICE:
Enclosed are comments from staff members of the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) Such comments do not necessarily
represent the official position of the Director of OMB or of the
Office of Management and Budget. If you wish to have the
Director's personal comments, please let me know -- and contact
me if you have any questions.
James C. Murr
Associate Director for
Legislative Reference
and Administration
Document No. 349720ss
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
9/11/92
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: SAT. 9/12/92 10:00 a.m.
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
SUBJECT:
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON - MONDAY, 9/14/92
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCBRIDE
BAKER
MOORE
SCOWCROFT
MULLINS
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BATES
PORTER
BRADY
PROVOST
BROMLEY
ROSS
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
TUTWILER
FITZWATER
ZOELLICK
GRAY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
MCGROARTY
HORNER
DELAND
GROOMES
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Dan McGroarty, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 10:00 a.m., SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, with a copy to this
office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
See comments
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
(R. Crady may respond time at a data)
Ext. 2702
9/11/92
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
2 SEP I1 P3:14
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON
Monday, September 14, 1992
Thank you, Dwayne Vaagan, for that introduction. And thanks
to all of you for letting me visit with you today. Being out
here in the great Pacific Northwest, I cannot help but think of
Teddy Roosevelt.
He was the first President to really focus the attention of
the Nation on the condition of our natural resources and the need
to manage these treasures for the benefit of future generations.
He said: "Neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in- dealing
with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future." And
he was right.
But Teddy Roosevelt said something else: "In the West," " he
said, "the forests should be so handled as to be in the interests
of the actual home-maker. He should be encouraged to use them at
once, but in such a way as to preserve and not exhaust them."
For the past four years, my Administration had devoted a
great deal of thought and effort to protecting our environment.
Like many of you, I love the outdoors and love to hunt and fish,
And like you, I have learned through a lifetime of experience to
appreciate and respect the beauty of the wilderness.
I know that you -- you who have chosen to live in these
woods -- respect and revere these forests as others cannot. And
you resent the implication that earning your livelihood here --
with sound management of the forest -- makes you less of an
2
environmentalist than the city dweller or the suburbanite. I
have come here today because I understand.
For the last four years, we have worked to protect the
environment -- and we have accomplished a great deal.
Four years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act.
For 13 years, the Congress was stuck in gridlock and had passed
no clean air law. But we proposed a new one, we negotiated it
through a divided Congress, and I proudly signed it into law.
That law will cut acid rain in half, reduce smog in our cities,
and get toxic pollutants out of the air.
Four years ago, I promised that I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas of our coasts from offshore
drilling. And today, there will be no drilling off the coast of
California, off the coasts of Washington and Oregon not far from
here, off the Florida Keys, off the New England coast, because we
have placed those areas under a moratorium until the next
century.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we have added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors, we are reopening and
3804
upgrading campsites all across America, and we have added
Moun
million and half acres to our National Parks and Wildlife Refuges
and Forests and recreation lands.
(8ilman)
5178
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists.
That is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. But
3
Americans today, like Teddy Roosevelt three quarters of a century
ago, realize that the protection of our lands is not inconsistent
with their use. They care about the growth of our country, and
about the ability of Americans to make a living. They
understand, that stewardship does not mean stopping all progress.
As Teddy Roosevelt said: "wise protection of resources does
not mean the withdrawal of those resources from contributing
their full share to the welfare of the people."
What President Roosevelt had in mind, and what the American
people have always wanted, is balance. But in these ancient
forests, the balance has been lost.
Not far from here is a timber town called Forks. Like
Corville, Forks supported a mill, and the mill supported the
town. And the town gave life to a community. Today,
unemployment in Forks is at 20 percent -- more than double what
it was just two years ago. The car dealership has closed. The
clothing store is gone. The movie theatre -- shut down.
Domestic violence complaints have doubled, just in the last year.
The community has been ravaged.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance has
been lost.
My friends, I have come here because we must restore the
balance.
I want to quote you something from Oregon's Senator Mark
Hatfield, who has served in the Senate long enough to remember
the creation of the Endangered Species Act. Not long ago, he
4
wrote: "There is no question that the Act is being applied in
manner far beyond what any of us envisioned when we wrote it
twenty years ago."
The application of the Endangered Species Act to these
forests has gone far beyond what the drafters intended. The
balance has been lost.
The fact is that the Endangered Species Act was intended as
a shield for species against the effects of major Federal
projects like highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs,
families, and communities of the Northwest.
But today, when all harvesting on Federal timberland is
stopped outright by 11 different lawsuits, the balance has been
to
lost. It's time factor in the worries about jobs, families and
communities.
When hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
timber workers thrown out of work, and revenues to communities
for schools and other local services slashed as a result, the
balance has been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families,
and communities.
Today, when interest groups can tie our Federal agencies up
in knots by suing them under five different statutes enacted by
Congress -- each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has
been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families, and
communities.
Today, when a class project at Wesleyan University in
Connecticut is to come up with lawsuits to stop people from
5
earning a living in the Northwest -- when students can play games
with people's lives -- the balance has been lost. It's time to
worry about jobs families and communities.
I have come to this great Pacific Northwest, to these
beautiful and productive forests, to join you in saying: we must
restore the balance. We must worry about jobs, families and
communities. Enough is enough.
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered Species
Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because after all, people and their jobs deserve some
protection too.
Let me be clear: I care about protecting the environment.
The basic purpose of the Endangered Species Act is a good and
noble one: to save the species of this country.
But today, the Act is being used, particularly here in
Washington and Oregon, to achieve in the courts what can't be
achieved through legislation or adminsitrative procedure -- the
complete lock-up of the most productive forests in the entire
United States.
The Endangered Species Act, in its current form as
interpreted by some courts and as driven by the Democrats in
Congress, has forced a radical approach and created an
unnecessarily tragic situation here in the Northwest. Massive
and unnecessarily large areas of Federal land are being set aside
for the owl. And jobs, families and communities are being wiped
out in the process.
6
You know, the other side has been talking lately about a
"false choice." They claim that this timber crisis is just
politics. The simple fact is this: the false choice is being
driven by the Endangered Species Act and its application to the
Northern Spotted Owl. It is being driven by those in Congress
who have permitted this crisis to go unresolved.
The simple fact is that when it comes to the Owl, the Act is
too rigid -- and Congress is too timid.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
within the paramaters of the law to address this problem -- but I
can tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed.
We have asked Congress for funds to cut enough timber in
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting laws
allow challenge after challenge.
So this year, we asked Congress to make a choice. We showed
them the Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, as required by the Endangered
32,000
Species Act -- a plan that would cost this region 30,000 jobs.
C'lman
And, because that plan imposes too great a cost on the families
5178
and communities of the Pacific Northwest, we asked them to
consider instead an alternative: a preservation plan that would
Jobs
cut that job loss in half.
Recovery Plan -32,ou
17,000
Preservation plan-is,ou
We sent Congress a bill that would help save 15,000 jobs.
Dr17K
And Congress has failed to act. So while the gridlock Congress
stalls, no timber is being cut -- and your jobs are disappearing
alot faster than the owl.
I spoke before about balance.
6
7
It is not balance when mills that have operated responsibly
for generations are threatened with extinction because of a lack
of fiber from our public lands.
It is not balance when the Act prevents the mere
consideration, at key points in the process, of costs that
directly affect people and their livelihood -- of the human
factor.
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people
first" -- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, it's time to face one fact: the situation is out of
control -- and it must be addressed
because the balance must be
restored.
So let me say this:
I will not sign an extension of the Endangered Species Act
that does not allow economics to be considered, and that is not
accompanied buy a specific plan to harvest enough timber to keep
timber families working in 1993 and beyond. It's time to make
people just as important as owls.
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to cut 2.6 billion
board feet in the Forest Service Pacific Northwest region next
year -- and to tie that plan to language which makes sure that a
reasonable cut that provides protection for species cannot be
blocked on procedural grounds. It's time to put people ahead of
process.
8
My administration has recently announced several steps to
speed up the harvesting of dead or dying timber. We will shortly
issue a rule to allow these timber salvage operations to occur
without triggering some of the restrictive and time-consuming
laws that are disrupting the balance today.
This will help in two ways: by reducing the risk of fire
from the large volume of dead or dying trees on our forest floor;
and by providing up to 450 million board feedt of timber for the
mills in the near term. It's time to protect jobs and put people
back to work.
I will fight for legislative language to end the injunctions
that have put an economic strangle-hold on the hte Northwest, in
(monioù)
order to free up the timber that we need today -- because the
families and the timber communities of the Pacific Northwest need
relief now.
And I call upon Congress today to pass the Spotted Owl
Preservation Plan -- Senator Gorton's bill -- because we must
preserve the owl; we must preserve the livelihood of the Pacific
Northwest; and we must preserve the jobs of the American people.
Finally, I am today directing the Secretary of Commerce to
increase the Federal ban on the export of raw logs from
Washington State lands from 75 percent to 100 percent. It is
time to make sure that mills in Washington have an opportunity to
process timber grown on their state lands.
Now, my opponents would have you believe that they, too are
in favor of balance. They won't commit to any specific action to
9
solve the problem. Their idea of balance is doublespeak --
promise both sides exactly what they want to hear.
When Bill Clinton spoke on Earth Day back in Pennsylvania,
he earned the praise of the Sierra Club for "promising the
protection of Old Growth forests in the Pacific Northwest." He
wanted their endorsement, and he got it.
Now, just recently, with the election nearing, he has come
to Oregon to hold out false hope to timber families by promising
a meeting. Classic doublespeak. But we. should face one fact.
This problem isn't going to be solved with one meeting. We've
had enough meetings, it's time for action.
Bill Clinton says that he'll have his meeting within 100
days. Well, we've been meeting for two years. What's needed is
a change in law. I will fight for it. Bill Clinton will not.
Now I know that the Governor of Arkansas is famous for being
on both sides of every issue. But I hope you'll ask him -- for
once -- to stop the rhetoric and take a stand. Families are in
the Northwest are at risk. So this is one issue where sincerity
would be better than slickness.
The plain truth is that the other ticket is on the record on
this problem, and here is what they have said.
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and I quote: "I helped
lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections for the spotted owl." The reasoning offered was
simple. The Senator said: "The jobs will be lost anyway. The
10
only question is whether the effort to create new jobs will begin
now or later."
Senator Gore and Governor Clinton don't realize that
generation after generation of families -- families like the
Vaagen brothers -- have made a living for their family, for their
neighbors, and for their community -- not by locking these
forests up, but by managing them wisely. By restoring what they
take, so that the land can sustain the next generation and the
one after that. After all, it's no mistake that America today is
home to more forest land than it was when Teddy Roosevelt was
President.
The other side doesn't understand that leading the fight
against any change in the tangled web of conflicting laws means
leading the fight against your job and your family and your
community and your way of life.
or maybe they do understand. But I ask you only to do this:
let them know that you understand, too. And do not be fooled by
this doublespeak.
It's time we worried not only about endangered species --
but about endangered jobs.
You know, the father of our national forest system, and one
of America's great conservationists, Gifford Pinchot, once
defined conservation this way: "Conservation means the wise use
of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men."
I have come here today to tell you that I am the candidate
who will worry about jobs, families, and communities.
11
I have come here today to tell you that I will not stand for
a solution that puts 30,000 people out of work. That is a non-
solution. And on my watch, it will not stand.
I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten about
the human factor -- because in the end, that's the most important
factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United
States of America.
#
#
#
#
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
September 11, 1992
MEMORANDUM FOR DAN MCGROARTY
SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT
FOR COMMUNICATION
FROM:
mister
ROBERT T. SWANSON
ASSISTANT COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT
SUBJECT:
Presidential Remarks: Visit to Vaagan Bros.
Lumber Company, Colville, Washington
At your request, Counsel's office has reviewed the above-
referenced matter. We have no legal objection, comments as
indicated on the attached draft.
Attachment
CC: Phillip D. Brady
Document No. 349720ss
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
9/11/92
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: SAT. 9/12/92 10:00 a.m.
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
SUBJECT:
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON - MONDAY, 9/14/92
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCBRIDE
BAKER
MOORE
SCOWCROFT
MULLINS
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BATES
PORTER
BRADY
PROVOST
BROMLEY
ROSS
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
TUTWILER
FITZWATER
ZOELLICK
GRAY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
MCGROARTY
HORNER
DELAND
GROOMES
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Dan McGroarty, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 10:00 a.m., SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, with a copy to this
office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
9/11/92
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
_2 SEP II P3:14
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON
Monday, September 14, 1992
Thank you, Dwayne Vaagan, for that introduction. And thanks
to all of you for letting me visit with you today. Being out
here in the great Pacific Northwest, I cannot help but think of
Teddy Roosevelt.
He was the first President to really focus the attention of
the Nation on the condition of our natural resources and the need
to manage these treasures for the benefit of future generations.
He said: "Neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in- dealing
with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future." " And
he was right.
But Teddy Roosevelt said something else: "In the West," " he
said, "the forests should be so handled as to be in the interests
of the actual home-maker. He should be encouraged to use them at
once, but in such a way as to preserve and not exhaust them."
For the past four years, my Administration had devoted a
great deal of thought and effort to protecting our environment.
Like many of you, I love the outdoors and love to hunt and fish,
And like you, I have learned through a lifetime of experience to
appreciate and respect the beauty of the wilderness.
I know that you -- you who have chosen to live in these
woods -- respect and revere these forests as others cannot. And
you resent the implication that earning your livelihood here --
with sound management of the forest -- makes you less of an
2
environmentalist than the city dweller or the suburbanite. I
have come here today because I understand.
For the last four years, we have worked to protect the
environment -- and we have accomplished a great deal.
Four years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act.
For 13 years, the Congress was stuck in gridlock and had passed
no clean air law. But we proposed a new one, we negotiated it
through a divided Congress, and I proudly signed it into law.
That law will cut acid rain in half, reduce smog in our cities,
and get toxic pollutants out of the air.
Four years ago, I promised that I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas of our coasts from offshore
drilling. And today, there will be no drilling off the coast of
California, off the coasts of Washington and Oregon not far from
here, off the Florida Keys, off the New England coast, because we
have placed those areas under a moratorium until the next
century.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we have added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors, we are reopening and
upgrading campsites all across America, and we have added over a
million and half acres to our National Parks and Wildlife Refuges
and Forests and recreation lands.
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists.
That is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. But
3
Americans today, like Teddy Roosevelt three quarters of a century
ago, realize that the protection of our lands is not inconsistent
with their use. They care about the growth of our country, and
about the ability of Americans to make a living. They
understand, that stewardship does not mean stopping all progress.
As Teddy Roosevelt said: "wise protection of resources does
not mean the withdrawal of those resources from contributing
their full share to the welfare of the people."
What President Roosevelt had in mind, and what the American
people have always wanted, is balance. But in these ancient
forests, the balance has been lost.
Not far from here is a timber town called Forks. Like
Corville, Forks supported a mill, and the mill supported the
town. And the town gave life to a community. Today,
unemployment in Forks is at 20 percent -- more than double what
it was just two years ago. The car dealership has closed. The
clothing store is gone. The movie theatre -- shut down.
Domestic violence complaints have doubled, just in the last year.
The community has been ravaged.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance has
been lost.
My friends, I have come here because we must restore the
balance.
I want to quote you something from Oregon's Senator Mark
Hatfield, who has served in the Senate long enough to remember
the creation of the Endangered Species Act. Not long ago, he
4
wrote: "There is no question that the Act is being applied in
manner far beyond what any of us envisioned when we wrote it
twenty years ago."
The application of the Endangered Species Act to these
forests has gone far beyond what the drafters intended. The
balance has been lost.
The fact is that the Endangered Species Act was intended as
a shield for species against the effects of major Federal
projects like highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs,
families, and communities of the Northwest.
But today, when all harvesting on Federal timberland is
stopped outright by 11 different lawsuits, the balance has been
lost. It's time factor in the worries about jobs, families and
communities.
When hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
timber workers thrown out of work, and revenues to communities
for schools and other local services slashed as a result, the
balance has been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families,
and communities.
Today, when interest groups can tie our Federal agencies up
in knots by suing them under five different statutes enacted by
Congress -- each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has
been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families, and
communities.
Today, when a class project at Wesleyan University in
Connecticut is to come up with lawsuits to stop people from
1
maragement
carter
JACEF Pink
5
earning a living in the Northwest -- when students can play games
with people's lives -- the balance has been lost. It's time to
worry about jobs families and communities.
I have come to this great Pacific Northwest, to these
beautiful and productive forests, to join you in saying: we must
restore the balance. We must worry about jobs, families and
communities. Enough is enough.
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered Species
Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because after all, people and their jobs deserve some
protection too.
Let me be clear: I care about protecting the environment.
The basic purpose of the Endangered Species Act is a good and
noble one: to save the species of this country.
But today, the Act is being used, particularly here in
Washington and Oregon, to achieve in the courts what can't be
achieved through legislation or adminsitrative procedure -- the
complete lock-up of the most productive forests in the entire
United States.
I
The Endangered Species Act, in its current form as
interpreted by some courts and as driven by the Democrats in
Congress, has forced a radical approach and created an
unnecessarily tragic situation here in the Northwest. Massive
and unnecessarily large areas of Federal land are being set aside
for the owl. And jobs, families and communities are being wiped
out in the process.
6
You know, the other side has been talking lately about a
"false choice." They claim that this timber crisis is just
politics. The simple fact is this: the false choice is being
driven by the Endangered Species Act and its application to the
Northern Spotted Owl. It is being driven by those in Congress
who have permitted this crisis to go unresolved.
The simple fact is that when it comes to the Owl, the Act is
too rigid -- and Congress is too timid.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
within the paramaters of the law to address this problem -- but I
can tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed.
We have asked Congress for funds to cut enough timber in
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting laws
allow challenge after challenge.
So this year, we asked Congress to make a choice. We showed
them the Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, as required by the Endangered
Species Act -- a plan that would cost this region 30,000 jobs.
And, because that plan imposes too great a cost on the families
and communities of the Pacific Northwest, we asked them to
consider instead an alternative: a preservation plan that would
cut that job loss in half.
We sent Congress a bill that would help save 15,000 jobs.
And Congress has failed to act. So while the gridlock Congress
stalls, no timber is being cut -- and your jobs are disappearing
alot faster than the owl.
I spoke before about balance.
7
It is not balance when mills that have operated responsibly
for generations are threatened with extinction because of a lack
of fiber from our public lands.
It is not balance when the Act prevents the mere
consideration, at key points in the process, of costs that
directly affect people and their livelihood -- of the human
factor.
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people
first" -- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, it's time to face one fact: the situation is out of
control -- and it must be addressed
because the balance must be
restored.
So let me say this:
I will not sign an extension of the Endangered Species Act
that does not allow economics to be considered, and that is not
accompanied buy a specific plan to harvest enough timber to keep
timber families working in 1993 and beyond. It's time to make
people just as important as owls.
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to cut 2.6 billion
board feet in the Forest Service Pacific Northwest region next
year -- and to tie that plan to language which makes sure that a
reasonable cut that provides protection for species cannot be
blocked on procedural grounds. It's time to put people ahead of
process.
8
My administration has recently announced several steps to
speed up the harvesting of dead or dying timber. We will shortly
issue a rule to allow these timber salvage operations to occur
without triggering some of the restrictive and time-consuming
laws that are disrupting the balance today.
This will help in two ways: by reducing the risk of fire
from the large volume of dead or dying trees on our forest floor;
and by providing up to 450 million board feedt of timber for the
mills in the near term. It's time to protect jobs and put people
back to work.
I will fight for legislative language to end the injunctions
that have put an economic strangle-hold on hte Northwest, in
order to free up the timber that we need today -- because the
families and the timber communities of the Pacific Northwest need
relief now.
And I call upon Congress today to pass the Spotted Owl
Preservation Plan -- Senator Gorton's bill -- because we must
preserve the owl; we must preserve the livelihood of the Pacific
Northwest; and we must preserve the jobs of the American people.
Finally, I am today directing the Secretary of Commerce to
Washington State lands from 75 percent to 100 percent. It is
77
protections
increase the Federal ban on the export of raw logs from
time to make sure that mills in Washington have an opportunity to
process timber grown on their state lands.
Now, my opponents would have you believe that they, too are
in favor of balance. They won't commit to any specific action to
9
solve the problem. Their idea of balance is doublespeak --
promise both sides exactly what they want to hear.
When Bill Clinton spoke on Earth Day back in Pennsylvania,
he earned the praise of the Sierra Club for "promising the
protection of Old Growth forests in the Pacific Northwest." " He
wanted their endorsement, and he got it.
Now, just recently, with the election nearing, he has come
to Oregon to hold out false hope to timber families by promising
a meeting. Classic doublespeak. But we. should face one fact.
This problem isn't going to be solved with one meeting. We've
had enough meetings, it's time for action.
Bill Clinton says that he'll have his meeting within 100
days. Well, we've been meeting for two years. What's needed is
a change in law. I will fight for it. Bill Clinton will not.
Now I know that the Governor of Arkansas is famous for being
on both sides of every issue. But I hope you'll ask him -- for
once -- to stop the rhetoric and take a stand. Families are in
the Northwest are at risk. So this is one issue where sincerity
would be better than slickness.
The plain truth is that the other ticket is on the record on
this problem, and here is what they have said.
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and I quote: "I helped
lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections for the spotted owl." The reasoning offered was
simple. The Senator said: "The jobs will be lost anyway. 11 The
e
10
only question effort to create new jobs will begin
is whether the &
now or later.
" The jobs will be lost anyway !?!
Senator Gore and Governor Clinton don't realize that
generation after generation of families -- families like the
Vaagen brothers -- have made a living for their family, for their
neighbors, and for their community -- not by locking these
forests up, but by managing them wisely. By restoring what they
take, so that the land can sustain the next generation and the
one after that. After all, it's no mistake that America today is
home to more forest land than it was when Teddy Roosevelt was
President.
The other side doesn't understand that leading the fight
against any change in the tangled web of conflicting laws means
leading the fight against your job and your family and your
community and your way of life.
Or maybe they do understand. But I ask you only to do this:
let them know that you understand, too. And do not be fooled by
this doublespeak.
It's time we worried not only about endangered species --
but about endangered jobs.
You know, the father of our national forest system, and one
of America's great conservationists, Gifford Pinchot, once
defined conservation this way: "Conservation means the wise use
of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men."
I have come here today to tell you that I am the candidate
who will worry about jobs, families, and communities.
11
I have come here today to tell you that I will not stand for
a solution that puts 30,000 people out of work. That is a non-
solution. And on my watch, it will not stand.
I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten about
the human factor -- because in the end, that's the most important
factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United
States of America.
#
#
#
#
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
September 11, 1992
MEMORANDUM FOR DAN McGROARTY
FROM:
ROGER B. PORTER
RBP
SUBJECT:
Presidential Remarks: Visit to Vaagan Bros.
Lumber Company
We have reviewed the attached presidential remarks and
have noted a few suggested changes on the draft.
If you have any questions or we can be of further
assistance, please let us know.
CC: Phillip D. Brady
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:36 ;
The White House-
202 456 7739;# 2
Document No. 349720ss
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
9/11/92
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: SAT. 9/12/92 10:00 a.m.
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER
COMPANY
SUBJECT:
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON - MONDAY, 9/14/92
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCBRIDE
BAKER
MOORE
SCOWCROFT
MULLINS
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BATES
PORTER
BRADY
PROVOST
BROMLEY
ROSS
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
TUTWILER
FITZWATER
ZOELLICK
GRAY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
MCGROARTY
HORNER
DELAND
GROOMES
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Dan McGroarty, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 10:00 a.m., SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, with a copy to this
office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:37 ;
The White House->
202 456 7739:# 3
9/11/92
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
2 SEP IT P3:14
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON
Monday, September 14, 1992
Thank you, Dwayne Vaagan, for that introduction. And thanks
to all of you for letting me visit with you today. Being out
here in the great Pacific Northwest, I cannot help but think of
Teddy Roosevelt.
He was the first President to really focus the attention of
the Nation on the condition of our natural resources and the need
to manage these treasures for the benefit of future generations.
He said: "Neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in- dealing
with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future." And
IS
he was right.
But Teddy Roosevelt said something else: "In the West," he
said, "the forests should be so handled as to be in the interests
of the actual home-maker. He should be encouraged to use them at
once, but in such a way as to preserve and not exhaust them."
For the past four years, my Administration had devoted a
great deal of thought and effort to protecting our environment.
Like many of you, I love the outdoors and love to hunt and fish,
And like you, I have learned through a lifetime of experience to
appreciate and respect the beauty of the wilderness.
I know that you -- you who have chosen to live in these
woods -- respect and revere these forests as others cannot. And
you resent the implication that earning your livelihood here --
with sound management of the forest -- makes you less of an
SENT. BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:37
;
The White House-
202 456 7739:# 4
2
environmentalist than the city dweller or the suburbanite. I
have come here today because I understand.
For the last four years, we have worked to protect the
environment -- and we have accomplished a great deal.
Four years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act.
For 13 years, the Congress was stuck in gridlock and had passed
no clean air law. But we proposed a new one, we negotiated it
through a divided Congress, and I proudly signed it into law.
That law will cut acid rain in half, reduce smog in our cities,
and get toxic pollutants out of the air.
Four years ago, I promised that I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas of our coasts from offshore
drilling. And today, there will be no drilling off the coast of
California, off the coasts of Washington and Oregon not far from
here, off the Florida Keys, off the New England coast, because we
have placed those areas under a moratorium until the next
century.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we have added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors, we are reopening and
upgrading campsites all across America, and we have added over a
million and half acres to our National Parks and Wildlife Refuges
and Forests and recreation lands.
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists.
That is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. But
SENT. BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:37
;
The White House-
202 456 7739;# 5
3
Americans today, like Teddy Roosevelt three quarters of a century
ago, realize that the protection of our lands is not inconsistent
with their use. They care about the growth of our country, and
about the ability of Americans to make a living. They
understand, that stewardship does not mean stopping all progress.
As Teddy Roosevelt said: "wise protection of resources does
not mean the withdrawal of those resources from contributing
their full share to the welfare of the people."
What President Roosevelt had in mind, and what the American
people have always wanted, is balance. But in these ancient
forests, the balance has been lost.
Not far from here is a timber town called Forks. Like
Corville, Forks supported a mill, and the mill supported the
town. And the town gave life to a community. Today,
unemployment in Forks is at 20 percent -- more than double what
it was just two years ago. The car dealership has closed. The
clothing store is gone. The movie theatre -- shut down.
Domestic violence complaints have doubled, just in the last year.
The community has been ravaged.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance has
been lost.
My friends, I have come here because we must restore the
balance.
of OREGON
I want to quote you something from Oregon's Senator Mark
Hatfield, who has served in the Senate long enough to remember
the creation of the Endangered Species Act. Not long ago, he
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:38
;
The White House->
202 456 7739:# 6
4
wrote: "There is no question that the Act is being applied in
manner far beyond what any of us envisioned when we wrote it
twenty years ago."
The application of the Endangered Species Act to these
forests has gone far beyond what the drafters intended. The
balance has been lost.
The fact is that the Endangered Species Act was intended as
a shield for species against the effects of major Federal
projects like highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs,
families, and communities of the Northwest.
But today, when all harvesting on Federal timberland is
stopped outright by 11 different lawsuits, the balance has been
lost. It's time factor in the worries about jobs, families and
communities.
When hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
timber workers thrown out of work, and revenues to communities
for schools and other local services slashed as a result, the
balance has been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families,
and communities.
Today, when interest groups can tie our Federal agencies up
in knots by suing them under five different statutes enacted by
Congress -- each inconsistent with the other on the balance has
been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families, and
communities.
Today, when a class project at Wesleyan University in
Connecticut is to come up with lawsuits to stop people from
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 : 15:38 ;
The White House-
202 456 7739;# 7
5
earning a living in the Northwest -- when students can play games
with people's lives -- the balance has been lost. It's time to
worry about jobs families and communities.
I have come to this great Pacific Northwest, to these
beautiful and productive forests, to join you in saying: we must
restore the balance. We must worry about jobs, families and
communities. Enough is enough.
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered Species
Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because after all, people and their jobs deserve some
protection too.
Let me be clear: I care about protecting the environment.
The basic purpose of the Endangered Species Act is a good and
noble one: to save the species of this country.
But today, the Act is being used, particularly here in
Washington and Oregon, to achieve in the courts what can't be
achieved through legislation or adminsitrative procedure -- the
complete lock-up of the most productive forests in the entire
United States.
The Endangered Species Act, in its current form as
interpreted by some courts and as driven by the Democrats in
Congress, has forced a radical approach and created an
unnecessarily tragic situation here in the Northwest. Massive
and unnecessarily large areas of Federal land are being set aside
for the owl. And jobs, families and communities are being wiped
out in the process.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:39
;
The White House->
202 456 7739;# 8
6
You know, the other side has been talking lately about a
"false choice." They claim that this timber crisis is just
politics. The simple fact is this: the false choice is being
driven by the Endangered Species Act and its application to the
Northern Spotted Owl. It is being driven by those in Congress
who have permitted this crisis to go unresolved.
The simple fact is that when it comes to the owl, the Act is
too rigid -- and Congress is too timid.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
AND
within the paramaters of the law to address this problem -- but I
can tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed.
We have asked Congress for funds to cut enough timber in
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting laws
allow challenge after challenge.
so this year, we asked Congress to make a choice. We showed
them the Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, as required by the Endangered
Species Act -- a plan that would cost this region 30,000 jobs.
And, because that plan imposes too great a cost on the families
and communities of the Pacific Northwest, we asked them to
consider instead an alternative: a preservation plan that would
cut that job loss in half.
We sent Congress a bill that would help save 15,000 jobs.
And Congress has failed to act. so while the gridlock Congress
stalls, no timber is being cut -- and your jobs are disappearing
alot faster than the owl.
(#)
I spoke before about balance.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:39 ;
The White House->
202 456 7739:# 9
7
It is not balance when mills that have operated responsibly
for generations are threatened with extinction because of a lack
? TIMBER
of fiber from our public lands.
It is not balance when the Act prevents the mere
consideration, at key points in the process, of costs that
directly affect people and their livelihood -- of the human
factor.
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people
first" -- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, it's time to face one fact: the situation is out of
control -- and it must be addressed because the balance must be
restored.
so let me say this:
I will not sign an extension of the Endangered Species Act
that does not allow economics to be considered, and that is not
accompanied buy a specific plan to harvest enough timber to keep
timber families working in 1993 and beyond. It's time to make
people just as important as owls.
ON FEDERAL LANDS
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to cut 2.6 billion
board feet in the Forest Service Pacific Northwest region next
year -- and to tie that plan to language which makes sure that a
reasonable cut that provides protection for species cannot be
blocked on procedural grounds. It's time to put people ahead of
process.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:40 ;
The White House-
202 456 7739:#10
8
My administration has recently announced several steps to
speed up the harvesting of dead or dying timber. We will shortly
issue a rule to allow these timber salvage operations to occur
without triggering some of the restrictive and time-consuming
laws that are disrupting the balance today.
This will help in two ways: by reducing the risk of fire
from the large volume of dead or dying trees on our forest floor;
and by providing up to 450 million board feedt of timber for the
mills in the near term. It's time to protect jobs and put people
back to work.
I will fight for legislative language to end the injunctions
that have put an economic strangle-hold Northwest, in
order to free up the timber that we need today -- because the
families and the timber communities of the Pacific Northwest need
relief now.
And I call upon Congress today to pass the Spotted Owl
Preservation Plan -- Senator Gorton's bill -- because we must
preserve the owl; we must preserve the livelihood of the Pacific
Northwest; and we must preserve the jobs of the American people.
Finally, I am today directing the Secretary of Commerce to
increase the Federal ban on the export of raw logs from
Washington State lands from 75 percent to 100 percent. It is
time to make sure that mills in Washington have an opportunity to
process timber grown on their state lands.
Now, my opponents would have you believe that they, too are
in favor of balance. They won't commit to any specific action to
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:40
;
The White House->
202 456 7739;#11
9
solve the problem. Their idea of balance is doublespeak --
promise both sides exactly what they want to hear.
When Bill Clinton spoke on Earth Day back in Pennsylvania,
he earned the praise of the Sierra Club for "promising the
protection of old Growth forests in the Pacific Northwest." He
wanted their endorsement, and he got it.
Now, just recently, with the election nearing, he has come
to Oregon to hold out false hope to timber families by promising
a meeting. Classic doublespeak. But we. should face one fact.
This problem isn't going to be solved with one meeting. We've
had enough meetings, it's time for action.
Bill Clinton says that he'll have his meeting within 100
days. Well, we've been meeting for two years. What's needed is
a change in law. I will fight for it. Bill Clinton will not.
Now I know that the Governor of Arkansas is famous for being
on both sides of every issue. But I hope you'll ask him -- for
once -- to stop the rhetoric and take a stand. Families are in
the Northwest are at risk. So this is one issue where sincerity
would be better than slickness.
The plain truth is that the other ticket is on the record on
this problem, and here is what they have said.
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and I quote: "I helped
lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections for the spotted owl." The reasoning offered was
simple. The Senator said: "The jobs will be lost anyway. The
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:41
;
The White House-
202 456 7739:#12
10
only question is whether the effort to create new jobs will begin
now or later."
Senator Gore and Governor Clinton don't realize that
generation after generation of families -- families like the
Vaagen brothers -- have made a living for their family, for their
neighbors, and for their community -- not by locking these
forests up, but by managing them wisely. By restoring what they
take, so that the land can sustain the next generation and the
one after that. After all, it's no mistake that America today is
home to more forest land than it was when Teddy Roosevelt was
President.
The other side doesn't understand that leading the fight
against any change in the tangled web of conflicting laws means
leading the fight against your job and your family and your
community and your way of life.
or maybe they do understand. But I ask you only to do this:
let them know that you understand, too. And do not be fooled by
this doublespeak.
It's time we worried not only about endangered species --
but about endangered jobs.
You know, the father of our national forest system, and one
of America's great conservationists, Gifford Pinchot, once
defined conservation this way: "Conservation means the wise use
of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men." =
I have come here today to tell you that I am the candidate
who will worry about jobs, families, and communities.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:41
;
The White House->
202 456 7739;#13
11
I have come here today to tell you that I will not stand for
a solution that puts 30,000 people out of work. That is a non-
solution. And on my watch, it will not stand.
I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten about
the human factor -- because in the end, that's the most important
factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United
States of America.
#
#
#
#
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:36 ;
The White House-
202 456 7739;# 2
Document No. 349720ss
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
92 SEP 11 P6: 42
DATE:
9/11/92
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: SAT. 9/12/92 10:00 a.m.
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
SUBJECT:
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON - MONDAY, 9/14/92
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCBRIDE
BAKER
MOORE
SCOWCROFT
MULLINS
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BATES
PORTER
BRADY
PROVOST
BROMLEY
ROSS
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
TUTWILER
FITZWATER
ZOELLICK
GRAY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
MCGROARTY
HORNER
DELAND
GROOMES
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Dan McGroarty, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 10:00 a.m., SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, with a copy to this
office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:37 ;
The White House->
202 456 7739;# 3
9/11/92
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
2 SEP 11 P3:14
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON
Monday, September 14, 1992
Thank you, Dwayne Vaagan, for that introduction. And thanks
to all of you for letting me visit with you today. Being out
here in the great Pacific Northwest, I cannot help but think of
Teddy Roosevelt.
He was the first President to really focus the attention of
the Nation on the condition of our natural resources and the need
to manage these treasures for the benefit of future generations.
He said: "Neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in- dealing
with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future." And
he was right.
But Teddy Roosevelt said something else: "In the West," he
said, "the forests should be so handled as to be in the interests
of the actual home-maker. He should be encouraged to use them at
once, but in such a way as to preserve and not exhaust them."
For the past four years, my Administration had devoted a
great deal of thought and effort to protecting our environment.
Like many of you, I love the outdoors and love to hunt and fish,
And like you, I have learned through a lifetime of experience to
appreciate and respect the beauty of the wilderness.
I know that you -- you who have chosen to live in these
woods -- respect and revere these forests as others cannot. And
you resent the implication that earning your livelihood here --
with sound management of the forest -- makes you less of an
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:37 ;
The White House-
202 456 7739:# 4
2
environmentalist than the city dweller or the suburbanite. I
have come here today because I understand.
For the last four years, we have worked to protect the
environment -- and we have accomplished a great deal.
Four years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act.
For 13 years, the Congress was stuck in gridlock and had passed
no clean air law. But we proposed a new one, we negotiated it
through a divided Congress, and I proudly signed it into law.
That law will cut acid rain in half, reduce smog in our cities,
and get toxic pollutants out of the air.
Four years ago, I promised that I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas of our coasts from offshore
drilling. And today, there will be no drilling off the coast of
California, off the coasts of Washington and Oregon not far from
here, off the Florida Keys, off the New England coast, because we
have placed those areas under a moratorium until the next
century.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we have added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors, we are reopening and
upgrading campsites all across America, and we have added over a
million and half acres to our National Parks and Wildlife Refuges
and Forests and recreation lands.
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists.
That is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. But
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:37 ;
The White House-
202 456 7739:# 5
3
Americans today, like Teddy Roosevelt three quarters of a century
ago, realize that the protection of our lands is not inconsistent
with their use. They care about the growth of our country, and
about the ability of Americans to make a living. They
understand, that stewardship does not mean stopping all progress.
As Teddy Roosevelt said: "wise protection of resources does
not mean the withdrawal of those resources from contributing
their full share to the welfare of the people."
What President Roosevelt had in mind, and what the American
people have always wanted, is balance. But in these ancient
forests, the balance has been lost.
Not far from here is a timber town called Forks. Like
Corville, Forks supported a mill, and the mill supported the
town. And the town gave life to a community. Today,
unemployment in Forks is at 20 percent -- more than double what
it was just two years ago. The car dealership has closed. The
clothing store is gone. The movie theatre -- shut down.
Domestic violence complaints have doubled, just in the last year.
The community has been ravaged.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance has
been lost.
My friends, I have come here because we must restore the
balance.
I want to quote you something from Oregon's Senator Mark
Hatfield, who has served in the Senate long enough to remember
the creation of the Endangered Species Act. Not long ago, he
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:38 ;
The White House-
202 456 7739:# 6
4
wrote: "There is no question that the Act is being applied in
manner far beyond what any of us envisioned when we wrote it
great!
twenty years ago."
The application of the Endangered Species Act to these
forests has gone far beyond what the drafters intended. The
balance has been lost.
The fact is that the Endangered Species Act was intended as
a shield for species against the effects of major Federal
projects like highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs,
families, and communities of the Northwest.
But today, when all harvesting on Federal timberland is
stopped outright by 11 different lawsuits, the balance has been
Concerns
lost. It's time factor in the worries about jobs, families and
communities. to
When hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
timber workers thrown out of work, and revenues to communities
for schools and other local services slashed as a result, the
balance has been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families,
and communities.
Today, when interest groups can tie our Federal agencies up
in knots by suing them under five different statutes enacted by
Congress -- each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has
been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families, and
communities.
Today, when a class project at Wesleyan University in
Connecticut is to come up with lawsuits to stop people from
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:38 ;
The White House-
202 456 7739;# 7
5
earning a living in the Northwest -- when students can play games
with people's lives -- the balance has been lost. It's time to
worry about jobs families and communities.
I have come to this great Pacific Northwest, to these
beautiful and productive forests, to join you in saying: we must
restore the balance. We must worry about jobs, families and
3yes
communities. Enough is enough.
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered Species
Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because after all, people and their jobs deserve some
protection too.
Let me be clear: I care about protecting the environment.
The basic purpose of the Endangered Species Act is a .good and
those rare and xhreatened
noble one: to save the species of this country.
=>over
But today, the Act is being used, particularly here in
(through legal acrobatics) ?
Washington and Oregon, to achieve in the courts what can't be
achieved through legislation or adminsitrative procedure -- the
complete lock-up of the most productive forests in the entire
United States.
The Endangered Species Act, in its current form as
some
interpreted by some courts and as driven by the Democrats in
Congress, has forced a radical approach and created an
unnecessarily tragic situation here in the Northwest. Massive
and unnecessarily large areas of Federal land are being set aside
for the owl. And jobs, families and communities are being wiped
out in the process.
The Act was was originally designed
to keep antelope 4 bison from being hunted
to extinction - to keep Ba'd
Eagles and wolves from being senselessly
shot or trapped.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:39 ;
The White House-
202 456 7739:# 8
6
You know, the other side has been talking lately about a
"false choice." They claim that this timber crisis is just
politics. The simple fact is this: the false choice is being
driven by the Endangered Species Act and its application to the
Northern Spotted Owl. It is being driven by those in Congress
who have permitted this crisis to go unresolved.
The simple fact is that when it comes to the Owl, the Act is
too rigid -- and Congress is too timid.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
within the paramaters of the law to address this problem -- but I
can tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed.
We have asked Congress for funds to cut enough timber in
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting laws
allow challenge after challenge.
So this year, we asked Congress to make a choice. We showed
them the Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, as required by the Endangered
Species Act -- a plan that would cost this region 30,000 jobs.
And, because that plan imposes too great a cost on the families
and communities of the Pacific Northwest, we asked them to
consider instead an alternative: a preservation plan that would
cut that job loss in half.
We sent Congress a bill that would help save 15,000 jobs.
And Congress has failed to act. So while the gridlock Congress
stalls, no timber is being cut -- and your jobs are disappearing
alot faster than the any owl.
I spoke before about balance.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:39
;
The White House-
202 456 7739:# 9
7
It is not balance when mills that have operated responsibly
for generations are threatened with extinction because of a lack
of fiber from our public lands.
It is not balance when the Act prevents the mere
consideration, at key points in the process, of costs that
directly affect people and their livelihood -- of the human
factor.
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people
first" -- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, it's time to face one fact: the situation is out of
control -- and it must be addressed because the balance must be
restored.
so let me say this:
I will not sign an extension of the Endangered Species Act
that does not allow economics to be considered, and that is not
accompanied buy a specific plan to harvest enough timber to keep
good
timber families working in 1993 and beyond. It's time to make
people just as important as owls.
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to cut 2.6 billion
board feet in the Forest Service Pacific Northwest region next
year -- and to tie that plan to language which makes sure that a
reasonable cut that provides protection for species cannot be
blocked on procedural grounds. It's time to put people ahead of
process.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:40 ;
The White House-
202 456 7739:#10
8
My administration has recently announced several steps to
speed up the harvesting of dead or dying timber. We will shortly
issue a rule to allow these timber salvage operations to occur
without triggering some of the restrictive and time-consuming
laws that are disrupting the balance today.
This will help in two ways: by reducing the risk of fire
from the large volume of dead or dying trees on our forest floor;
and by providing up to 450 million board feedt of timber for the
mills in the near term. It's time to protect jobs and put people
back to work.
I will fight for legislative language to end the injunctions
that have put an economic strangle-hold on hte Northwest, in
order to free up the timber that we need today -- because the
families and the timber communities of the Pacific Northwest need
relief now.
And I call upon Congress today to pass the Spotted Owl
Preservation Plan -- Senator Gorton's bill -- because we must not just
preserve the owl; we must preserve the livelihood of the Pacific
Northwest; and we must preserve the jobs of the American people.
Finally, I am today directing the Secretary of Commerce to
increase the Federal ban on the export of raw logs from
Washington state lands from 75 percent to 100 percent. It is
time to make sure that mills in Washington have an opportunity to
where are the logs
process timber grown on their state lands. currently going? Foreign?
Now, my opponents would have you believe that they, too are or
90
other
in favor of balance. They won't commit to any specific action to
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:40 ;
The White House-
202 456 7739;#11
9
solve the problem. Their idea of balance is doublespeak --
promise both sides exactly what they want to hear.
When Bill Clinton spoke on Earth Day back in Pennsylvania,
he earned the praise of the Sierra Club for "promising the
protection of Old Growth forests in the Pacific Northwest." He
wanted their endorsement, and he got it.
Now, just recently, with the election nearing, he has come
to Oregon to hold out false hope to timber families by promising
a meeting. Classic doublespeak. But we. should face one fact.
This problem isn't going to be solved with one meeting. We've
had enough meetings, it's time for action.
Bill Clinton says that he'll have his meeting within 100
days. Well, we've been meeting for two years. What's needed is
a change in law. I will fight for it. Bill Clinton will not.
Now I know that the Governor of Arkansas is famous for being
on both sides of every issue. But I hope you'll ask him -- for
once -- to stop the rhetoric and take a stand. Families are in
the Northwest are at risk. So this is one issue where sincerity
is
would be better than slickness.
The plain truth is that the other ticket is on the record on
this problem, and here is what they have said.
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and I quote: "I helped
lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections for the spotted owl." The reasoning offered was
simple. The Senator said: "The jobs will be lost anyway. The
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:41
;
The White House-
202 456 7739;#12
10
only question is whether the effort to create new jobs will begin
now or later."
Senator Gore and Governor Clinton don't realize that
generation after generation of families -- families like the
Vaagen brothers -- have made a living for their family, for their
neighbors, and for their community -- not by locking these
forests up, but by managing them wisely. By restoring what they
take, so that the land can sustain the next generation and the
one after that. After all, it's no mistake that America today is
home to more forest land than it was when Teddy Roosevelt was
President.
The other side doesn't understand that leading the fight
against any change in the tangled web of conflicting laws means
leading the fight against your job and your family and your
community and your way of life.
But I
And
or maybe they do understand. But I ask you only to do this:
let them know that you understand, too. And do not be fooled by
this doublespeak.
It's time we worried not only about endangered species --
} great!
but about endangered jobs.
You know, the father of our national forest system, and one
of America's great conservationists, Gifford Pinchot, once
defined conservation this way: "Conservation means the wise use
of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men."
I have come here today to tell you that I am the candidate
who will worry about jobs, families, and communities.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 9-11-92 ; 15:41
;
The White House-
202 456 7739;#13
11
I have come here today to tell you that I will not stand for
a solution that puts 30,000 people out of work. That is a non-
solution. And on my watch, it will not stand.
I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten about
the human factor -- because in the end, that's the most important
factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United
States of America.
#
#
#
#
Dan McGwanty
David Dale
Document No. 349720ss
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
9/11/92
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: SAT. 9/12/92 10:00 .m3
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
SUBJECT:
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON - MONDAY, 9/14/92
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCBRIDE
BAKER
MOORE
SCOWCROFT
MULLINS
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BATES
PORTER
BRADY
PROVOST
BROMLEY
ROSS
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
TUTWILER
FITZWATER
ZOELLICK
GRAY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
MCGROARTY
HORNER
DELAND
GROOMES
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Dan McGroarty, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 10:00 a.m., SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, with a copy to this
office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
Comments as noted -
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Dule Curtis for MRD
Ext. 2702
337-5125
9/11
395-5750
9/11/92
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
VISIT TO VAAGAN BROS. LUMBER COMPANY
2 SEP 11 P3:14
COLVILLE, WASHINGTON
Monday, September 14, 1992
Thank you, Dwayne Vaagan, for that introduction. And thanks
to all of you for letting me visit with you today. Being out
here in the great Pacific Northwest, I cannot help but think of
Teddy Roosevelt.
He was the first President to really focus the attention of
the Nation on the condition of our natural resources and the need
present ANd
to manage these treasures for the benefit of future generations.
He said: "Noither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing
with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future. #
And
sounds
wattly
he was right
Dut Teddy Roosevelt said something else: "In the West, " he
said, "the forests should be so handled as to be in the interests
of the actual home-maker. He should be encouraged to use them at
once, but in such a way as to preserve and not exhaust them."
For the past four years, my Administration had devoted a
great deal of thought and effort to protecting our environment.
Like many of you, I love the outdoors and love to hunt and fish,
And like you, I have learned through a lifetime of experience to
appreciate and respect the beauty of the wilderness.
I know that you -- you who have chosen to live in these
woods -- respect and revere these forests as others cannot. And
you resent the implication that earning your livelihood here --
with sound management of the forest -- makes you less of an
2
environmentalist than the city dweller or the suburbanite. I
have come here today because I understand.
For the last four years, we have worked to protect the
environment -- and we have accomplished a great deal.
Four years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act.
we always
lead w/ the
For 13 years, the Congress was stuck in gridlock and had passed
CAA - it's a
no clean air law. But we proposed a new one, we negotiated it
yawner now.
through a divided Congress, and I proudly signed it into law.
How about
That law will cut acid rain in half, reduce smog in our cities,
insert
#,
and get toxic pollutants out of the air. ]
over.
Four years ago, I promised that I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas of our coasts from offshore
drilling. And today, there will be no drilling off the coast of
California, off the coasts of Washington and Oregon not far from
here, off the Florida Keys, off the New England coast, because we
have placed those areas under a moratorium until the next
century.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we have added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors, we are reopening and
upgrading campsites all across America, and we have added over a
million and half acres to our National Parks and wildlife Refuges
and Forests and recreation lands.
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists.
That is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. But
A
Four years ago, I promised to make the polluter
pay. The most So much cald be accomplished
if we would just enforce The laws alrecidy on
the books. And we have secured more penalties
and prison terms for pollulers in the last Three
years, than in the previous 18 years combined.
(also responds to yesterday's
Dingell heaving)
3
Americans today, like Teddy Roosevelt three quarters of a century
we CAN
while also using Them for The
ago, realize that the protection our lands is not inconsistent
benefit of The people. They understand The Need FOR wild aReas, and
with their use. They care about the growth of our country, and for schools and offices
Recreation aReas, as well as The Need FOR paper / and timber for
about the ability of Americans to make a living. They
New homes. and all
understand that stewardship does not mean stopping all progress. kinds of
Insert
As Teddy Roosevelt said: "wise protection of resources does products
B
over
not mean the withdrawal of those resources from contributing
their full share to the welfare of the people. ]
What President Roosevelt had in mind, and what the American
people have always wanted, is balance. But in these ancient
forests, the balance has been lost.
Not far from here is a timber town called Forks. Like
Corville, Forks supported a mill, and the mill supported the
town. And the town gave life to a community. Today,
unemployment in Forks is at 20 percent -- more than double what
it was just two years ago. The car dealership has closed. The
clothing store is gone. The movie theatre -- shut down.
Domestic violence complaints have doubled, just in the last year.
The community has been ravaged.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance has
been lost.
My friends, I have come here because we must restore the
balance.
I want to quote you something from oregon's Senator Mark
Hatfield, who has served in the Senate long enough to remember
the creation of the Endangered Species Act. Not long ago, he
B
Just this morning, I visited a place in
southern California where people are demonstrating
that ideal. Private land owners, developers,
conservationists, and local officials are working
together to protect wildlife habitat and ensure make voon for
economic growth in that growth region. By
doing so, They're trying to avoid the kind of
Federal intervention and economic paralysis
that increasingly results from the Endangered
Species Act.
4
wrote: "There is no question that the Act is being applied in
manner far beyond what any of us envisioned when we wrote it
twenty years ago."
The application of the Endangered Species Act to these
forests has gone far beyond what the drafters intended. [The
balance has been lost. 10st.]
and PRI Cupplied ECTS to Private federal
proj projects
The fact is that the Endangered Species Act was intended as
a shield for species against the effects of major Federal CONSTRUCTION
projects like highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs,
eNtiRe Regions lik (
families, and communities of the Northwest.
(NOT true)
But today, when all harvesting on Federal timberland is
stopped outright by 11 different lawsuits, the balance has been
lost. It's time TO factor in the worries about jobs, families and
communities.
When hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
have been
timber workers thrown out of work, and revenues to communities
have been
for schools and other local services slashed as a result, the
balance has been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families,
and communities.
Today, when interest groups can tie our Federal agencies up
in knots by suing them under five different statutes enacted by
Congress -- each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has
been lost. It's time to worry about jobs, families, and
communities.
Today, when at class project at Wesleyan University in
Connecticut is to come up with lawsuits to stop people from
5
aRe these
earning a living in the Northwest -- when students can play games
survally
suits
with people's lives -- the balance has been lost. It's time to
filed.
worry about jobs families and communities.
L.)
I have come to this great Pacific Northwest, to these
beautiful and productive forests, to join you in saying: we must
restore the balance. We must worry about jobs, families and
communities. Enough is enough.
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered Species
Act, about the spotted ovl, and about the management of our
forests. Because after all, people and their jobs deserve some
protection too.
Insert
C
Let me be clear: I care about protecting the environment.
over
The basic purpose of the Endangered species Act is a good and
pReveNT extinction of
noble one: to save the species of this country.
But today, the Act is being used, particularly here in
Washington and Oregon, to achieve in the courts what can't be
achieved through legislation or admins trative procedure -- the
complete lock-up of the most productive forests in the entire
United States.
The Endangered Species Act, in its current form as
interpreted by some courts and as driven by the Democrate in
Congress, has forced a radical approach and created an
unnecessarily tragic situation here in the Northwest. Massive
iT wasa [ana unnecessarily large areas of Federal land are being set aside
Federal
for the owl. And jobs, families and communities are being wiped
scientific
panel
out in the process.
that Recommended the
larger area
U
In my efforts to strike the night balance,
I've sponsored programs that planted 225 million
trees, brought new funds to the cleanup of Puget
saw, and reached out to share American
expertise with other nations. (EQ)
6
You know, the other side has been talking lately about a
"false choice." They claim that this timber crisis is just
politics. The simple fact is this: the false choice is being
driven by the Endangered Species Act and its application to the
Northern Spotted Owl. It is being driven by those in Congress
who have permitted this crisis to go unresolved.
The simple fact is that when it comes to the owl, the Act is
too rigid -- and Congress is too timid.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
within the paramaters of the law to address this problem -- but I
can tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed. There has to be
We have asked Congress for funds to out enough timber in
a better way.
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting laws
allow challenge after challenge.
So this year, we asked congress to make a choice. We showed
them the Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, as required by the Endangered
Species Act -- a plan that would cost this region 30,000 jobs.
And, because that plan imposes too great a cost on the families
and communities of the Pacific Northwest, we asked them to
consider instead an alternative: a preservation plan that would
cut that job loss in half.
We sent Congress a bill that would help save 15,000 jobs.
And Congress has failed to act. So while the gridlock Congress
stalls, no timber is being cut -- and your jobs are disappearing
alot faster than the owl.
I spoke before about balance.
7
It is not balance when mills that have operated responsibly
for generations are threatened with extinction because of a lack
of fiber from our public lands.
It is not balance when the Act prevents the mere
consideration, at key points in the process, of costs that
directly affect people and their livelihood -- of the human
factor.
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people
first" -- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, it's time to face one fact: the situation is out of
control -- and it must be addressed because the balance must be
restored.
here is what I propose:
So let me say this:
First, ^ I will not sign an extension of the Endangered Species Act, unless it
a reauthorization
hat does net allow S economics to be considered? and that is not
accompanied buy a specific plan to harvest enough timber to keep
timber families working in 1993 and beyond. It's time to make
people just as important as owls.
Insert from
X
page 8
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to cut 2.6 billion
board feet in the Forest Service Pacific Northwest region next
year -- and to tie that plan to language which makes prevents sure lawsuits that &
reasonable cut that provides protection for species cannot be
blocked on procedural grounds. Y It's time to put people ahead of
precess.
Insert from page 8
8
Third, My administration has recently announced several steps to
check- ire
speed up the harvesting of dead or dying timber. We will shortly
think it has
more of
issue a rule to allow these timber salvage operations to occur
been issued
without triggering some of the restrictive dec and time-consuming,
documentation
is slowing down these sales
laws that are disrupting the balance today.
This will help in two ways: by reducing the risk of fire
and
in the
from the large volume of dead or dying trees on our forest floor;
and by providing up to 450 million board feedt of timber for the
mills in the near term. It's time to protect jobs and put people
back to work.
move
Second, I will fight for legislative on language to end the injunctions
to
+
that have put an economic strangle-hold on hts Northwest
$00
L
page
I'll Fight
to free up the timber that we need today -- because the
more
families and the timber communities of the Pacific Northwest need
to
Y
relief now.
page?
is this
And I call upon Congress today to pass the Spotted Owl
consistent and/
Preservation Plan -- Senator Corton's bill -- because we must
or reductant
preserve the owl, we must preserve the livelihood of the Pacific
with the bottom
Northwest; and we must preserve the jobs of the American people.
of P 7?
Finally, Fourth I am today directing the Secretary of Commerce to
^
increase the Federal ban on the export of raw logs from
Washington State lands from 75 percent to 100 percent. It is
time to make sure that mills in Washington have an opportunity to
process timber grown on their state lands.
NOW, my opponents would have you believe that they, too are
see page 9
in favor of balance. They won't commit to any specific action to
And Fifth, I'll work to bring people together, to encourage local
initiatives ) that might avoid these tragic crises.
9
solve the problem. Their idea of balance is doublespeak --
promise both sides exactly what they want to hear.
When Bill Clinton spoke on Earth Day back in Pennsylvania,
he earned the praise of the Sierra Club for "promising the
protection of old Growth forests in the Pacific Northwest." He
wanted their endorsement, and he got it.
NOW, just recently, with the election nearing, he has come
to Oregon to hold out false hope to timber families by promising
a meeting. Classic doublespeak. But we. should face one fact.
This problem isn't going to be solved with one meeting. We've
had enough meetings, it's time for action.
Bill Clinton says that he'll have his meeting within 100
days. Well, we've been meeting for two years. What's needed is
a change in law. I will fight for it. Bill Clinton will not.
Now I know that the Governor of Arkansas is famous for being
on both sides of every issue. But I hope you'll ask him -- for
once -- to stop the rhetoric and take a stand. Families are in
the Northwest are at risk. So this is one issue where sincerity
would be better than slickness.
sounds
The plain truth is that the other ticket is on the record on
inconsistant
this problem, and here is what they have said.
w/ bottom
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and I quote: "I helped
of P 8
lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections for the spotted owl." The reasoning offered was
simple. The Senator said: "The jobs will be lost anyway.
[Ine
at this sentence,
This sounds more insensitive
and the
second line is actually twe
10
only question is whether the effort to create new jobs will begin
now or
Senator Gore and Governor Clinton don't realize that
generation after generation of families -- families like the
Vaagen brothers -- have made a living for their family, for their
neighbors, and for their community -- not by locking these
forests up, but by managing them wisely. By restoring what they
take, so that the land can sustain the next generation and the
one after that. After all, it's no mistake accident that America today has
home to more forest land than it was when Teddy Roosevelt was
I want to keep people working and have more forest lands in
President. America in the 21st century.
[The other side doesn't understand that leading the fight
against any change in the tangled web of conflicting laws means
harsh
leading the fight against your job and your family and your
community and your way of life. ]
or maybe they do understand. But I ask you only to do this:
let them know that you understand, too. And do not be fooled by
this doublespeak.
It's time we worried not only about endangered species --
also
but,about but about endangered jobs.
You know, the father of our national forest system, and one
of America's great conservationists, Gifford Pinchot, once
defined conservation this way: "Conservation means the wise use
of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men."
I have come here today to tell you that I am the candidate
who will worry about jobs, families, and communities.
11
I have come here today to tell you that I will not stand for
a solution that puts 30,000 people out of work. That is a non-
solution. And on my watch, it will not stand.
I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten about
the human factor -- because in the end, that's the most important
factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United
States of America.
#
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press secretary
(Colville, Washington)
For Immediate Release
September 14, 1992
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
TO EMPLOYEES OF VAAGEN BROTHERS LUMBER COMPANY
Vaagen Brothers Lumber Company
Colville, Washington
1:09 P.M. PDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much. what a wonderful
welcome. (Applause.) And may I thank your very special Senator,
Senator Slade Gorton, for that introduction, and much more for all he
does for this great state back in Washington, D.C. You have an
outstanding Senator. (Applause.) And thanks to Dwayne Vaagen, and
all of the rest of you for letting us visit here today. I know we've
disrupted not only this wonderful facility, but a lot of things around
town. And I'm grateful to the Mayor, Mayor scott, and the police
officials and everybody else who assist in the planning and the success
of a visit like this.
I'll tell you, I really enjoyed flying in here in that
helicopter. And for those of you who haven't been up there, there are
a lot of trees around here. so don't listen to some of the critics --
(applause.)
You know, last week out in Detroit, I released an Agenda
for American Renewal. I see a sign back there on that. And the agenda
was based on a fundamental premise: that the challenges America faces
-- foreign, domestic and economic, and, yes, environmental -- are
connected, they're linked. And the solution to one cannot be divorced
from the solution to the other. We need an integrated approach.
We need to bring this integrated approach to the
relationship between the economy and the environment. Environmental
protection and economic growth must go hand in hand, they can't be
divorced from each other. This morning down in southern California,
I spoke about ways to bring them together. But frankly, I believe that
when it comes to the Endangered Species Act and its application here
in the Northwest, the balance has simply been lost.
Like many of you, I love to hunt and hike and fish. And
I love the outdoors. (Applause.) And like you, I have learned through
a lifetime of experience to appreciate and respect the wilderness. I
know that you, and you who have chosen to live in this beautiful part
of the country -- respect and revere these forests as others never can.
(Applause.) And you resent the implication that earning your
livelihood here -- with sound management of the forest -- makes you
less of a conservationist than the city dweller or the suburbanite.
(Applause.)
For the past -- and I'm proud of this record, although I
don't have the endorsement of some of the extreme environmental groups
-- but for the past four years, we've worked hard to protect our
precious environment -- and we've accomplished a great deal. Four
years ago, I promised Americans a new Clean Air Act. For over a
decade, no one could get it done. But we did. My Clean Air Act
reduces smog in our cities, and gets toxic pollutants out of the air
and will cut acid rain in half.
MORE
Four years ago, I promised I would protect the
environmentally sensitive areas off our coasts from the excesses of
offshore drilling. And today, there will be no drilling off the coast
of California or Washington and Oregon not far from here, off the
Florida Keys, off the New England coast. We have banned ocean drilling
until the year 2000.
Four years ago, I promised to be a good steward of our
public lands. And we've added thousands of miles of trails for
Americans like you who love the outdoors. We're reopening and
upgrading campsites all across America. And we've added a million and
a half acres to our national parks, wildlife areas, forests and
recreation lands.
The fact is that every American cares about the
environment -- and most consider themselves environmentalists. That
is particularly true here in the Pacific Northwest. And yet Americans
today realize that we can protect our lands while also using them for
people's benefit. (Applause.) They understand the need for wilderness
and recreation areas, as well as the need for paper for our schools and
offices and timber for new homes.
Being out here in the great Pacific Northwest, I'm
reminded of Teddy Roosevelt -- the very first President to focus the
attention of the nation on the condition of our natural resources.
Teddy Roosevelt once said this: "Wise forest protection does not mean
the withdrawal of forest resources from contributing their full share
to the welfare of the people." What President Roosevelt had in mind,
and what the American people have always wanted, is balance.
(Applause.)
Not far from here is a timber town called Forks. Like
Colville, Forks supported a mill, and the mill supported a community.
Because of a lack of timber, the mill had to close. Today unemployment
in Forks is at 20 percent. The car dealership has closed. The
clothing store -- gone. The movie theater -- shut down. Domestic
violence complaints have doubled, just in the past year.
Forks is in crisis for a simple reason: the balance that
I was talking about, that balance has been lost. I've come here
because we must restore the balance. (Applause.) Listen to Oregon's
Senator Mark Hatfield, who was a cosponsor of the original Endangered
Species Act back in 1972. This year, he wrote: "There is no question
that the act is being applied in a manner far beyond what any of us
envisioned when we wrote it 20 years ago."
The Endangered Species Act was intended as a shield for
species against the effects of major construction projects like
highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at Jobs and families and
communities of the entire regions like the Northwest. (Applause.)
But today, when harvesting on federal timberland is
stopped outright by 13 different lawsuits, under seven different
statutes, each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has been
lost. It's time to fight for jobs, families and communities.
(Applause.)
The time has come to talk sensibly. When hundreds of
mills have been shut down, thousands of timber workers thrown out of
work, and revenues for schools and other local services have been
slashed, the balance has been lost. And it's time to fight for jobs,
families, and communities. (Applause.)
And so, as I say, we must talk sense about the Endangered
Species Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because it is my firm belief that people and their jobs
deserve protection, too. (Applause.)
AUDIENCE: What about AIDS? What about AIDS?
MORE
- 3 -
THE PRESIDENT: Let me digress for one minute -- let me
digress. This man has asked a question here. I hadn't planned to
discuss this. His question is -- if you'll listen, sir, I'll t plain
to you what about AIDS. AIDS is a. serious problem. Under my
administration we've appropriated $4.3 billion, ten times as much per
victim as for cancer. We've asked for $4.9 billion. We are the
leaders in research, and we're going to keep on fighting until we get
this thing whipped. (Applause.)
Now, let me go back to the Endangered Species Act. And
let me be clear: The basic purpose of the Endangered Species Act 10
good and noble -- to save the rare and threatened species of this
country. But today, the act and other laws are being used by people
with extreme views, particularly here in Washington and Oregon, to
achieve in the courts what no sane official would ever have voted for
-- the complete lock-up of the most productive forests in the entire
United States.
The Endangered Species Act, as rigidly interpreted by some
courts and as driven by the Congress, has forced an extreme approach
and created an unnecessarily tragic situation here in the Northwest.
Massive areas of federal land are being set aside for the owl --
virtually ignoring the fact that two-thirds of the Northwest's old-
growth forests are already designated as parks, wilderness, or other
classifications. (Applause.) other classifications that prevent
harvesting. And each pair of owls -- listen, America -- gets 3,500
acres to itself, while jobs, families and communities are being wiped
out in the process. (Applause.)
And the other side has been talking about a false choice.
They claim that this timber crisis is just politics, and the simple
fact is this: The false choice is being driven by extremists who are
twisting the Endangered Species Act and its application to the Northern
spotted Owl. (Applause.) So I came up here to set the #ecord
straight. And let's do that for the entire country, right here. We
have always worked within the parameters of the law to address this
problem. But I can tell you this: The law is broken, and it must be
fixed. (Applause.)
We have asked the United states Congress for funds to sur
enough timber in this region to keep people employed. But those
conflicting laws allow challenge after challenge. so this year we name
Congress an alternative plan -- a preservation plant that would save
17,000 jobs compared to the recovery plan required by the act. And
Congress has simply failed to act.
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted Owl equation. (Applause.) My opponent talks about putting
people first. Well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
And, so, here's what I propose. Here's what I propose. First, I will
not sign an extension the Endangered Species Act unless it gives
greater consideration to jobs. And to families and to communities,
too. And I will not sign it without a specific plan in place to
harvest enough timber to keep timber families working in 1993 and
beyond. It is time to make people more important than owls.
(Applause.)
And, second, I will fight to end the injunctions that have
put an economic stranglehold on the Northwest in order to free up the
timber that we need today, because the families and the timber
communities of the Pacific Northwest need relief now.
And I call upon Congress to pass my plan to produce 2.6
billion board feet of timber from Forest Service lands in the Northwest
region next year and to pass language that prevents lawsuits from
stopping reasonable harvests with reasonable species protection.
(Applause.) It is time to put people ahead of process.
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- 4 -
Third, my administration will speed the harvesting of
The Endangered Species Act was intended as a shield for
species against the effects of major construction projects like
highways and dams -- not a sword aimed at the jobs, families, and
communities of entire regions like the Northwest.
But today, when harvesting on Federal timberland is
stopped outright by 13 different lawsuits -- under 7 different
statutes, each inconsistent with the other -- the balance has been
lost. It's time to fight for jobs, families and communities.
when hundreds of mills have been shut down, thousands of
timber workers thrown out of work, and revenues for schools and other
local services have been slashed, the balance has been lost. It's time
to fight for jobs, families, and communities.
The time has come to talk sense about the Endangered
Species Act, about the spotted owl, and about the management of our
forests. Because it is my firm belief that people and their jobs
deserve protection too.
Let me be clear: the basic purpose of the Endangered
species Act is good and noble -- to save the rare and threatened
species of this country.
But today, the Act and other laws are being used by people
with extreme views, particularly here in Washington and Oregon, to
achieve in the courts what no sane elected official would ever vote
for -- the complete lock-up of the most productive forests in the
entire United States.
The Endangered Species Act, as rigidly interpreted by some
courts and as driven by the Congress, has forced an extreme approach
and created an unnecessarily tragic situation here in the Northwest.
Massive areas of Federal land are being set aside for the owl
virtually ignoring the fact that two-thirds of the Northwest's old
growth forests are already designated as parks, wilderness, or other
classifications that prevent harvesting. Each pair of owls gets 3,500
acres to itself! Meanwhile, jobs, families and communities are being
wiped out in the process.
The other side has been talking about a "false choice."
They claim that this timber crisis is just politics. The simple fact
is this: the false choice is being driven by extremists who are
twisting the Endangered species Act and its application to the Northern
spotted Owl.
Now let's set the record straight. We have always worked
within the parameters of the law to address this problem -- but I can
tell you this. The law is broken, and it must be fixed.
We have asked Congress for funds to cut enough wither in
this region to keep people employed. But these conflicting Leve allow
challenge after challenge.
So this year, we sent Congress an alternative plan: a
preservation plan that would save 17,000 jobs compared to the recovery
plan required by the Act. Congress has failed to act.
My friends, it is time to consider the human factor in the
spotted owl equation. My opponent talks about "putting people first" -
- well, we can start right here in the Pacific Northwest.
so here is what I propose:
First, I will not sign an extension of the Endangered
Species Act unless it gives greater consideration to jobs, families,
and communities. And I will not sign it without a specific plan in
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-
place to harvest enough timber to keep timber families working in 1993
and beyond. It's time to make people more important than owls.
Second, I will fight to end the injunctions that have put
an economic strangle-hold on the Northwest, in order to free up the
timber that we need today -- because the families and the timber
communities of the Pacific Northwest need relief now.
I call upon Congress to pass my plan to produce 2.6
billion board feet of timber from Forest Service lands in the Northwest
Region next year -- and to pass language that prevents lawsuits from
stopping reasonable harvests with reasonable species protection. It
is time to put people ahead of process.
Third, my Administration will speed the harvesting of dead
or dying timber that has been dangerously building up during a 7-year
drought. One step is our new rule to allow more timber salvage
operations to occur without triggering some of the time-consuming
requirements that are blocking progress. This will reduce the risk of
fire, it'll provide up to 450 million board feet of timber for the
mills in the near term. And it's time, then, to protect jobs with
timber that's available now. (Applause.)
And fourth, we will make sure that 100 percent of the raw
logs from Washington state-owned public lands are processed here. It's
time to put the mills back to work. (Applause.)
And, finally, I call upon Congress to pass the spotted Owl
Preservation Plan -- and that's Senator Gorton's bill which he calls
"the Northern Spotted Owl Preservation and Northwest Economic
Stabilization Act of 1992." It's time to preserve both owls and jobs.
And that's what Slade Gorton's act does, and he helps the families in
the process. (Applause.)
Now, the Senator mentioned my opponent, so I will, too.
(Laughter.) My opponent's approach to this problem -- to your jobs -
- is doublespeak. When Bill Clinton spoke in Pennsylvania, he said
what the Sierra Club wanted to hear. They concluded that Governor
Clinton was -- quote -- "promising the protection of old growth forestr
in the Pacific Northwest." And then, when he heard I was coming here,
Mr. Clinton cynically held out false hope to timber families by
promising -- get this -- another meeting.
There have already been more than 40 bipartisan meatings
of the Northwest congressional delegation on this issue for three
years. Now, here, you wondered what these are -- these are the
studies. Look at them. We don't need any more studies of this
problem. We need action in the United states Congress. Good heavenet
(Applause.) We've produced a pile of studies and proposals Signe high.
The best thing for the timber industry is all the trees it took to
print these reports. No more studies, let's change the Lew. Let's
change the law. (Applause.)
And the difference on this is clear. The difference on
this is clear. It's as simple as this: My opponent will not fight to
change the law to restore balance. And now I know that being getting
famous for being on both sides of every issue. (Laughter.)
Do you want to know the real views of the other ticket?
Senator Gore wrote it in black and white in his book, before he knew
that he'd be looking for your votes.
In his book, Senator Gore said this, and = quote: "I
helped lead the successful fight to prevent the overturning of
protections " for the Spotted Owl." And Senator Gore wrote, and I quote:
the jobs will be lost anyway." I challenge Governor Clinton: Do
you agree with your running mate? Do you endorse the book that you
once called "magnificent"?
It is time we worried not only about endangered species -
- but about endangered jobs, jobs in the timber industry and in
agriculture, and in transportation and in recreation as well --
$ 6 -
It is time we worried not only about endangered
species -- but about endangered jobs, jobs in the timber industry and
in agriculture, and in transportation and in recreation as well --
(applause) -- all of those are threatened by the Endangered Species
Act. (Applause.)
I have come here to tell you that I am a candidate who
will respect wildlife, yes -- but who will also fight for jobs, and
families, and communities. And I have come here to tell you that I
will not stand for a solution that puts at least 32,000 people out of
work. I can tell you - that solution will not stand. (Applause.)
And I have come here to tell you that we haven't forgotten
about the human factor -- because in the end, no matter how you look
at it, that's the most important factor of all.
I have come here today to tell you that we can restore the
balance, and we must restore the balance, and with your help, we will
restore the balance.
Thank you, And may God bless you. And may God Bless the
United States of America. Thank you all very much. Thank you.
(Applause.)
END
1:30 P.M. PDT