Bush Backing Labor-Industry Bill on Logging

WASHINGTON —  The Bush Administration for the first time Thursday threw its conditional support behind a Northwest timber bill, a labor-industry proposal that would free the government from some environmental restrictions when logging national forests.

Deputy Assistant Agriculture Secretary John Beuter and Bureau of Land Management Director Cy Jamison told a Senate panel that the legislation strikes an appropriate balance between ecological and human needs.

They said, however, that President Bush continues to oppose one provision that would provide tens of millions of dollars in economic relief to unemployed loggers and millworkers.

Legislation containing special assistance to workers who lose their jobs in the timber industry is not needed and would set a bad precedent,” Beuter said.

The bill is strongly opposed by environmentalists because it would make it easier to log federal lands inhabited by the threatened northern spotted owl. The bill under consideration by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee on public lands, national parks and forests was crafted by the AFL-CIO, the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and timber industry members of the American Forest Resource Alliance.

It is sponsored by Republicans Bob Packwood of Oregon and Slade Gorton of Washington in the Senate and Rep. Jerry Huckaby (D-La.) in the House.

The Bush Administration had refrained from backing any of the nearly dozen pieces of timber legislation that Congress members have proposed over the past two years.

The bill would alter the Endangered Species Act to allow for expedited exemptions for logging.