Top Trump administration officials are urging Congress to provide them with broader federal authority as part of the Farm Bill to conduct active forest management to help prevent the deadly infernos like those that have devastated parts of California over the past several years.
“If you clean the forest floor of fuel load, you don’t have these raging forest fires that just go where you cannot contain them,” Perdue said, while attributing the years-long litany of environmentalist lawsuits to misguided fears about clear-cut logging and wildlife degradation.
“President Donald Trump and I both saw the devastation of the fire on our recent trips to California: piles of rubble recognizable as houses only by their chimneys and charred appliances, and vehicles melted to the pavement in pools of molten aluminum,” Zinke said.
“Part of forest management includes reducing the fuel load by scientifically determining which trees need to be removed in order to improve forest health and resiliency. Active management doesn’t necessarily mean clear-cutting or large-scale logging, as some environmentalists would have you believe,” he said.
Zinke and Perdue, flanked by the bipartisan Congressional Western Caucus on Nov. 27, urged the inclusion of key forestry management provisions in the final version of the pending Farm Bill.
The provisions, however, are a central sticking point in stalled Farm Bill negotiations. Congress is required to pass a new Farm Bill every five years, and both the House and Senate passed respective versions of the nearly one trillion dollar agricultural legislation in July. But significant differences regarding forest management and food stamp work requirements have held up negotiations.
The House version includes the Trump administration’s desired forestry and wildfire regulations, while the Senate version does not. Both chambers are currently Republican-controlled, although Democrats will assume control of the House after Congress adjourns for the year in just three weeks.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who sits on the Farm Bill conference committee, accused Perdue and Zinke of using California’s wildfire tragedy to advance anti-environmental policies.
“Secretaries Perdue and Zinke shockingly are trying to co-opt the terrible tragedies in California to push for the Trump Administration’s crass, cynical and unaccountable logging of the public’s national forests,” he said.
Another area of contention involves food entitlements. The nation’s vast food assistance programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The House version of the Farm Bill aims to shrink SNAP enrollment, over the objections of Democrats, by cutting a paltry $20 billion in funding over the next 10 years and revamping work requirements that were administratively gutted under President Obama.
The House proposal would require so-called able-bodied adults without dependents, or healthy adults ages 18 to 59, to work at least 20 hours a week or be enrolled in expanded job training “workfare” programs to receive SNAP benefits.
President Trump confirmed his support on Aug. 22.
Republicans added two more Senate seats in the midterm elections, but Senate Democrats have successfully held out thus far on compromising on both forestry reforms and SNAP work requirements, and they appear poised to exploit the Trump administration’s lost leverage in the House come Jan.
“What the House has proposed on forestry would kill the farm bill,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan), a top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, on Nov. 27.