Peninsula Daily News and The Associated Press
WASHINGTON – North Olympic Peninsula congressman Norm Dicks flexed his new political muscle Monday and declared a Bush administration plan to sell national forest and other public lands to be dead on arrival on Capitol Hill.
Dicks, whose 6th District includes Jefferson and Clallam counties, became the chairman of an Appropriations subcommittee that oversees environmental spending after Democrats gained the majority in Congress last fall.
“They are just not going to do this. It’s not going to happen,” Dicks said of a Bush administration proposal Monday to sell off up to 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools and roads.
It was the second year that the administration has proposed the land sales.
Western lawmakers and environmentalists blasted the plan, saying short-term gains would be offset by the permanent loss of the land.
“We’re going to find a way to fund the [rural] schools program without selling even one acre of public land,” said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called the plan a “betrayal,” and said he would “work around the clock . . . to convince Congress to act honorably and fulfill the federal obligation to our rural counties.”
