Inside Douglas County with U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz [0:00-5:04]

This is Inside Douglas County on news radio 939 FM and 1240 KQEM. It's our daily in depth look at people and issues that are shaping the local area. Inside Douglas County is presented by concrete builder supply. Now inside Douglas County on news radio 939 FM and 1240 KQEM. Afternoon, thanks for being here as we cover a number of things happening around the Umbhwa Valley focusing on Congress today. Second District Congressman Cliff Benz just off the floor of the House. A little bit of Go Congressman. Thanks for being on. Great to be with you Kyle and thanks for the opportunity as usual. Now you were speaking in the past hour regarding secure rural schools. That has been a bit of concern. It passed the Senate didn't make it through the House yet and I understand a vote's coming in the next few hours. Yeah well that's all true. Let me just say that the movement of the bill through the Senate was quite different than the movement of the bill through the House because the movement through the Senate didn't have any money with it. So it was merely passing the bill and saying, gee we hope you can find the money over there in the House somewhere. And so it's a little disingenious I think for those on the Senate side to be saying they supported the bill when they didn't put any money in the bill. Now there's much confusion and people running in different circles about why the money wasn't in the bill in the Senate. But it doesn't change the fact that the money was not in the bill in the Senate. And so when it got over here some months ago the challenge became where are we going to find the money? Because that's up to about $400 million spread over a number of states. I want to say 18 and maybe off of it. But Oregon is like third biggest state when it comes to getting money under secure rural schools. We get about 50 million a year. And this particular bill covers three years. Last year or this year next year. And so it's about $150 million issue for Oregon. And so it's extraordinarily important. And I'm just very happy that we went to this whole bunch of us went to the speaker and said we have to have your support on this bill. And I say a whole bunch of us are probably ten of us in the speaker's office and to the speaker's everlasting credit. He helped us find the money. And so I'm very, very happy that we now have funding in the bill. We just testified in favor of it to move it on the suspension calendar. A recorded vote was requested. And that means we'll be voting on it tonight. But the Democrats supported it also. And so I anticipate no problem whatsoever in getting it in the past. Exactly how many people will vote against it. I can't tell you about the good news. It's going to pass. And talk about the impact of this legislation since it was first enacted 1990. Well, we should talk a little bit about why we need it. And the answer is that we need the legislation because of the spotted owl. And when the spotted owl was protected back in 1990, a forest activity, logging on the federal forests, fell by 80 percent, 80 percent. And so you know better than anybody what that did to our timber community to destroy them. Literally destroyed them. And many of them are in my district. And so that was in 1990. In 10 years later, 2000, they decided Congress did to send to enact the secure role schools, which basically was in recognition of the horrific damage that had been done to our timber dependent communities. And thank goodness they did something. And so this legislation has been extraordinarily important to Oregon and in California, Washington. Idaho, Montana, these states have still serious, serious problems in small towns that used to have a sawmill and good jobs and now don't. And so this bill is hugely important for those counties that found themselves basically on the verge of bankruptcy. And so it's a great big deal. And I know it is because I hear from every one of my county commissioners saying over and over and over again, what are you going to do about it? And you can imagine, I took forms and charts and graphs that my staff put together in to show them to the speaker, to show the precipitous decline in timber revenue, to show the decline in timber logging activity, to show the decline in sawmills and jobs, and the dramatic increase in demand for welfare programs like SNAP benefits and Medicaid.