🚀 go-pugleaf

TO:       All Forest Activists
FROM:     Steve Holmer
DATE:     April 18, 1996
 
SUBJECT:  Only You Can Stop Forest Robbery: National Fax-In Day
 
     As part of Ancient Forest Week, we are asking activists from
every region to contact the President today, and every day until the
Rider is Repealed.  With the cutting started at Enola Hill, and new
reports of bad Option 9 and salvage sales coming in almost every
day, it is clear the Administration needs to take stronger action to
protect the forests.  With the election looming and the
Administration attempting to use the environment as an issue
politically, it is essential that the President and his political advisors
know that we expect them to do more.  Please help us send the
message to the White House that they need to take immediate
action to repeal the rider and cancel bad sales like Enola Hill, and
they need to do it now, before any more of our forest heritage is
lost.
 
     How can the President challenge the Republicans on the
Environment without addressing the Rider?  
 
     Please contact President Clinton at 202/456-1111 (9-5) EST, fax
202/456-2883, email president@whitehouse.gov and urge the
President to insist on complete repeal of the rider as part of the
1996 Omnibus Spending bill, and to endorse H.R. 2745 the rider
repeal bill in the House.
 
VP Gore Issues Earth Day Ultimatum to Gingrich
     In a April 17 letter to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
(R-GA), and at a Capitol Hill press conference with Democratic
leaders, Vice President Al Gore called on the Speaker to remove all
of the anti-environmental riders in the Omnibus Spending bill by
Earth Day (April 22) in order to pass the bill by April 24 when the
temporary funding measure expires.  The letter notes that "the
riders have been so controversial that at least 34 Senators and 80
Representatives have written to appropriations conferees stating their
opposition to them."  Examples of unacceptable riders used in the
letter were the Tongass, the ESA moratorium, "undermining efforts
to protect salmon in the Columbia River Basin" and the California
Desert.  Gore threatened that unless all of the riders were removed
the Administration would veto the bill.
 
     It is reported that House appropriations conferees offered to
trade a partial repeal of the rider affecting the Section 318 sales in
exchange for the Administration accepting all of the other riders and
signing the bill.  The Administration reportedly refused and there is
no reason to assume that Senators Hatfield and Gorton would
support such a deal.  However, the fact that the rider is being
discussed by the conferees at this point is significant, and gives us
every indication that we need to keep pushing for the President to
make repealing the rider a deal breaker as part of these
negotiations.