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The Last Redoubt of Soviet-Style Resource Economics

May 18, 2005

Last year, the U.S. Forest Service spent $49 million putting up timber sales in the Tongass National Forest.

Total revenue earned from Tongass timber sales last year: $800,000.

That is not a sustainable business model -- but in the world of pork barrel public lands logging, sustainable business models are a foreign concept. Alaska's three-person congressional delegation is just fine with the status quo -- a textbook case of Sovet-style, socialist paradise economics where the government spends money it can't afford to sell products that no one wants. Yet Alaska's two senators and congressman are still called "conservatives" in the popular press. Go figure.

On Thursday, Ohio Congressman Steve Chabot, a real conservative who hasn't forgotten that the GOP is supposed to stand for fiscal responsibility, will offer an amendment to cut off subsidies for new logging roads in the Tongass.

Chabot led an identical charge last year and actually got his amendment through the House, controlled as it is by"conservatives" who are only too happy to hand over the taxpayers' money to long established industries that should pay their own way. Unfortunately, the amendment stalled in the Senate, the gravy train has kept chugging, and the timber industry still has its hands in the taxpayers' pockets.

Here's hoping that Chabot and other fiscal conservatives have better luck this year emptying the Tongass pork barrel.