May 14, 2007
Dear Blue Dog Caucus Member:
Taxpayers for Common Sense Action (TCS Action) commends you and the Blue Dog Caucus for drawing attention to the crisis of our ballooning national debt – at $8.8 trillion, every dollar counts.
That’s why we urge you to support efforts to block taxpayer spending on new commercial logging roads in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. We must take a stand against the Forest Service’s fiscal mismanagement of the Tongass.
The Tongass timber program has been hemorrhaging money—and jobs—for years. Since 1982, the Tongass timber program has lost nearly one billion dollars. That equates to nearly $40 million on average every year, or the equivalent of nearly two thousand times the share of our national debt owed by every American.
Since 1996, timber related employment in the Tongass is down from 1,560 to fewer than 200. Yet the subsidies keep flowing to timber companies in ever greater amounts. The per job subsidy has risen to over $200,000.
The Forest Service’s response to its growing pattern of fiscal waste is to plan even more roads and spend even more money. If the Forest Service gets its way taxpayers will continue to lose tens of millions in the Tongass every year.
Considering the Forest Service’s long-term losses, massive maintenance backlog, and failure to respond to global market forces, taxpayers cannot afford to continue subsidizing Tongass logging roads. TCS Action strongly urges you to support ending road subsidies in the Tongass. For more information, please contact me or Demian Moore at (202) 546-8500 x118 or Demian@taxpayer.net.
Sincerely,
Ryan Alexander
President
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