Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-1994

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Geography

Major Professor

Ronald Foresta

Committee Members

Thomas Bell, Michael Fitzgerald

Abstract

This study examines Congressional responses to the revelations in the mid-1980s that a considerable number of national forest timber sales are "below-cost", i.e. the cost of preparing the timber for sale is greater than the revenue realized by the government.The issue presents an unusual opportunity to study the conflicts between ideology and local economic self-interest in Congress because the two majorCongressional ideologies responsibility environmentalism and fiscal are in an unusual alignment on this issue:below-cost timber sales are widely considered both environmentally harmful and fiscally irresponsible. A profile of each legislator was compiled. It included: pattern of voting on environmental issues, pattern on fiscal issues, and party affiliation. A profile of each legislator's district or state was also compiled, including presence of federal land,presence of below-cost timber sales, number of forestry related jobs, importance of the forest industry and percent urban. A number of statistical techniques, correlations,group means, multiple regressions, factor analysis, and discriminant analysis, were used to explore the relationship between voting on the three Congressional proposals to reduce such sales, the Fowler rider in the Senate (1992) and theJontz and Porter amendments in the House (1992 and 1993), and the legislator's personal and district profiles.ItWas hypothesized that those legislators whose districts had a national forest timber industry within them would vote to maintain the below-cost sales (and the subsidies to their district that the sales represented). Legislators without such sales in their districts, and therefore without a local economic stake, would be free to vote to end them on ideological grounds.

Voting proved different than hypothesized: ideology variables were far stronger predictors of voting than were measures of local self-interest.Moreover, fiscal conservatives tended to vote against ending the subsidy.Their votes, plus those who did vote local self-interest were sufficient to prevent the curtailment of below-cost sales.Two Reasons are advanced for the seeming contradiction.First, given the great number of bills on which legislators are expected to vote, they cannot be fully informed about the ramifications of each. In the absence of such information, itis safer to fall back on partisan instincts than ideologicalones. Second, some fiscal conservatism is in fact a cover of respectability for pro-business, pro-growth ideology.Fiscal conservatism on most issues, except when government subsidies of business or growth are involved, is consistent with such an ideology.

Attempts to end wasteful and environmentally harmful public lands practices must formulate strategies taking both issue ignorance and covert growthist ideology into account.

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