9-9 IAT Walden & Simpson

Economically hard-hit Oregon counties are on the ropes and are about to go down for the count. That was the gist of a news conference Thursday afternoon in Medford in which 11 officials from five Oregon counties gave a sobering assessment of the impact the loss of dollars from federal timberlands has had on their counties. "The solution is pending in Congress as we speak in the form of the bipartisan O&C Trust, Conservation and Jobs plan offered by Oregon Rep. Greg Walden. Rep. Walden's counterpart in Idaho, Rep. Mike Simpson, Also has a concern with regard to timberlands, but it is not a logging issue... It's all about wildfires and loss of grazing. "The first thing we need to do is finish the farm bill. There are several programs that would help these grazers that have lost both acreage and cattle but those programs expired in 2011. We were not able to do a farm bill last year and so far we have not got it done this year and we need to get it done but the indemnification program and a few other things that were in the last farm bill would have been beneficial. Those programs are in the house passed bill and in the Senate passed bill but we have not been able to get a conference yet and get them into law. John said today, Speaker John Boehner, that he expected maybe by October we would have a conference done and get a farm bill done which is going to be very important to these people. How do you help farmers who actually lost cattle, what do you do to the infrastructure that was destroyed by these wildfires and what do you do to the restoration project so that these lands can be used for grazing in the future?"