Federal Timber Dollars Drying Up Expose Addicted Counties and Failed Federal Policies

Federal Timber Dollars Drying Up Expose Addicted Counties and Failed Federal Policies

http://apne.ws/Itzl6l

The environmental lobby used the spotted owl to destroy the western timber industry by shutting down vast stretches of National Forest from logging in the 1990’s. Twenty years later we learn that it wasn’t the logging that was killing off the owls, but instead it was their larger, more efficient and adaptive cousin the Barred Owl. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Spotted-Owls-New-Nemesis.html

The spotted owl is destined for relegation to the same list as the Dodo bird. Extinction happens. I’m not happy about it, but part of nature is the survival of the fittest. Sadly the same isn’t true for the federal government. Speaking of which, since we now know that it wasn’t really logging killing off the spotted owl, we’ve opened the forests back up for logging right? Not at all, instead the very tax base that used to support those communities, loggers, saw mills and the trucks that shipped that would all went silent within a few years of the spotted owl being placed on the Endangered Species List. (By the way now the Forest Service is organizing kill teams to shoot barred owls.)

Ah, but don’t fear, the good folks in Washington DC felt your pain, and sent PILT money. Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILT, was designed as federal to help those communities make up for lost tax revenue. Some counties knew that the gravy train wouldn’t last forever, while others after being decimated by the loss of industry and brain drain of the best and brightest to bigger cities decided to become structurally dependent on the PILT dollars, as if they would never end. Recently, elected officials in the federal government have realized that there are no votes of consequence in these rural counties, and thus the federal dollars (borrowed money) can be used in places where it might actually buy votes that could swing an election.

Today the grand jails, and paved roads that used to be dirt cannot be maintained on the backs of the locals alone. Do I feel for the local communities? Absolutely, I was living in Corvallis, Oregon in the late 90’s and watched the mill town of Sweethome die a slow death each time I drove through on my way back to Idaho for monthly Guard Drill.

So why write this post? Simply this, we’ve all been spending PILT money. We have borrowed from our grandchildren to finance our current lifestyle. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, but I still feel the responsibility to prepare for life after PILT.

The federal government is borrowing $0.40 of every dollar we spend right now. Should interest rates rise just to 6%, that number goes well above $0.50 within a year or two. At some point all of the federal budget will have to be cut. (Unless of course we point to Greece, saying that austerity doesn’t work…) How will your state, your county, your town, your kids’ schools, and your family weather that coming reality?