WASHINGTON - Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and several other Western senators tore into U.S. Forest Service officials on Thursday over a lack of funding for wildfire preparation and suppression.

Tester slammed proposed cuts at a time when "we're one lightning strike and a good wind away from burning the whole damn state down."

Under President Bush's proposed 2009 budget, the agency's budget would drop $373 million from 2008 levels, to $4.1 billion. Dollars would be cut from wildfire preparedness, hazardous fuels reduction and other fire operations. The Forest Service asked for $982 million in those categories, a decrease of $115 million from 2008.

It proposed to boost regular suppression funding from $846 million to $994 million. But the agency also received $432 million in emergency funding for fire suppression for 2008, outside the regular budgeting process. Taking that into account, suppression dollars would be a 22 percent drop.

Money for state and private forestry programs, research, maintenance, management and law enforcement also would decline from 2008.

"I see the Forest Service being severely hamstrung by the amount of money that they use on forest fire fighting," Tester said. "I think it takes away from their ability to manage. And I look at this budget, and I see a decrease in the dollars that are set aside for forest fire fighting. And it tells me you're going to have to find that money somewhere else."

At the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Tester blasted the agency for not asking for as much money as it will likely spend on fires. Congress in recent years has passed emergency or supplemental funding bills with money for firefighting after the agency spent more than it had budgeted.

"This budget is very frustrating to me," Tester said. "If I budgeted on my farm the way this is budgeted, I'd never get the crops in the ground."

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey explained that the Forest Service determines how much to budget for firefighting based on an average of how much it cost over the past decade.

Since fire seasons have been growing more severe recently, using a five-year average instead would mean the agency would have to ask for a larger amount. But Rey defended use of the 10-year average, saying members of Congress have implicitly expressed support for it by passing the agency's budget each year.

"I am not going to whack your budget out because I don't agree with the 10-year average," Tester replied. "That's incorrect and it's stretching it to the max."

Rey testified that despite more fires than in 2006 and a 49 percent increase in acres burned, the cost of suppressing forest fires was $127 million lower in 2007, because of cost-containment measures. Tester attacked that statement as being contradictory.

Rey said the agency isn't happy about the increase in acres burned, but that the acreage would not have been smaller if more money had been spent. He said there is not a direct correlation between the amount spent and acres burned, in part because the agency now will sometimes allow fires in wilderness areas to burn.