Maritime Pollution Prevention Act of 2008
MARITIME POLLUTION PREVENTION ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 08, 2008)
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Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I want to rise in support today of the Senate amendment to H.R. 802, the Maritime Prevention Pollution Act of 2008. I want to give credit and pay tribute to the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Oberstar, and the chairman of the subcommittee, Mr. Cummings of Maryland, for their diligence in working this bill and working the will of the committee and today the will of the House. I join Mr. Oberstar in expressing my regret that the other body has not acted in as prompt a fashion, and therefore we may be too late with this legislation. Hopefully that isn't the case.
This type of legislation is exactly what our committee should be about. Those of us, as the current occupant of the chair who hails from the Great Lakes region, as does the chairman of the full committee, know the great work that has gone into the restoration of the Great Lakes over many, many years. I am reminded as I listened to the chairman talk about the action or inaction of the other body that Johnny Carson, before the restoration of Lake Erie in particular was in full swing, used to joke that Lake Erie was a place where fish went to die. I think it is appropriate to say that at this moment in time, the Senate, regardless of who is in charge, is a place where bills go to die.
This bill will implement international requirements to reduce air emissions from ships for purposes of U.S. law and will establish more stringent standards for the emissions of airborne pollutants from ships as well as the sulfur content of fuel oil used in United States waters.
As Members may remember, the House first passed this bill in March of 2007, again thanks to the splendid leadership of Chairman Oberstar and Chairman Cummings, with a broad bipartisan majority. Since that time, the bill has languished in the other body, to the point where we may well be prevented from voting on proposed amendments to the underlying convention at the next meeting of the International Maritime Organization. As a result, our abilities to push for strengthened measures have been significantly weakened.
Nonetheless, this is important legislation. I am pleased we will be sending it to the President as a first step to improve environmental conditions in our ports and along our coasts. I urge all Members to join me in supporting this legislation.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I know that it will come as a surprise to the Speaker that I spend just a couple of minutes talking about energy today, and I want to talk about it in the context of our committee.
I think the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Oberstar, can probably cite the statistic, but every year I have been here, and this is my 14th year in the United States Congress, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I think under both Republican and Democratic leadership, has distinguished itself in the bipartisan and efficient way in which we craft our legislation and actually get something done, when the other body is willing and when the chief executive is willing to sign it.
I thought I heard before our July 4th recess Mr. Oberstar talk about the many numbers of bills that we have actually moved through the House, through the Senate, that have been signed into law, and it far exceeds a lot of the work that some of the other more contentious committees in this body, by their nature, no criticism intended, can compile, and I think it is in direct correlation to and as a direct result of the respect that we have for each other on both sides of the aisle on that committee, and now the stern but fair leadership of the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar).
That brings me to a frustration that I found and encountered over the Fourth of July recess. I was talking to Mr. Oberstar. I didn't quite have the adulation poured upon me at parades that he had in his district in Minnesota. There were some people that thought that $4.10 was a little bit much to be paying at the pump.
But the message that I got pretty loud and clear is that they want us to resolve it. When you pull into the gas station, there isn't a Republican pump and there isn't a Democratic pump and there isn't an independent pump, there is just gas that costs a lot of money today, and someone making $8 an hour in Ohio for a $320 per week gross paycheck is struggling, with $60, $70 filling up the tank to go to and from work.
There are a lot of opinions, and I will get into those in just a second, but I was reminded for the 12 years we were in the majority I happened to be supportive of something known as Davis-Bacon, which is the Federal prevailing wage law, and our committee is responsible for producing the Water Resources Development Act.
We were stymied for years in getting necessary water infrastructure projects out to our communities because of the sort of Davis-Bacon problem, and that is the then majority leader believed that if it came to a vote on an amendment, at that time by one of our colleagues who is not with us anymore, Mrs. Kelly of New York, that that issue would prevail, and much to the dismay of Members in the then majority party, who happened to be a majority of the majority but were a minority of the House, if that vote were permitted to have taken place. That was a frustrating thing, and, sadly, I think we find ourselves there again on this energy question.
There are Members in this House who advocate additional exploration and drilling in the United States, both on and offshore, in the West, in Alaska, off the east coast and the west coast. There are some who say no. There are some who advocate a replenishment and an increased investment in renewable, wind and solar. The gentleman from Minnesota is an expert on photovoltaic electricity, and certainly he has passed legislation that would be supportive of increased research and development of that type of energy generation.
There are those who believe like the French we should add nuclear power back into our portfolio. France, I believe, generates about 80 percent of its power through nuclear power. We haven't had a nuclear power program in this country for a number of years. There are those in this House that object to that and don't think that that is a good idea as well.
But the point is that I think that at $4, $4.10, $4.11, we have reached the price point where the American public, who has to get up and buy food, send their kids to school, pay their bills, pay their taxes and fill up their gas tanks, don't really want to hear why we disagree and what we can't agree on.
I think that they are looking for a solution. And there are a lot of people in both parties who are bellicose on this issue, and I don't intend to do that. But I think I would say that the time to have this national debate is now. We need to determine what direction the country is going to go in. And like most issues, the Democrats aren't 100 percent correct, the Republicans aren't 100 percent correct. But we are expected to be the leaders of the Nation and we are expected to come up with solutions.
So I would hope, not in the spirit of the old Water Resources Development Act where we were not permitted to have the House work its will, that the current leadership of the House would let the Members of the House work their will on what the energy policy of this country should be to give some relief to our citizens.
And since I am in a commending mood, Mr. Speaker, I would nominate the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, to be the designee of Speaker Pelosi to head up this effort and use the same bipartisan manner he uses on all other issues to get us out of this mess.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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