Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROYCE. I thank the gentleman.

Congratulations here to Chairman Shuster and Ranking Member DeFazio for getting this important bill to the floor today. We are certainly proud to support our men and women serving in the United States Coast Guard. They play such a critical role there through rescue and saving lives and the role that they play also in drug interdiction and in protecting our territorial waters.

I would also like to recognize the cooperative way in which Chairman Hunter has worked to address concerns about how this bill would impact an important lifesaving program under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and that is the Food for Peace program. Over the past several years, the effort to reform the Food for Peace program so that we can feed more people in crisis overseas in less time for less money has been portrayed as a zero-sum game between the intended beneficiaries of our generosity and the U.S. merchant marine. That is unfortunate because that is wrong.

What is clear, though, is that we need to fix this problem in the sense that, after Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines in 2013, U.S. purchase and shipping requirements delayed deliveries of U.S. food for 3 weeks. Now, fortunately, with the Food for Peace program, those needs were met.

But now in Nepal, it would take 45 days to get U.S. food in country even though food has been pre-positioned in nearby Sri Lanka. So that is why this element of the Food for Peace program is so important. If we had to wait 45 days to respond to every humanitarian disaster, some people would perish. Certainly many would be on the verge of starvation over that 45-day period.

I am, therefore, pleased to see that this year the Coast Guard authorization bill does not raise cargo preference requirements from 50 percent to 75, and further, the bill's cargo preference enforcement provisions maintain important consultation and public comment requirements. At the same time, the recently passed national defense authorization bill will accelerate support for the existing Maritime Security Program.

I appreciate Chairman HUNTER's work to ensure that U.S. maritime security needs are fulfilled through a national defense mechanism rather than relying upon food aid cargos.

Mr. Speaker, preserving U.S. maritime security is essential, but it need not come at the expense of food aid. I look forward to continuing to work with Chairman HUNTER and Ranking Member Garamendi on creative solutions that enable us to preserve U.S. maritime security while making Food for Peace more effective, more efficient, and most importantly, getting it there on time for those that are in need after a disaster.

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