Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Amendments Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) has been an extraordinary leader on trying to address a critical need that the United States has.

The Arctic Ocean is opening. There is not only a Northwest Passage, but there is a Northeast Passage. And this year, just a couple of weeks ago--less than 2 weeks ago--a cruise ship passed through the Northwest Passage without the aid of an icebreaker.

We absolutely have to have a polar icebreaker. As the chairman said, we have one icebreaker today, and it is going to go in for overhaul.

When it does, we have no heavy icebreaker either for the North Pole or the South Pole.

We are in trouble. We have to have this. The U.S. Navy has to have it. U.S. security has to have it. And certainly for the commerce in the Arctic, we have to have it. It is a reality. The Arctic Ocean is opening. Commerce will take place. And it will also need military availability in that area.

The legislation that is before us today does not have the proper language in it because of CBO sitting on their duff and doodling numbers when we know we need this language.

The Senate appropriations bill has a billion dollars for icebreakers, but there is no authorization. Unfortunately, because of our rules here, we had to strip the language out. Later, we hope to put the language back in, but it is not available today.

We have to have this. We go back meeting after meeting, hearing after hearing, year after year, 4 or 5 years that we have been working on this, and then, at the very last moment, CBO can't get its act together. Well, I am sorry, CBO. We ought to waive the rules and get on with what we need to do here, which is to provide the authorization.

The language that the chairman has worked out with me and others would not only provide the authorization, but would do it in such a way as to give us the very best possible financial deal on the construction of icebreakers--that is a block buy--and also authorizing, should the money be available in the future, an additional three lighter icebreakers beyond the three heavy icebreakers.

Not to say we are going to build it all at once, but the authorization is in the law. That then allows the Coast Guard to properly line it up for the very best deal that we can get, maybe one at a time, maybe two or three over a 5- or 10-year period of time.

Unfortunately, that language had to be stripped out.

So when the chairman started his explanation of this bill, he did so to call all of our attention to what is not in the bill that should have been in the bill, but for CBO and the rules that we have that require us to have CBO's accounting before we move an authorization.

That is where we are today. Unfortunately, it is where we are. So we are going to move this bill along. We will probably--hopefully--come back before this session is over in the lameduck session and write this thing properly. Unfortunately, today we are not there. There is more to be said about the rest of the bill.

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