Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to speak about the Coast Guard reauthorization legislation that just passed the Senate today. I thank my colleagues for all of their hard work on this important measure that literally has taken years to piece together. I thank Chairman Thune and Ranking Member Nelson for working on this legislation and for incorporating many of the things that the people of Washington were interested in seeing as part of this comprehensive bill. I certainly want to thank Senator Carper and the EPW staff for working on major provisions of this bill relating to ballast water and the solutions they put forward. This bill includes many provisions important to our Coast Guard, our environment, and to our shipbuilding community. It represents a true bipartisan effort to find solutions and to put those solutions into action.

Our State of Washington is rich in its maritime heritage. The Coast Guard is a large part of that. With so much coastline, and so many rivers and streams, the Coast Guard is so important. Our State is home to fishermen, shipbuilders, Tribes, trade operators, and a thriving tourism economy. So for places from Cape Disappointment and Grays Harbor to Neah Bay and all the way up the Columbia River, our Washington State Coast Guard works tirelessly to protect the Northwest and our environment.

In our State, there are more than 2,000 Active-Duty coasties, 440 reservists, 192 civilian employees, and an impressive 869 volunteer auxiliary members in the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard plays an important role in the safety and oversight of our fisheries. Thousands of Pacific Northwest fishermen call Washington State home, and over 35,000 Washington State jobs are supported by the Alaska fisheries.

While we usually talk about big assets here on the floor, like icebreakers and national security cutters, Washington State is also home to heavy surf stations that serve in some of the most extreme conditions that people have to operate under.

This bipartisan Coast Guard legislation has many provisions that I would like to talk about this afternoon. I want to again thank my colleagues for their great bipartisan work on this legislation.

This legislation has many different solutions for many of the challenges our agencies face. I want to again thank Senator Thune for working across the aisle on the various Coast Guard provisions that are included in this bill, and I want to thank Senator Sullivan for helping to cosponsor the authorization of the recapitalization of the Coast Guard heavy polar icebreaker, the Polar Star. The Polar Star is home- ported in Seattle and is our only operational heavy icebreaker, crucial for Arctic operations.

The language that we just passed improves the oversight of ships that pose an oil spill risk in Puget Sound. This is so important for us moving forward to have these types of assets in these critical waters.

This bill also includes language to strengthen the Coast Guard's family leave policies, as they moved forward to meet other branches in adding paid family leave. The legislation included language that helps to improve the flexibility of that paid family leave for various parts of our State that are most hard to serve.

The Coast Guard families should not be forced to choose between serving their country and supporting their families, and I so appreciate the incorporation of this language into this legislation.

This bipartisan deal also helps to protect good shipbuilding jobs at Dakota Creek Shipyard. I am a very strong supporter of the Jones Act, and I believe it is important that we continue to have the Jones Act in the future. I am proud that we were able to work together to find a solution to save good jobs at the Dakota Creek Shipyard, and I appreciate my colleagues working on the incorporation of that language.

This legislation also included a critical compromise to address the threat of invasive species and the threat they pose to our waterways in many different parts of the United States. We worked hard on this solution, consulting with the State of Washington, and believe that this version, which does create regulatory certainty for maritime operators but does so while still protecting our environment, is critical.

The bill allows the State of Washington, which has a strong history of protecting our waters from invasive species, to modify the west coast ballast water management practices, which is very important for us to protect our waterways for the future. It requires that the most rigorous scientific standards are used--including the Clean Water Act's best available technology standard so important to us in the Northwest. The bill also creates tools for emergency response to invasive species so they can be stopped before they take a stronghold in our environment. Lastly, it includes a permanent fishing vessel exemption for incidental discharges which do not pose a threat to our environment.

All of these things were part of a very comprehensive Coast Guard bill that tried to give us the best tools possible to continue to operate in our coastal areas of the United States, to have the right resources, to have the right oversight, to have the right assets, and the right protection of our environment.

Again, I thank our colleagues on both sides of the aisle for working so diligently to finally get this legislation over the threshold and on to the President's desk.

The Coast Guard represents such an important maritime piece of our economy. I hope our colleagues will realize we need to give the Coast Guard the resources and assets to do their jobs, not just now in this legislation but moving forward as well.

I also want to thank our Coast Guard fellow, Lieutenant Commander Michelle Rosenberg, for her time working on this comprehensive legislation for the last several years.

I, again, thank my colleagues.

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