Executive Calendar
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I am sure all of my colleagues are going to want to listen to this speech. I am on the floor with my colleagues Senator Whitehouse and Senator Menendez to talk about some very important legislation for our country, legislation that passed the Senate last week. It is the Save Our Seas 2.0 legislation.
I begin by thanking Senator Whitehouse and Senator Menendez for their leadership on this bill.
We are going to talk a little bit about the importance of it, why it matters to Alaska, to New Jersey, to Rhode Island, and to the whole country. This is a significant piece of legislation. It is, really, the most comprehensive piece of legislation to pass the Congress--to pass the Senate--that has dealt with ocean debris and ocean pollution--ever. That sounds like a pretty hyperbolic phrase, but it is true. We checked with the CRS. There has been nothing more comprehensive than this piece of legislation that tackles an issue we all care about--clean oceans.
As a matter of fact, on Thursday night, 100 Senators passed this after there having been a lot of work on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, on the Committee on Environment and Public Works, and on the Committee on Foreign Relations. After about a year of work on this, we finally got it passed. A number of Senators--Democrats and Republicans--were cosponsors. I really want to thank the two Senators who are on the floor right now. In particular, Senator Whitehouse has been a real leader on these issues that deal with oceans. This is an environmental issue that we can solve. Republicans and Democrats in the Congress, the Trump administration in the White House, and environmental and industry groups are all pulling on the same oar, and we had a good start last Thursday on what this does.
I want to turn it over to my colleague from Rhode Island because, in many ways, he has been the real leader, the driver, and is the founder of the Oceans Caucus. Bit by bit, legislation by legislation, he and I cosponsored the first Save Our Seas Act in the last Congress. To much fanfare in the Oval Office, the President signed it, and now you are starting to see people work on this. There is a whole section in the USMCA on cleaning up our oceans. We have gone from Save Our Seas 1.0, which has already passed into law, to Save Our Seas 2.0. I think it is exciting, and I think the American people don't always hear about the bipartisan work that is actually getting done on big issues that matter to our Nation. There is a lot.
Cleaning up our oceans is one that matters to everybody and, certainly, to my State, with its having more coastline than the rest of the lower 48 combined. You don't even have to live in a coastal State to care about this issue. Some of our cosponsors on this bill--on both sides of the aisle--are from States that don't even have any coastline. That is how important it is.
I want to turn it over to Senator Whitehouse. I thank him for his and Senator Menendez' leadership. We will talk a little bit about what is in it and what we are going to do next. This is a good day for the environment in America. It is a good day for the oceans not just in our country, not just in Alaska, not just in Rhode Island but in the world. As a nation, if we are leading on this, which this legislation does, then we are going to be able to help clean up our oceans all over the world. We had a good start here on Thursday night in the U.S. Senate when we passed this bill legislatively unanimously.
Again, to my colleague from Rhode Island, the floor is his.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Menendez and Senator Whitehouse again for their leadership on this.
We have all seen the pictures and the news stories. The issue, though, is a severe one. The World Economic Forum has estimated that if we don't do anything about this big crisis of ocean debris, but particularly the issue of plastics in the ocean, there are estimates that by 2050 there will be more plastics by weight in the world's ocean than there are fish. We can't let that happen.
So what we have done is we have put together this bill. As already mentioned, there were three different committees. There is an element on the domestic innovation side that creates a Marine Debris Foundation. That is a congressionally chartered private organization.
Think of groups that matter to Americans. There are dozens of these kinds of foundations, but they are important. They send a signal that the Congress of the United States cares about these things. Think about the Red Cross, the American Legion, and the National Parks Foundation. These are all congressionally chartered organizations. The new Marine Debris Foundation will be one of them.
The American Government is focused on this. It is an opportunity for the private sector, and we have seen some industries step up. There is a group called the Alliance to End Plastic Waste that has pledged $1.5 billion to start addressing this problem. That is not small change. It is going to need that kind of money. Perhaps some of that can go into this foundation.
There is an innovation prize. A lot of focus in our bill is on innovation so that we can solve some of the big challenges in chemistry--a plastic bottle that could fully biodegrade. We don't have that yet, but these are some of the things that the bill looks at doing.
Of course, Senator Menendez talked about the very substantial foreign relations component because so much of the plastic waste in the oceans comes from countries in Asia and Africa and 10 rivers, estimating almost 80 to 90 percent of all of the plastic waste in all of the oceans. So, again, it is solvable because it is definable.
Then, the third component is improving domestic infrastructure to prevent marine debris through new grants and foreign studies for waste management mitigation. So this covers a lot of different areas-- innovation, our domestic side, the international side.
We have momentum. We had a great group of bipartisan Senators-- Democrats and Republicans from all over the country and from all political persuasions--showing that momentum. We have the Trump administration fully behind this. In many ways, some of their Federal agencies weighed in significantly to help us design this legislation, and now we need to get it over to the House and move it in the House soon and get it to the President's desk.
So this is a good day for the oceans and a good day for bipartisan success in the U.S. Senate on an issue that people care about. People really care about making sure that we have clean oceans and we are making progress.
So I just want to leave it at that, and I will ask my colleague from Rhode Island, who has been the real leader on this issue, to wrap it up.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I look forward to another White House signing of this with all of our colleagues. I am sure that the administration is interested in it. You and I had a very eventful one over at the White House a couple years ago.
So, again, the momentum is there. We are just going to keep building on it.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source