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Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support the nomination of RADM Ann Phillips to be Administrator of the Maritime Administration.

Rear Admiral Phillips served in the U.S. Navy for 31 years, served in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and held leadership positions such as the Director of Surface Warfare for the Chief of Naval Operations. Most recently, she served as special assistant to former Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam, where she focused on coastal adaptation and protection.

This nomination is so important to our maritime industry, especially as we are facing unprecedented challenges in the maritime supply chain. The Maritime Administration is responsible for supporting America's maritime transportation industry, including supporting the health of the U.S. merchant marine fleet, investing in port infrastructure, supporting American shipyards, and growing and training the maritime workforce.

Never before have maritime and shipping issues been more important to the health of our economy and consumers. Our ports are handling record amounts of cargo as COVID-19 has caused consumers to shift their spending habits to e-commerce. The arrival of these imports has led to record volumes at our U.S. ports.

In 2021, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach moved 10 million containers for the first time ever. In my State, the State of Washington, the Northwest Seaport Alliance saw a 15-percent increase in container volumes over the last year. So this unprecedented volume continues to cause massive challenges of ships backed up offshore and vessels anchoring or loitering in waiting areas near the Ports of L.A. and Long Beach. Twenty-two percent of sales have been lost by agricultural exports due to transportation delays and cancelations, with products like potatoes, milk, wheat, and seafood that are literally rotting on our port docks.

My colleagues and I have been working hard to pass the Ocean Shipping Reform Act. And we did that out of the Senate, and now, obviously, our colleagues in the House--we have different bills--hopefully, will either resolve this in USICA or, with the passage of one of these bills, with the Senate bill maybe being passed by the House.

But the Federal Maritime Commission needs tools to crack down on bad actors in the shipping industry and reduce costs facing consumers. Our bill that passed in March that, as I said, we are working to reconcile, we believe needs to become law as soon as possible.

But the bill is only a piece of the supply chain challenge. We need to make serious investments in our port infrastructure to handle the increasing capacity and get goods moving, and MARAD is charged with overseeing the Port Infrastructure Development Program, the primary grant program used to invest in our ports and help move our products. That is why it is so important to have this position.

President Biden's bipartisan infrastructure law included 2.25 billion MARAD port infrastructure development dollars for the next 5 years. I want to thank my colleague Senator Wicker for working with us on this-- this is such critical infrastructure investment--and all my colleagues who supported those programs. This huge economic opportunity and the volume of our trade needs the infrastructure at our ports to continue to increase.

We need Rear Admiral Phillips confirmed to make sure those dollars get out the door and get them to our ports now. We need the leadership of this organization to improve the resiliency of our ports, which are vulnerable to climate change and extreme storms. And we need Rear Admiral Phillips' experience in coastal resiliency as we have charged MARAD with building a maritime industry for the future that makes sure that we are looking at shore power issues and operating on cleaner fuels.

And we need Rear Admiral Phillips' experience in the Navy that will bring the expertise to the workforce mission. MARAD is tasked with ensuring that the United States has a strong merchant marine workforce to support the U.S. Sealift Program. The events in Ukraine have shown us that we must deal with the shortage of merchant mariners. It is estimated that we are over 1,800 merchant marine officers short of the need in case of a conflict. With the rise of China and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, we cannot take another minute for granted for the need for U.S.-flagged ships and U.S. mariners to support the logistics of the U.S. military. I know the Presiding Officer knows this very well.

In addition to strengthening our workforce, we need to invest in our shipyards, maintain our national defense needs as well as strengthen the U.S. flag fleet. This means investing in modern shipyards and identifying incentives to build new generations of U.S.-flagged ships.

These U.S. merchant mariners are also vital to the maritime industry. My State and various States face a workforce shortage and many of our other maritime sectors also. We need to skill and train a workforce for tomorrow.

Maritime jobs are good, family wage jobs, but we need to have a talented workforce that is inclusive, and we need to have an inclusive environment and work with the Coast Guard and the maritime industry to address issues of sexual assault and harassment to keep people safe in the workplace at sea.

Rear Admiral Phillips is the right person for this job to help the industry, the maritime unions, the shipping companies, and the Coast Guard to foster change. She has been a trailblazer in her career because she has been the first woman to command a destroyer squadron, the first woman Director of Surface Warfare, and now the first woman Maritime Administrator.

I urge my colleagues to support her nomination.

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