Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 4188

Floor Speech

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Mr. SULLIVAN. 4188, the Coast Guard reauthorization, which was received from the House; I further ask that the Thune substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to talk about the broader issue here. I appreciate the willingness of my colleague from Delaware to work on this important issue. The Coast Guard reauthorization bill passed out of the commerce committee unanimously in April.

We talk a lot about national security here on the Senate floor. We talk about our men and women in uniform and how they are protecting us. But I have always liked to mention the men and women in the Coast Guard. Prior to 9/11, you can make a very strong argument that the Coast Guard was probably the only uniformed service whose members were risking their lives for Americans day in and day out every single day. I think a lot of their heroism goes unnoticed. Trust me, in Alaska we see it daily.

The Coast Guard admirably performs a variety of missions on a daily basis throughout our great Nation with a team of fewer than 90,000 members comprised of Active-Duty, Reserve, civilian, and Volunteer forces and an annual budget of less than $10 billion, with, let's face it, a fleet of aging vessels and aircraft.

The ranking member of the commerce committee, Senator Nelson from Florida, and I talk a lot about how heroic these men and women are and how they deserve our attention, just like other members of the military.

Last year the Coast Guard executed more than 17,500 search and rescue missions--these are incredibly dangerous, by the way--in rough waters off the coast of Alaska and Florida and Delaware and saved over 3,400 lives. Think about that--3,400 lives in 1 year. In addition, last year the Coast Guard law enforcement crews interdicted over 140 metric tons of narcotics, detained over 300 smugglers, and interdicted more than 3,500 migrants.

What we are talking about here is bipartisan legislation that needs to be passed that will do one very important thing for our country and the Coast Guard: It is going to improve the mission readiness and performance of the Coast Guard. It demonstrates that the Congress of the United States is paying attention to these brave young men and women.

I am disappointed because we have worked hard to move this legislation since April. We have worked hard. We stripped out provisions that the other side had problems with. Section 605 is gone now, to move this forward. So we have been working hard. I thought we were going to pass this legislation this morning.

The provision my colleague from Delaware was talking about is section 606 of the Coast Guard Authorization Act, and it is simply looking to create consistency and reduce forum shopping in lawsuits involving mariners.

While I understand that some special interests--trial lawyers in particular--are not always interested in judicial consistency or efficiency because it is not in the interest of their bottom line, I wish to remind this body that the provision we are talking about passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives in a bipartisan manner-- not once, not twice, but three times in the past 2 years. Three times. It is not a controversial provision.

Section 606 is about forum shopping for foreign mariners. In fact, section 606 is not even about Americans; it is about forum shopping for foreign mariners in foreign waters on foreign-flagged ships. That is the issue which is holding up the reauthorization of the Coast Guard bill for our brave men and women who serve in the Coast Guard. Why that provision should be holding us up is beyond me.

But I did have a good discussion with my colleague from Delaware. We are more than willing to continue to work with our colleagues to reach consensus. But I certainly hope we can get there today and not let one small provision that is very focused on one special interest group hold up a bipartisan bill which everybody on the commerce committee voted for and which is going to do something very important: recognize the men and women in the Coast Guard who risk their lives--just like everybody else in the military--on a daily basis to protect Americans.

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