Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

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Ms. BALDWIN. Thank you, Madam President and colleagues.

The next vote will be on cloture on a motion to concur with an amendment that is the Coast Guard reauthorization, but with a special provision that I want to draw all my colleagues' attention to, dealing with incidental discharges from vessels.

I am strongly supportive of the Coast Guard reauthorization, but this VIDA provision, as it is known, is extremely troublesome. It impacts both freshwater coasts of the Great Lakes as well as our other coastal regions, and it strips the Environmental Protection Agency of its scientific role in setting standards for discharges and puts the Coast Guard entirely in charge of these decisions and enforcement.

In addition, it strips all of our coastal States of the authority to pass laws concerning the waters off their coasts. Wisconsin is a State that has passed its own water discharge rules. It has done so because we need to protect the greatest fresh drinking water source in the world and in our Nation.

We also have had threats of invasive species that would decimate our Great Lakes. Ballast water and incidental discharges can often be the cause of those invasive species. In addition, there are chemicals that can enter the water if this is not regulated. This is not the time for a one-size-fits-all approach.

We should remove the VIDA provision from the Coast Guard reauthorization, pass the Coast Guard reauthorization on a voice vote because it is absolutely not controversial, and then get to the hard work of doing VIDA the right way.

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