Executive Calendar
Floor Speech
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The issue was a matter under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee, and for the information of the Senate, this part of the bill has been introduced as a stand-alone bill. Senate bill 168 was referred to the Commerce Committee and not the EPW Committee, and the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee agrees with that. So this argument that somehow this is not under the committee's jurisdiction is one I would raise as an objection to the request of Senator from Washington.
Secondly, as I think the Senator from Washington knows, we have worked tirelessly with every member of our committee on both sides of the aisle and Members off the committee. Furthermore, I think we have accommodated every request the Senator from Washington has made on this bill, and we have involved her in all these discussions. My understanding was that as a result of that consultation and those discussions on the bill, she was going to vote in favor of the bill.
Now what she wants to do is take out those pieces of a very carefully negotiated bill that she doesn't like and pass just the provisions that she likes. It would be great if, here in the U.S. Senate, we could all do that. But that doesn't happen around here.
We carefully negotiated this, with great input from the Senator from Washington, and it was my understanding that the Senator from Washington was going to vote for this package. Politics is being played here--pure and simple, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.
I might add, this bill has been introduced and dealt with at the committee level during five different Congresses--five different Congresses. This year, it has passed not once, but twice, out of the Senate Commerce Committee by a voice vote.
It seems to me, at least, that even after it came out of the committee, the fact that we negotiated this with the Senator from Washington and multiple Senators on the other side of the aisle, both on and off the committee, to come up with a balanced package that enjoyed broad bipartisan support--65 votes--until this afternoon, suggests to me this is purely politics being played with this legislation.
This is an important bill. This is the Coast Guard. This is VIDA. VIDA was referred to the Commerce Committee by the Parliamentarian. We have worked with the Commerce Committee; we have worked with the EPW Committee; we have worked with the EPA. The EPA is supporting the solution. This is not the political-level EPA; these are the career folks at the EPA who support the solution we have come up with. Yet we run into these objections that are all of a sudden--all of a sudden-- coming up out of thin air.
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