Executive Calendar
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor with a bunch of thank-yous after Thursday evening's happy news that Save Our Seas 2.0 passed the U.S. Senate by unanimous consent.
I thank all of the Senate Members of our bipartisan Oceans Caucus. The Oceans Caucus has been a really good forum for getting these bills moving to a point at which they can pass by unanimous consent. I and Senator Murkowski, who is Senator Sullivan's colleague from Alaska, set it up years ago. It now has over 40 Members. It is very bipartisan, and it has had a really important role in moving bipartisan oceans legislation.
So, Oceans Caucus, thank you.
This bill, Save Our Seas 2.0, had to go through three committees. It had to go through Commerce, Foreign Relations, and Environment and Public Works. Let me start in reverse order because Senator Barrasso, the chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, is here on the Senate floor. I express my appreciation to him and my appreciation to our ranking member, Senator Carper, for having shepherded this through the committee with unanimous committee support, and that gave it a lot of momentum to go on to Foreign Relations and to Commerce.
So, my friend Senator Barrasso, thank you, sir. I do appreciate it very much. I think this is a score, a good win. A good deed was done here.
Foreign Relations was also very important, and Senator Menendez, our ranking member, is about to speak, so I will not steal his thunder. He has been an incredibly valuable part of this triumvirate, and I am extremely grateful to Senator Menendez.
Also, on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Senators Wicker and Cantwell were very helpful about making sure this got through Commerce and were helpful once it was on the floor.
Most of all, though, my thanks go to Senator Sullivan, of Alaska. We started down this road quite some time ago. We tentatively got into the space of ocean plastic waste with a simple hearing in the Committee on Environment and Public Works. He had an essential role in making that happen because there was a turf conflict between our subcommittee and the EPW and the Subcommittee on Science, Oceans, Fisheries, and Weather within the Commerce Committee.
Now, if you are not from the Senate, you think that this is all crazy talk, but if you are in the Senate, it is a really serious problem to have to resolve. We had the very good fortune of having the chairman of the Fisheries Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee and the chairman of our subcommittee of the Environment and Public Works Committee being the same individual, none other than Senator Dan Sullivan. So he went out and had a nice debate with himself and was able to negotiate a happy resolution of that turf dispute, and the hearing went forward. Without that, it never would have happened. So that was the opening bid.
Then we got to 1.0, which, admittedly, was not a very big bill, but it was going to test the proposition: Was the Senate willing to legislate on marine plastic waste? Yes. We got a big, booming, 100-vote support for that in the Senate. Senator Sullivan was so happy with that outcome that we immediately went to work on crafting 2.0, which, as Senator Sullivan has pointed out, is not just a beachhead but is significant marine plastic waste legislation. It will push the administration to do a lot more, for more than half of the waste in the oceans comes from 5 Asian countries, and more than 80 percent of the waste in the oceans comes from 10 rivers in Asia and Africa. This is a solvable problem if we direct attention and resources and solutions to that problem, and I am really looking forward to following up on that.
I am really looking forward to getting right to work on Save Our Seas 3.0 because we are not done here. There is a lot of plastic mess out there to clean up, and there is a lot of energy around getting even more done.
So, Senator Sullivan, you have my great appreciation.
I will close, if I may, with one unlikely thank-you. As Senator Sullivan mentioned, this reminded me that there are Senators who supported this who don't even have coasts. They are from those square end States in the middle of the country that don't have coasts. One of them who has been very important to this has been Senator Inhofe, of Oklahoma.
Now, on climate change, Senator Inhofe and I are at each other's throats pretty much all of the time. We are always having fights about climate change. I call him a climate denier, and he calls me a climate alarmist. We go back and forth, fighting about climate change. Yet, on this, he has been an essential ally, and having his support has sent, I think, a terrific signal to the Senate that, hey, if Senator Whitehouse and Senator Inhofe can agree on this, there is room for me in there somewhere.
And so a final thank you to Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, but the biggest thank you, of course, is to Senator Sullivan, who really made this happen.
With that, I yield to my colleague and friend Senator Menendez, who has been so important to this, so he can add his thoughts.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am delighted to close this out. Again, I thank Senator Sullivan. I think there is reason to hope for a really good appropriations subcommittee hearing on this subject in the coming year. I think there is reason to hope for another Environmental and Public Works Committee full committee hearing on marine plastics. I expect those things will happen, and that will help us with our progress.
One of the things I have come to admire about Senator Sullivan is that, as a colonel in the U.S. Marines, he sets himself a mission and then he goes about it with real vigor. One of the missions that he set himself was to make sure that the Trump administration followed up on what Save Our Seas 1.0 did.
There were a lot of doors that were knocked on that had their hinges rattled by Senator Sullivan. There are a lot of administration officials who probably had to hold the phone an inch or so away from their ears because Senator Sullivan was trying to get their attention on this subject.
Having seen him in action on Save Our Seas 1.0, I very much look forward to watching him in action on Save Our Seas 2.0 and to make sure that its legislative promise is fully realized in executive implementation.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, on to Save Our Seas 3.0.
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