Unanimous Consent Request--S. 593
Floor Speech
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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, we talked a lot about the pandemic and all that it has brought. I would like to take just a few moments here, at the outset, before I ask for full consideration, to share with colleagues, very briefly, what we have faced in the State of Alaska with regard to our State's economy. We have probably taken a greater hit than any State in the country.
We saw a 32-percent drop in revenue last year, 10 percent higher than any other State in the Nation. We are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and that is good, but we are also facing the prospect of another devastating tourist season.
Back home, right now, people are not talking about the season for 2021 coming up. The motto is ``Get through to `22.'' That is an awful way to be approaching our situation so they have asked for help. They realize that anything that we can do to try to salvage even a few weeks of the tourist season is going to be important to us.
So Senator Sullivan and I have been working on behalf of hundreds of small businesses that rely on this essential income just so they can scrape by for another year. A lot of people don't think about cruise ships as being an essential activity during a pandemic but, let me tell you, in our State, where so much of our economy is based on tourism, it is an imperative. It is jobs; it is livelihoods; and it really is what allows our small communities to keep their doors open.
In 2019, before the pandemic was upon us, we were looking at 1.33 million tourists who came to the State of Alaska by way of cruise ship. That is pretty significant. In 2020, there were 48 passengers. That is 48 passengers. That is not 48,000. So, in other words, you had an economy that was looking pretty strong and pretty good, and it absolutely went into a free fall.
Normally, the tourism industry generates more than $214 million in State and municipal revenue, more than $1.4 billion in payroll, $2.2 billion in visitor spending, and the prospect was doing nothing but going up until we were hit in 2020. The vastly diminished cruise season contributed to statewide unemployment rising from 6.2 percent to 11 percent. Southeast Alaska had greater unemployment, which increased from 4.7 to 11.3--17 percent of all jobs in the region impacted.
This kind of unemployment and this kind of stress is an extraordinary challenge. So Alaskans are trying to figure out is there a way to salvage there, and there are two points here.
We are ready to welcome visitors back in the State. We are leading the country in vaccination rates. Half of all Alaskans have had their first dose. So 43 percent are fully vaccinated, but we have got two issues that we are facing here; first is, the Centers for Disease Control has their no sail order for the cruise industry in place. We actually got some very encouraging news just last evening. CDC has acknowledged these changing circumstances with regard to vaccination. They updated their guidance for how to safely resume cruising, so that is good. That is a positive.
But we have got a second issue, and that second issue is that Canada has a ban on allowing passenger vessels to depart from or transit through their waters. We are dealing with a law that is controlling so much of this because, in the United States, we only allow domestically built, owned, and crewed vessels to operate on solely domestic trips. This is the Passenger Vessel Services Act, the PVSA.
So we have got a situation that without a stop in Canada, a cruise to Alaska is a domestic ship. Canada has effectively been available to cruise companies that offer voyages to Alaska--not built in the United States, not crewed by U.S. citizens, not permitted to sail in Alaska without making a stop in a foreign country because otherwise this violates the PVSA. So what we are trying to do, we are trying to work with the Canadians to resolve this issue. It has been tough making headway because Canada is in a different spot when it comes to their vaccines.
We have turned to a legislative fix, a temporary legislative fix. There are a lot of different opinions on PVSA and the Jones Act. I am not here to debate them today, but what I am trying to offer, along with Senator Sullivan, is a temporary fix that will allow the cruise ships to travel between Washington State and Alaska because what we are trying to do here--I am not trying to save the cruise companies; I am trying to save communities that are so dependent on these vessels that bring these passengers up.
For them, it is critical. If we can't get some level of relief, and we can't get folks north, they are not going to--they have been on hold now since last year. So 14 months until we get into 2022, on top of what we have already seen, these businesses won't be there.
What we are doing is we temporarily deemed that a voyage to Alaska from Washington State without a stop in Canada is, by law, a foreign voyage. So PVSA is not going to hold us back. I have worked with Senator Cantwell, and I have worked with Senator Blumenthal to address some of the issues that they have raised, and I thank them both for their efforts to work with me.
We have incorporated, in this amendment, three simple requirements-- two of which the industry already adheres to--requiring defibrillators on ships, making sure that the passengers' bill of rights is publicly available, and we asked the Secretary to consider a rulemaking on how to safely return human remains in the tragic event that someone passes away on a cruise. These are simple, commonsense changes that ensure cruises are safe for passengers and the crew.
Along with Senator Sullivan and Congressman Young, I would ask the Senate to consider and pass the Alaska Tourism Recovery Act so that cruises can gain some semblance--some semblance--of opportunity in Alaska, as they have for so long.
So, again, I will restate my motion here asking unanimous consent that Murkowski amendment No. 593 be called up and agreed to.
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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, to just wrap up this discussion, I really appreciate the comments from my colleague Senator Sullivan because I think you have really keyed in on where we are today.
The Alaska Tourism Restoration Act is such a narrowly defined in scope initiative to, again, create this very brief period of time to allow for what is left or what will remain of a tourist season to proceed. But we are faced with bigger issues, and these issues clearly evoke great passion and debate, whether it is consumer protection or to Senator Lee's concerns that he has raised overall about Jones Act and PVSA.
So those are significant issues that will be debated in committees as we move forward and further debated on the floor. But I think, at this point in time, the recognition from our colleagues from Connecticut and from Utah that this effort that we are trying to make in Alaska to redeem a small segment of our tourist season--those who come to us by cruise ship--that just perhaps the strength of cooperation you see here today will be that level of encouragement for the ships to start coming north in anticipation of clearer and more beneficial guidance, working with CDC.
It has been a lot of pieces to knit together. It hasn't been particularly easy or pretty, but I would like to think that the folks in southeastern Alaska and throughout the State will see the benefits of this in the weeks and months ahead.
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