[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 206 (Thursday, December 14, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5977-S5979]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 3533

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to talk a few minutes about 
seafood.
  In many respects, at least in terms of our physical health, we are 
what we eat, and Americans have been eating a lot more seafood, which 
is good for you.
  A lot of people don't know this. I didn't until I researched. Ninety-
four percent of the seafood sold in the United States is imported--94 
percent. That is a pretty extraordinary figure. Of the various types of 
seafood, shrimp represents the highest volume of imports of total 
edible fishery products.
  Given that this seafood is imported, we have to be careful. For that 
reason, Congress created what we call the Seafood Import Monitoring 
Program. I am going to call it SIMP, S-I-M-P. So if I say ``SIMP,'' you 
will know what I am talking about. SIMP's job is to make sure that 
these foreign imports are safe--safe to eat for the American people.
  SIMP has jurisdiction over 13 different species groups and about--
well, over 1,100 unique species. As I said, that includes shrimp and 
red snapper but almost all forms of seafood that are grown overseas, 
are produced overseas and imported--or exported, I should say, to the 
United States.
  Now, this sounds simple, but it is not. SIMP's job is to ask 
questions. SIMP wants to know how the seafood was caught. SIMP wants to 
know the conditions under which the seafood was farmed, if it is a 
domestic product. If the seafood has been processed, SIMP wants to know 
how it was processed, what the final form was supposed to look like and 
what it actually does look like.
  SIMP is supposed to keep us safe. Part of the way that SIMP keeps us 
safe is to inspect the product--not just look at the reporting 
requirements that the foreign producers give to SIMP but actually look 
at the product, whether it is the raw seafood or whether it is 
processed. SIMP inspects it.
  In fiscal year 2020, SIMP--once again, the Seafood Import Monitoring 
Program, SIMP--and its auditing team

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completed 1,131 investigations. That is the good news. The bad news is, 
that was only 1 percent--1 percent--of all of the imports.
  Of the audits or investigations--the inspections, if you will--that 
SIMP did, about 40 percent of those were on shrimp. Of the 40 percent 
that SIMP did on shrimp, 35 percent were found to be not in compliance 
with the rules. Thirty-five percent was unsafe.
  This is serious business. Unlike most of our domestic producers, a 
lot of the producers in foreign countries try to produce their shrimp 
or their seafood on the cheap. They raise the product in filthy water. 
They don't have rigorous standards for processing the product if they 
take the raw product and turn it into a final product. Oftentimes, many 
of these foreign producers shoot the shrimp and other forms of seafood, 
like red snapper, with antibiotics, which, of course, if you eat enough 
of them, makes you resistant to those antibiotics if you get sick in 
another way that the antibiotics could cure.
  I mean, let me just be blunt. Some of this product is unsafe. It will 
make you grow an extra ear. And that is why we have SIMP, is to say: 
Wait a minute. You can't sell this in the United States.
  Once again, of the 1,100-and-change inspections that SIMP did in 
fiscal year 2020, 40 percent were shrimp, and SIMP found that 35 
percent of that 40 percent failed the test.
  SIMP is able to inspect, as I said, 1 percent of this exported--for 
us, imported--seafood. One percent. It needs to be doing 10 percent. It 
needs to be doing 10 percent, and my bill would help them do 10 
percent. My bill would provide additional funding for additional 
seafood inspections on imported seafood, and we would be asking SIMP to 
go from 1 percent inspections of all imported seafood to 10 percent.
  Now, there is no free lunch, Mr. President, and you don't get one 
now. My bill costs money. It will cost $36 million. In the grand scheme 
of our spending, that is not much, but $36 million is a lot of money. 
And I didn't want to come up here and just offer a bill that was a 
money suck; I wanted to come up here and say: Look, we have a problem. 
It will cost $36 million to solve it, and here is where the money is 
going to come from.
  The money, the $36 million, will come from the money that has been 
appropriated--the extra billions of dollars that have been 
appropriated--to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS, believe me, 
will never miss the $36 million. The IRS wastes that much money between 
bites of oatmeal at breakfast.
  If we do this bill, people can enjoy their seafood, and they can 
appreciate the fact that it is safe.
  So for that reason, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous 
consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 
3533, which is at the desk--and S. 3533, as I just indicated, is the 
Seafood Import Monitoring Program Audits bill--and I further ask that 
the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the 
motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. WYDEN. Reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I just heard about this legislative idea a 
few minutes ago. So I really have very little information about it.
  But what I can tell you is, we already know what the bottom line is. 
The amendment offered by the Senator from Louisiana will hurt honest 
taxpayers and will help wealthy tax cheats. That is the bottom line.
  Now, I am all for seafood inspections. We have got loads of seafood 
in our part of the world. But I want to take just a minute to talk 
about the reasons that Members of this body ought to oppose the 
legislation.
  First--and the Congressional Budget Office has made this point--this 
amendment uses the fake offset of cutting IRS funding. The cut in IRS 
funding included in this amendment doesn't pay for an increase in 
seafood inspections; it increases the deficit. And the reason I say 
that is because that is what the Congressional Budget Office says about 
these ideas.
  The Congressional Budget Office are the folks that we put in place to 
give us objective, nonpolitical analyses of various important ideas. 
The Congressional Budget Office are the people that we use on the 
Finance Committee regularly, and the Congressional Budget Office has 
said that every dollar cut from the IRS budget reduces revenue by $2. 
And that increases the deficit.
  Second, this has given a big pass to wealthy tax cheats. People need 
to know that the reason there is a focus on IRS enforcement is because 
the wealthy tax cheats have the lawyers and accountants, and they have 
all kinds of ways to get around the rules. The working families that we 
represent--the folks in Michigan, the automobile workers--pay taxes 
with every single paycheck. We know what kind of financing they have 
because they pay with every check. It is the wealthy tax cheats that we 
have to deal with.
  And I just say to my friend, the kind of person that he has given a 
pass to is--we recently found almost a thousand millionaires who didn't 
even file a tax return. Not one of the scams--they didn't even file a 
tax return, almost a thousand millionaires. The Federal Government lost 
more than $30 billion just on that.
  So the Senate ought to be focusing on making sure that we have tough 
IRS enforcement, that we have the funding to improve services for all 
taxpayers--all of them--and, particularly, ending the free ride, once 
and for all, for wealthy tax cheats.
  And the service has gone up. We have seen reduction in waiting times 
for calls from 28 minutes to 3 minutes.
  I wish I had time to have a more extended exchange with my colleague. 
We are, right now, in our caucus meeting having debates on important 
issues.
  But I would just say, in the future, if my colleague could even give 
us 15- or 20-minutes' notice, we could maybe have a more extended 
discussion.
  The people who get help here are wealthy tax cheats. The people who 
are hurt here are honest taxpayers. And for that reason, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, look, I understand Senator Wyden's point 
of view. I don't think he meant this, but I don't want to leave anyone 
with the impression that he didn't know about this bill and that all of 
my colleagues didn't know about this bill.
  We have something called a hotline. And when we have a bill and we 
want to try to move it on the floor, we, through this hotline, notify 
well in advance every Senator: Hey, Kennedy is coming to the floor at 
this time, on this day, with his bill. If you object to it, you can 
come down and object.
  That hotline was sent to Senator Wyden. It was sent to all the other 
98 of my colleagues. It was sent to every single Senator, and we do 
hotlines every day.
  So if he was surprised, I am sorry. But that is between him and his 
staff.
  Point two, I appreciate Senator Wyden's point of view. He is a smart 
gentleman. He is smart enough to know this has nothing to do with 
wealthy tax cheats. This has to do with safe seafood for the American 
people.
  The bill would have cost $36 million. It would come from the IRS. No 
Republican Senator voted for it. My Democratic colleagues gave the IRS 
$80 billion extra--$80 billion extra--to go out and audit the American 
people. This will take $36 million of it to make sure that they are 
still alive when the IRS audits them because they may not be eating 
dangerous shrimp full of antibiotics.
  Does the IRS need all $80 billion? Of course not. How do I know that? 
Don't take Kennedy's word for it. Take the word of the gentleman who 
asked us to pass the bill: President Biden. He has already told us the 
IRS doesn't need the full $80 billion. He offered up $20 billion to us 
for this year's budget to spend on other things.
  So the idea that the world is going to spin off its axis--and wealthy 
tax cheats and all of this other foolishness--is just not accurate. I 
say that with all respect to my colleague, Senator Wyden.
  I will be back. For $36 million, we can protect the American people. 
I can promise you that the seafood board will spend that money better 
than the Internal Revenue Service. That is faint praise, but I can 
promise you that will happen.

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  My final point, I appreciate the opportunity to present this bill. Be 
careful what you eat, particularly if it is imported seafood. I am not 
kidding you. If you are eating seafood, given the statistics, you are 
probably eating foreign seafood, and this stuff can be dangerous. I 
mean it. Some of this product has enough antibiotics in it that you 
will grow an extra ear. And you don't want that.
  The best way to be safe is to eat domestic seafood--good old American 
seafood. But if you don't, if you are going to eat foreign seafood, be 
very, very careful.
  I will be back with a very commonsense approach to try to solve that 
problem, and I am sorry we couldn't do it today.
  Thank you, Mr. President, for your time, and I thank Senator Wyden. 
And I wish both of you a Merry, Merry Christmas.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The objection was heard.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.