[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 24343]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              OCEAN POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Speaker, the Republicans have been in the majority 
for basically 10 years, and we have done a number of very positive 
things. What I would like to speak to this august body about tonight is 
an issue of oceans.
  In 1994, when the Republican majority took over, they began to 
reorganize the committee process. At that time, they wanted to make it 
more applicable to the Members to represent their districts, to 
represent their regions and to be more efficiently organized, to spend 
the taxpayers dollars wisely.
  What we did, however, was to consider that we will continue to 
reorganize the process as the years went by to ensure that Members had 
an opportunity to serve on the committee that not only represented 
their districts, but that also represented their desire to be a 
visionary Member of this Congress.

                              {time}  1945

  One of the committees that was eliminated was the Merchant Marine and 
Fisheries Committee that dealt with oceans issues, fisheries issues, 
the Great Lakes and things of that nature.
  The reason that one single standing committee was important was 
because there are billions and billions and billions of dollars that 
are generated in the U.S. economy as a result of the world's, and 
especially the jurisdiction of the oceans, that fall in the United 
States, of the oceans, whether that is trade, whether that is 
commercial fisheries, recreational fisheries, marine habitat, the 
weather, the climate, the rain that sustains the country. All of these 
issues are dealt with because of ocean and Great Lakes issues.
  The committee, however, was reduced to a subcommittee and put under 
the jurisdiction of the Interior Committee which was renamed the 
Committee on Resources.
  There is still a great deal of effort to put forth a good ocean 
policy by the Federal Government. However, since the full committee was 
reduced to a subcommittee, much of the jurisdiction was taken away. On 
the House side, there are 19 full and subcommittees that deal with a 
myriad of ocean issues; and, as a result of that, even though 
committees work well together in their area of jurisdiction, the issues 
dealing with oceans are relegated to a very small piece of any one 
single committee, even the Committee on Resources, where that full 
standing committee became a subcommittee.
  Because the issues are so fragmented, there is no one particular 
center of gravity to develop policy, in my judgment, for the U.S. ocean 
policy.
  What I am suggesting that we do in the next Congress is that we 
create a standing committee that has full jurisdiction over the oceans, 
that takes that $120 billion annual economy that is generated by 
oceans, that deals with the commercial fishing activity from Alaska to 
Hawaii, to the Pacific, to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Atlantic Ocean, 
an area whose jurisdiction is larger than the 50 States combined. We 
take all of those issues and we combine it into one full committee, and 
that one full committee will have jurisdiction over the issues that are 
dealt with as far as the oceans are concerned.
  Let us just take commercial fishing activity, for example. Everybody 
has gone into a store and purchased fish. Everybody has gone into a 
restaurant and ordered fish. That generates billions upon billions of 
economic activity. But 75 percent of the commercial fish caught in U.S. 
waters spawn in tidal estuaries, and one of the problems with tidal 
estuaries is they are being polluted. They are being fragmented. They 
are being dammed. They are being degraded in a whole host of ways. And 
there is not really one single entity in the Federal Government that 
can work with the State government, the private sector and various 
groups to take a look at the loss, which is as much as 20,000 acres on 
an annual basis.
  So just on the perspective of an economic agenda I feel confident 
that an oceans committee, which would be the center for the perspective 
on developing coordinated U.S. policy on oceans issues, is vital in the 
next Congress.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I would urge my colleagues, when this comes up for 
an issue, to vote favorably in this direction.

                          ____________________