Political Quotes

“I am today reintroducing a very important bill on a subject that was not resolved last year, and which continues to be an outstanding issue for those of us who are dependent on healthy and productive natural populations of ocean fish and shellfish. Simply put, this bill prohibits further movement toward the development of aquaculture facilities in federal waters until Congress has had an opportunity to review all of the very serious implications, and make decisions on how such development should proceed. Some people are calling for a moratorium on offshore aquaculture. Frankly, Mr. President, we need more than a delay--we need a very comprehensive discussion of this issue and a serious debate on what the ground-rules should be. For years, some members of the federal bureaucracy have advocated going forward with offshore aquaculture development without that debate. Doing so, would be an extraordinarily bad idea. We are now being told that the Administration is in the final stages of preparing a draft bill to allow offshore aquaculture development to occur, and that it plans to send a draft to the Hill in the very near future. The problem is, that draft has been prepared in deep secrecy. We have only rumors about what may be in that draft bill.…”