Jared Huffman: “Mr. Speaker, it is a very selective concern about national security, apparently, because right now, every one of these…”

“Mr. Speaker, it is a very selective concern about national security, apparently, because right now, every one of these landings has a publicly available map. The whole world knows where everything is. If my friends were concerned about the national security exposure that that presents, you would think we would be working on some way to make that less of a publicly obvious piece of information. No, we are not hearing about that. We are hearing it raised as a bit of a pretext here to try to run these projects through national marine sanctuaries rent-free and environmental review-free. One of the speakers across the aisle actually said a few moments ago that there is no need for a special use permit, that it is ridiculous to require one because there is no environmental impact to these projects. We have heard about what happened off the Oregon coast. Certainly, the people of the Oregon coast would differ mightily with the notion that there is no environmental impact. They are still cleaning up the mess, and taxpayers ultimately had to do it. We also have the example from the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary that I referred to earlier. This, of course, is a tough place to work on the seafloor. It is mud. It is sensitive habitat. Fishermen are active in the area. There are national security assets there. There is the Northwest Training and Testing Range, so it is a complicated place to do a project like this.”