Sam Farr: “10 years ago, the United States Congress enacted legislation to create an Oceans Commission to look at how we can…”

“10 years ago, the United States Congress enacted legislation to create an Oceans Commission to look at how we can prevent the oceans from dying. Yesterday, the President of the United States enacted, by Executive order, the first national oceans policy and governance for the oceans and Great Lakes of the United States--our greatest national heritage and our greatest national trust. We, the people, are going to be taking care of the oceans like they've never been taken care of before. We're not going to allow the conflicts of the sea of overfishing, of overmining, of overdrilling, of overeverything and dumping all of our waste and garbage and sewage into the oceans. We're now going to have a policy that's like the clean air policy, where we cleaned up the air in America, cleaned up the water in America with the Clean Water Act. Thank you, Mr. President, for being the best steward our oceans have ever had and implementing the recommendations of the National Oceans Commission, which Congress enacted but could not enact legislation. Hopefully, we'll move out from here and the world will see and the children will appreciate the actions that the President took yesterday.”