Sam Farr: “Mr. Speaker, I appreciate very much the role and leadership that the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) has played…”

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate very much the role and leadership that the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) has played in this. We are a Congress that oftentimes emphasizes our partisan differences, and I think on this bill we are emphasizing our bipartisan strengths on a common issue, which is the oceans. This is the International Year of the Ocean, and it is interesting how that international year has played out. I am joking but I think that we have to realize that in the International Year of the Ocean who knew that the Academy Awards would honor the oceans by granting the Oscar to the movie Titanic? Who would have known, when we began this year, that the New York Times bestseller's nonfiction list would be for a break in the all time record of a nonfiction book about weather, called The Perfect Storm? Who knew, when we began this year, that we were going to have on Larry King Live two talk shows about weather, the El Nino? So we are finishing this year with Congress responding to all of these issues by enacting a bill that really takes all of those issues into consideration, and that is a bill that puts together a commission that is to look at these Federal programs not as a single sector oriented, which is what we found in our committee discussions.”