Political Quotes

“At the beginning, I first of all want to salute both Mr. Young and Mr. Huffman for their hard work on this legislation, which is very contentious and requires a lot of interests to be balanced. Again, hopefully, as the process moves forward through the next Chamber, we will get to that sweet spot for good policy for our Nation. Mr. Chairman, the amendment at the desk is a simple amendment, which creates a 5-year, industry-based pilot trawl survey for the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils. Such a program would follow the model industry-based trawl surveys used in the Pacific Northwest under NOAA's supervision that have been a great success. The reason I am offering this bipartisan amendment with Congressman Lee Zeldin from New York is that NOAA trawl surveys have been seriously hampered by a string of mechanical and performance problems with NOAA's ship Henry B. Bigelow over the last 2 years. For example, from August 2017 to March 2018, Bigelow missed several trawls while in its shipyard for chronic propulsion problems. Even when the Bigelow is operational, one-third of its trawls are not performing, and these bad trawls generally have yields that are 67 percent lower than when it performs properly. These problems are unacceptable, given the critical importance of that data to accurately calculate catch limits on the East Coast, which, as we have heard, is a highly contentious issue.…”