James Oberstar: “I just want to point out, in support of the committee position, that during the House-Senate conference on the port…”

“I just want to point out, in support of the committee position, that during the House-Senate conference on the port security bill last year, we were attempting to negotiate a fee proposition that would provide funding for the needs of ports to conduct the security measures that were required under the Port Security Act, and we hit upon this idea of a container fee. It was discussed between a Member of the other body and the gentleman from Alaska (Chairman Young) and me. And we revised and revised this language down so we had it very narrowly honed to fit the definition of the Office of Management and Budget that a fee is a charge for a service directly related to the purpose for which the charge is imposed. That language proved to be unacceptable to the Office of Management and Budget, not on its merits, but on policy grounds that they did not want to fund port security with a container fee. At the request of the President, Senator Hollings and I, and the gentleman from Alaska (Chairman Young) agreed to drop that language. Now, while I am very much in sympathy with the purposes for which the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) wishes to generate this source of revenue, we tried a much more narrow application and ran aground on the rocks of OMB.”