John B. Breaux: “I take a few minutes to make comments about a bill that I have been fooling around with for almost as many years as I…”

“I take a few minutes to make comments about a bill that I have been fooling around with for almost as many years as I have served in the Congress. I remember quite well when I was in the other body and served as chairman of the Fisheries Committee back in 1972, I hate to say how long it has been that we started working on the concept, over 20 years ago, to say that the fishing areas around the United States belong to the people of the United States. At that time, we were being literally inundated by foreign fishing fleets from Japan and other nations which saw the areas around the coastal waters of the entire United States off of our 30 coastal States as very valuable areas. They were coming in and really displacing our own American fishing men and women, and doing it at a rate that would have soon, I think, destroyed the areas of the United States as far as fisheries is concerned. We came up with the Fisheries Management Conservation Act.”