Tom Coburn: “we passed the Fisheries Act, the Magnuson- Stevens Act, which was reauthorized this year in which Senator Stevens…”

“we passed the Fisheries Act, the Magnuson- Stevens Act, which was reauthorized this year in which Senator Stevens undertook, correctly, the responsibility of eliminating conflicts of interest and created oversight on the fisheries boards. We have recently had notification and seen some pretty significant abuse within NOAA of some of their grant processes. All this amendment says is, we are going to add some accountability and transparency to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grants program. I refer my colleagues to a Baltimore Sun article which has been prominent in that newspaper over the last couple of weeks where over $10 million in a grant has failed to demonstrate results. It is riddled with conflicts of interest, and it has had little to no oversight from NOAA. Before we expand NOAA, one of the things we ought to do is make sure there are no conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, in the grant process.”