Political Quotes

“I reclaim my time, and I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts. MR. FRANK of Massachusetts. The gentleman from Washington is turning this on its head; and standing on your head is dangerous in any circumstances; but in the water, it's bad for your breathing. What we have in the law are individual transferrable quotas. It was written into Magnuson-Stevens, and it does exactly what catch shares are supposed to do, with one difference. The gentleman says Washington is micromanaging. No, it was the National Marine Fisheries Service that twisted the law. The law says they can do this for new ones. The gentleman's right, it doesn't disrupt anything. It allows them to do it subject to a vote of the people in the fishery. I would say to my friend from Maine that may be what they think in Maine. I represent the fishing port in the United States that brings in the most money, and the people there want to be able to vote for themselves. They do not, as does the gentleman from Washington, identify the regional councils as the voice of the fishermen. They have a lot of complaints about that, including the NMFS intervention. So this is the question. It is not whether or not we should have the system that the gentlewoman from Maine mentioned, whether or not you should be able to allocate and come together. There is one point at issue here: should the fishermen themselves have to vote for it. In the Magnuson-Stevens Act, it said you can do any of that new if the fishermen voted it.…”