Joe Cunningham: “I want to tell my colleagues, the things about drugs, the things about illegals, California pays a big price for all of…”

“I want to tell my colleagues, the things about drugs, the things about illegals, California pays a big price for all of the above. And I would tell the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the greatest thing that we do not have to deal with in San Diego is the ice cutters. They have to do that in Michigan. But I support his issue there. The gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) and I will probably never vote for each other more than a handful of times, but this happens to be one of those times that we do. And I do think also that one of the things the Coast Guard does there is actually a requirement under OPA 90, where we have dual hull tankers. I hope some day we can enforce that so we do not have things like the Valdez. And even our offshore oil, I put a requirement that the President supported that limited our offshore oil drilling off California because of the pollution not only in our wetland but our beaches. And we see every day these tankers going up and down from foreign countries that are leaking oil and coming on our beaches, and I worked with the gentleman to stop that. Last year we honored two policemen that died here in defending our Capitol. But we do not hear much about just 96 miles from here right off Point Lookout we lost a Coast Guard cutter, a rescue ship, and people gave their lives in service to that, too.”