Bill Flores: “Last year, the House adopted my bipartisan amendment that would prevent agencies under the FY 2013 CJS appropriations…”

“Last year, the House adopted my bipartisan amendment that would prevent agencies under the FY 2013 CJS appropriations bill from imposing ocean zoning related to the Obama administration's National Ocean Policy under Executive Order 13547. Executive Order 13547 was signed in 2010 and requires that various bureaucracies essentially zone the ocean and the sources thereof. This essentially means that a drop of rain that falls on your house could be subject to this overreaching policy because that precipitation will ultimately wind up in the ocean. The Department of Energy is a part of the National Ocean Council established under this executive order that has been tasked to zone the oceans. Concerns have been raised by many groups that the National Ocean Policy will restrict ocean and inland activities. It is also worrisome that the administration has not made any requests for funds for this effort, nor has Congress ever appropriated money for this purpose. We have had hearings on this in the Natural Resources Committee, and no agency has told us from what source they're getting the funding for this initiative. So where is the money coming from? Are they raiding existing accounts and diverting already scarce dollars from existing statutory responsibilities? On this chart you can see the executive order creates a huge new bureaucracy at a time when we're trying to make the government smaller, more efficient, more accountable, and less intrusive.…”