On the recordNovember 4, 2011
We have no more speakers on the general debate, so I will take a few minutes here to conclude on our side for general debate, and I appreciate the opportunity to close on general debate. The points that were made earlier, I do want to reemphasize a few points. One is a concern we have about the decommissioning process and the decommissioning of the two icebreakers that are in the U.S. Coast Guard fleet. The administration has a statement of administration policy, which you've allowed to be entered into the Record. I think a follow-up to that point would be that we certainly would want to hear from the administration sooner rather than later about a plan for what some would call an organic capability of our icebreaker fleet. That is a U.S. Coast Guard-owned and -operated icebreaker fleet, rather than being left with the potential and real possibility of having to lease icebreakers from other countries to do the work that otherwise we would be doing. That continues to be a major concern. We have heard, as well, concerns about the ballast water title and are expecting amendments and further debate on that as the afternoon progresses. Certainly we are going to have an en bloc amendment, and we will have time to discuss those. I just want to underscore one of those from Mr.…
