Date: 2005-12-14
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I rise in oppositionto this resolution for many of the reasons that my colleagues have cited. The fact of the matter is. we have the blueprint for what needs to be done on the oceans. $10 million was spent developing it. We have another one from the private sector. from the Pew Foundation. led by our former colleague Leon Panetta. I think they spent over $4 million. The Resources Committee has a budget of $14 million. If there are five other committees. most of their budgets are larger than ours. so you are approaching almost $100 million in public moneys that are available to deal with this issue. And yet we are going to create a task force to study a study and spend another $400.000. Either the place is so terribly bureaucratized that it cannot respond or it does not "want to respond. The fact of the matter is. we can do this through a select committee and end up.with a legislative product. or we can do this through a task force and end up with a study of a study recommending to the committees. that have not shown any interest to date. that they should do something about the oceans. You are right. the oceans are far too important to be left to that mechanism. But the fact of the matter is. this task force does not take this any further down the road. This is about action. As Mr. FARR said. it is about leadership. We have the expertise in the committees. When we did the energy bill. the Speaker told us that the energy bill would be on the floor by a certain date. The Commerce Committee did their part. the Ways and Means Committee did their part. Transportation did their part. Resources did their part. We saw the bill on Monday. We talked about it on Wednesday. voted on it on Friday. It was on the floor the following week. Not a great process. but they obviously wanted to do something to have an energy bill on the floor. We have done that in other cases. Here they simply do not want to do it. They really just do not want to do this to protect the oceans. because it requires a commitment of resources. It requires a national commitment to protect the oceans. and the Republican Congress is not interested in doing that. If they wanted to do it. they would do it. They simply do not want to do it. But what they want to do now is just throw some additional money at it to kind of kick the can down the road. The emotions are too important to be kicked down the road. This should be addressed by this Congress. We have had a year. and nothing has happened. So now we are going to spend another 6 months and the ball is not going to get advanced very far. other than politically. and then we are going to be back telling the committees they should do something about the oceans. We just spent $15 million telling the committees they should do something about the oceans. So this is about whether you have the will to do something about the oceans. whether you have the political ability to do something about the oceans and the leadership to do something about the oceans. or you do not. It just does not make any sense. This system. I guess. should become more flexible to deal with. because almost all of the tasks now that the Congress deals with cut across committee jurisdiction lines. So we ought to become more flexible to deal with it. We should not just be throwing more money at it to pretend like we are doing something to advance this incredibly important. incredibly urgent oceans agenda. This task force does not deal with that. I urge my colleagues to vote against this.