before the
Special Oversight Panel on the Merchant Marine
My
opening remarks will be brief. However, before we address the business before
this panel---consideration of the Maritime Administration budget for fiscal year
2003, I would like to extend a warm welcome to our witness today, Captain Bill
Schubert, Administrator of the Maritime Administration.
In reviewing your testimony, I am particularly pleased to see that your
agency has backed away from a proposal to transfer the Maritime
Security Program to the Department of Defense. As you know, this panel found
absolutely no basis for the recommendation made by the Administration last year.
Frankly, it lacked merit and no one could identify even one penny of cost
savings.
I should say, however, that we need to get
started soon on reauthorization of the current program. I intend to seek your
initial views today on the content of a new program. I know the task will be
difficult, but I want to put the Administration on notice now and your
Department and Agency, in particular, that we intend to get a new program in
place well before its scheduled expiration in 2005. It strikes me that this
panel put together a pretty good package in 1995 and I think we can do it again.
In that regard, I intend to set up a series of panel hearings as soon as we can
get through the Defense Authorization conference-- -to at least start the
process. I will be meeting with General Handy, the TRANSCOM CINC, in the next
couple of weeks to get his views and I hope to have him as a witness at one of
these hearings.
On the title XI issue, I am
disappointed that the Administration has once again proposed eliminating this
program. I recognize that we may have to make some legislative changes to assure
the public that we can prevent some of the defaults that have occurred this
year. Maybe these defaults were not the result of problems with the
legislation-but rather economic conditions and of course downturns after
September 11.
In any event, we need to see that
defaults of this magnitude do not reoccur. Again, I would like your views on
ways that we can get this program back on track. Finally, I have noticed in your
testimony that you will submit a package of legislative provisions that you
would like this panel to act on. If we do not receive these proposals in the
very near future, we will not be able to even consider them in this cycle. We
need them in days not weeks.
Document 26 of 37. 