The lawmaker expected to shepherd a Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization bill through the U.S. Senate expects that chamber to pass its own bill and then settle on a final version with leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives.
That’s according to an aide for U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) who sent a statement to SeafoodSource on Friday, 13 July, two days after the House passed H.R. 200.
“There’s healthy agreement across Capitol Hill that reauthorizing the Magnuson-Stevens Acts is long overdue,” said Matt Shuckerow, Sullivan’s deputy communications manager, in the statement. “As chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard, Senator Sullivan has held numerous hearings on reauthorization and solicited input from numerous stakeholders. He looks forward to pursuing a Senate version of MSA reauthorization legislation and working out differences with H.R. 200.”
The statement is sure to give hope to commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico, who opposed the House bill for reasons they said singled them out. Amendments to the bill, they claim, seek to exclude them from fishery management councils and would put restrictions on catch shares, which they said have helped rebuild the red snapper stock to the point where federal officials removed it from the overfished list earlier this year.
Another amendment would require the U.S. Comptroller General to issue a report on how the government could reclaim resource rent in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic regions.
“We were surprised to see a Republican Congress support an amendment that would open the door to levying additional taxes on commercial fishermen (above the amount they are already legally required to pay) and stripping away their representation on regional fishery management bodies,” the Gulf of Mexico Reef Shareholder Alliance said in a statement to SeafoodSource. “Taxation without representation is tyranny. This attack on commercial fishermen does nothing to help the private angler fishermen that deserve an accountable and sustainable management plan.”
Already, fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico are seeing some progress in the Senate. Ryan Bradley, director of Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United, told SeafoodSource that group members spoke recently with U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), who had filed a similar bill to revise recreational fisheries. Bradley said Wicker has made some concessions to his bill, so they’re hopeful that would translate to a friendlier MSA reauthorization bill in the Senate.
Time is winding down, however, on getting a bill to President Trump’s desk for his signature. Based on the current schedule for this session of Congress, the Senate will be out for almost all of August. In addition, the body will have other priorities, such as hearings and votes for Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court justice nomination and election races for 35 Senate seats.
If the Senate does not take action or have a conference committee hammer out a compromise before this term ends, elected officials must start anew next year in their attempt to reauthorize the MSA.
