The Hill News

Missing from much of the debate regarding President Obama’s executive order for a National Ocean Policy (NOP) is the fact that legislative attempts to create this new bureaucracy were regularly defeated by the House going back to the 108th Congress. No companion bill was every debated before the Senate or Senate committee, and the House version of this overreaching national policy never made it to the floor.

Mind you, this was not partisan gridlock which stymied this big government policy directive, but a coalition of Democrats and Republicans alike who would not support movement of this flawed legislation. In member debate before the bipartisan House Natural Resources Committee, the original NOP bill (known as “Oceans 21”) was called “bad legislation” being pushed by “an overzealous group of people” opposed to fishing. Committee members criticized the legislation for "creating a new bureaucracy and potentially costing taxpayers more money,” wh! ile one of the longest tenured Democrats on the committee even expressed concern for “unintended consequences for fisheries management” should the bill move forward.

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