In an interview on May 25, 2010 on the Saving Seafood Hour on WBSM, Congressman Barney Frank discussed next steps in pursuing changes to Obama Administration policy with regard to New England's more restrictive catch limits imposed on May 1.
The Congressman said: "The next step is to get back to the White House. When I talked to the Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, I said… ‘You will be hearing from me this week’. Senator Kerry and I in particular, because as Democrats [the Congressional majority party and the party of the President] we have the responsibility to take the lead, although Senator Brown is very supportive on this. We will be talking to the White House within the next few days to insist that they take a step. … we want an answer from the Secretary of Commerce and if it’s not the answer we want, we are going to go to the White House."
Mayor Lang stated "The reason that we are attracting more and more plaintiffs, and the reason that we have the strong support of the Congressman [Frank] and I know many other Congressmen that we will bring on board as well as Senators, is because we are right on the merits. This is an example of the government running afoul of the law and being extremely doctrinaire, arbitrary, in some cases being punitive in their implementation of the act. I think that when we go to court it's because we've reached which end as far as trying to work out any kind of appropriate settlement of the differences between the parties.
[click here and listen to the audio now]