January 23, 2014 — Last week the most unproductive Congress in our Nation’s history managed to squeeze out an omnibus appropriations bill that includes $75 million dollars for fisheries disaster assistance.
New England’s Congressional delegation has been working hard since the time that John Kerry and Barney Frank were still in office to secure this funding. There was no slack in the line when Kerry and Frank left office as Rep. Bill Keating, Sen. Warren, and Sen. Markey, as well as Congressional leaders from Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine, worked together to secure these funds in the face of both the stupidly political and the very real budget hurdles
As the saying goes: if it was easy, it would have been done years ago. This is a good success in an exceptionally difficult time for securing any kind of new funding. (Because you might be wondering and for what it’s worth, CLF supported disaster assistance funding for New England because of the radical downturn in the cod assessments but there wasn’t much of a role for us but to root on our Congressional delegation.)
Now what? Some of the first responses were “It should have been $150 million” and “It should have been here years ago.” Well, it isn’t and it wasn’t. Could the bill have been written better? Absolutely. Let me just suggest that the first response should been “Thanks.” Disaster relief funding could still help a good number of people. A thoughtful and creative process for using this rare and scarce opportunity is warranted.