April 25, 2013 — Protecting and sensibly managing our oceans and coasts is more than a ticket to a few nice vistas and vacation spots—it’s an economic imperative. And these recent actions by the Obama administration prove that they get the message.
It should come as no surprise that a president who grew up in Hawaii and has been known to enjoy the occasional vacation on Martha’s Vineyard would prioritize policies that result in the improved management of America’s oceans and coasts. In the past few weeks, President Barack Obama has met such expectations. His administration released a final implementation plan for the National Ocean Policy that he established by executive order in 2010. It also finalized a budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, which, even in a time of sequestration and fiscal austerity, asks for an 11 percent boost from current funding levels.
Both actions show that the administration understands the challenges facing our marine resources and is willing to prioritize them. President Obama’s National Ocean Policy has drawn fire from Capitol Hill, primarily from congressional Republicans who have painted it as yet another example of government intrusion. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) has decried it as an imposition of a new “job-killing regulation.” Rep. Hastings and his colleagues peppered administration witnesses at a 2011 hearing on the National Ocean Policy, concerned that the policy might constitute a jurisdictional overreach that could make life more difficult for agriculture and other industries with “upstream impacts”—and apparently unwilling to accept the idea that the policy neither creates any new regulations nor kills any jobs.
Message received, Chairman Hastings. The updated implementation plan released earlier this month includes new language asserting in no uncertain terms that the concerns of pro-small-government Republicans have been heard. “The Policy does not create new regulations, supersede current regulations, or modify any agency’s established mission, jurisdiction, or authority. Rather, it helps coordinate the implementation of existing regulations and authorities … in the interest of more efficient decision-making,” it reads. As a result, the policy received endorsements from both the National Corn Growers’ Association and the American Soybean Association, the latter of which called out the plan as a “serious and thoughtful” example of “regulatory streamlining.”
Read the full story at the Center for American Progress