Majority Statement

• Senator John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV

  Chairman

  U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
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  Majority Statement

  Senator John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV

  Of all of the executive nominations the Commerce Committee considers, perhaps the most important is the one we will be discussing today – the nomination for Commandant of the United States Coast Guard. President Obama recently nominated Vice Admiral Paul F. Zukunft to serve as the 25th Commandant of the Coast Guard. Admiral Zukunft, I congratulate you on your nomination, and I welcome you to the Senate Commerce Committee.  

  Here’s why this job is so important. First of all, the Coast Guard is a branch of our Armed Forces. The 43,000 men and women of the Coast Guard defend our country. They protect our ports, our waterways, and the open seas, against threats to our national security. But they also help American citizens live better, safer lives. They enforce our environmental and safety laws. And they answer the call when lives are in danger on the water – even when that means putting their own lives at risk.

  On an average day, the men and women of the Coast Guard:

  • save 11 lives;
  • respond to 57 search and rescue cases; 
  • keep 455 pounds of cocaine off the streets;
  • investigate 12 marine accidents; 
  • respond to and investigate 9 pollution incidents
  • conduct security inspections of 5 “high-interest” vessels;
  • screen nearly 1,300 vessels prior to their arrival in U.S. ports;
  • interdict 7 undocumented migrants seeking to unlawfully enter the United States, and 
  • ensure compliance of 15 fishing vessels with our fisheries laws.

  The Coast Guard performs all of this important work on a budget that is a small fraction of the other military services. And they do it in boats and aircraft that, in some cases, have been in service since the Vietnam Era. We have always asked the Coast Guard to do a lot, and since the 9/11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, we have asked them to do even more. But the truth is that in recent years, we have not given the Coast Guard the resources it really needs to do this work. We need to be honest about our expectations of the Coast Guard if we continue to underfund it year after year.  

  Admiral Zukunft and I had a chance to talk in private about these challenges, and how he intends to lead the Coast Guard. I am confident he is going to do a great job. I look forward to his testimony today.

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Minority Statement

• Senator John R Thune

  Ranking Member

  U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
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  Minority Statement

  Senator John R Thune

  Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing to consider the nomination of Vice Admiral Paul Zukunft to be the 25^th Commandant of the United States Coast Guard.

  I also want to thank Vice Admiral Zukunft, along with his wife, Fran, for their service and sacrifice on behalf of our nation. 

  As this committee knows well, the Coast Guard’s overall mission is to ensure the safety, security, and stewardship of our nation’s waters—a massive mission that it performs admirably on a daily basis. For some perspective, it’s worth noting that the Coast Guard’s entire annual budget of about $9 billion is less than the cost to build one aircraft carrier for the Navy, which is around $13 billion.  

  Vice Admiral Zukunft has a long and distinguished career in the Coast Guard, and served with distinction during one of the most complex disasters in our nation’s history, the Deepwater Horizon Spill of 2010. During that disaster, Admiral Zukunft served as the Federal On-Scene Coordinator, leading more than 47,000 federal, state, local, and private sector responders to contain and clean up the devastating spill.

  Currently, Vice Admiral Zukunft is the operational commander of the Coast Guard’s Pacific Area. This is an area of responsibility that spans half the globe, touching 71 nations and six of the seven continents. In that capacity he has dealt with transnational criminal activity, increased human activity in the Arctic, and global competition for dwindling fish stocks, among other issues. He has worked with nations like Russia, China, Japan, Canada, and South Korea while conducting combined operations against illegal fishing activity in the Western Pacific Ocean. And, he has worked to coordinate the efforts of Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Justice, and local law enforcement agencies at the Coast Guard’s Sector in San Diego—creating a model of interagency cooperation in the fight against transnational criminal operations along the nation’s maritime Southwest border. 

  Vice Admiral Zukunft also serves on the Coast Guard’s Leadership Council, comprised of the Commandant and the service’s five Vice Admirals, where he has tackled some of the toughest challenges the Coast Guard faces, ranging from budget issues to workforce matters. He currently serves on the Coast Guard’s Investment Review Board that finalizes the allocation of funds across the service’s acquisition, operations, and personnel accounts.

  Clearly, Vice Admiral Zukunft is highly qualified, deeply experienced, and prepared to lead the Coast Guard. I look forward to supporting Vice Admiral Zukunft’s nomination, and I again want to express my appreciation for his willingness to continue to serve the nation as the next Commandant of the Coast Guard. 

  Mr. Chairman, I note that we have a deadline to act on this nomination, as Admiral Papp’s term as Commandant concludes in May. I hope that we can act in a timely fashion to have Vice Admiral Zukunft in place by that time.

  We will also be hearing testimony today on a later panel from two nominees to the CPSC. They are Elliot Kaye, who is nominated to be the next Chairman of the CPSC, and Joseph Mohorovic, who is nominated to be a Commissioner at the CPSC. The CPSC currently has three Commissioners, and should these two nominees be confirmed, the CPSC will return to its full slate of five Commissioners.

  The CPSC is a creature of Congress, created in 1972 by the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA). As such, its authority is very carefully bounded by the law. It is an independent agency that has the important responsibility of protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with more than 15,000 consumer products, such as household products, toys, and sporting goods. The CPSC fulfills its statutory responsibilities by developing voluntary standards with industry, banning products if necessary, and informing and educating consumers, among other things. 

  The Commission, as defined by the CPSA, does not have jurisdiction over certain products, such as tobacco and tobacco products, or firearms and ammunition, among other items.   Other federal agencies and commissions have jurisdiction over these types of products. This is important, because I am always concerned about efforts by agencies to expand their authority, and it is crucial that agencies remain within the jurisdictional and procedural boundaries mandated by Congress. Depending on timing with this afternoon’s panels, I plan on asking our two CPSC nominees about their views on some of these jurisdictional and procedural boundaries for the CPSC.

  Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing, and I look forward to the testimony from our nominees.

Testimony

• Vice Admiral Paul F. Zukunft

  to be Commandant of the United States Coast Guard
  Download Testimony (214.71 KB)

Witness Panel 2

• Mr. Elliot F. Kaye

  to be Chairman and a Commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission
  Download Testimony (67.19 KB)

• Mr. Joseph Mohorovic

  to be a Commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission
  Download Testimony (47.38 KB)