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.