The organizations listed below are extremely concerned about the potential negative impacts of Section 303 of H.R. 1987, the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2015, which would provide the Secretary of Transportation the exclusive authority to unilaterally apply cargo preference rules on programs run by other departments and agencies, and ignore the outcomes of important interagency consultations. We are concerned that Section 303 could have a further detrimental effect on food aid programs and could lead to additional inefficiencies and costs, in terms of wasted resources and greater risk to human lives.
The Department of Homeland Security has previously warned that similar language needlessly increases the risk for programmatic inefficiencies and on-the-ground operational problems. We are concerned that the unilateral control proposed in Section 303 would expand the Maritime Administration’s (MARAD) authority, allowing MARAD to exercise exclusive authority over how that cargo preference must be applied within critical food aid programs. MARAD’s legally mandated mission is to “strengthen the U.S. maritime transportation system […]” – a mission that reflects neither the importance of cost efficiency nor the impact on critical humanitarian responses.
With natural disasters like the recent earthquake in Nepal and the ongoing crisis in Syria stretching humanitarian funding thin and 805 million people around the world going hungry every day, we must make every food aid dollar count. We cannot afford to make U.S. food aid more costly or risk diverting more funding toward shipping costs instead of life-saving assistance. Legal authorities provided to the Administration should be ensuring transparent and effective use of taxpayer dollars so that resources are allocated to feeding more vulnerable people, not less.
U.S. food aid saves millions of lives each year. Therefore, the undersigned organizations remain opposed to the content of Section 303, and we urge the Congress to reject any actions that hamper the reach and effectiveness of food aid programs by increasing transportation costs and eliminating transparency of the process that establishes implementing regulations for cargo preference.
