Dear fellow USSA members and industry supporters,
We have two words for you: THANK YOU!
You may remember that in late May, we sent a few urgent e-blasts alerting you to pending Congressional action that would bring U.S. flagging regulations in line with international standards. In those e-blasts, we asked you to reach out to specific Senators to convince them to lend their support. Not only did you call and email them, but you did so in droves. They heard your voices loud and clear, and as a result, there is now greater support-bi-partisan support, at that-for updating a law that has remained untouched since first written in the 1920s.
While ultimately the Senate amendment did not get the majority votes it needed, the push for regulatory change is not dead, and your tremendous efforts were not wasted. Thanks to you, more Senators now understand that big boats flying the U.S. flag mean big jobs on U.S. soil. They also now know that more boats mean more jobs, especially manufacturing jobs. The USSA has meetings scheduled in Washington in the coming weeks and months to continue this education process, and we’ll be calling on you to help move this over the finish line.
We realize the e-blasts came quite suddenly and requested you act quite quickly. Typically, the wheels of progress in Washington turn slowly. However, much to our surprise, support for flagging change rapidly started developing in early May. In fact, we learned both the House of Representatives as well as the U.S. Coast Guard want to see change. Considering that the USSA has been working on this initiative for nearly a decade, the developments over the past month have essentially occurred at lightning speed.
Thank you all once again for the wave of support. Let’s keep up the good fight.
In the meantime, if you’d like more information on the flagging issue, don’t hesitate to reach out to any of us, or the USSA Advocacy Committee co-chairs, Jay Dayton and Peter Schrappen.
Sincerely,
