Congress returns from campaigning and conventions for a few weeks in September, and key legislation for American Samoa will be among the bills lawmakers try to tackle.
KHJ News Washington D.C. Correspondent Matt Kaye reports…
Lawmakers return September 6th when they will face a raft of year-end unfinished business, including keeping the government funded into the new fiscal-year that starts October first.
A toxic political climate will also dominate Capitol Hill, after bitter party and intraparty feuding the last several weeks.
Legislative cooperation will be in short supply.
But Congresswoman Aumua Amata Radewagen plans to forge ahead, after winning committee votes in one or the other chambers for important legislation for American Samoa.
Radewagen’s ‘cabotage’ waiver bill would allow foreign carriers to make multiple stops within American Samoa—or to another territory or Compact nation—without first returning to foreign soil or getting a US waiver every 30-days.
The Senate Energy Committee approved the provision as part of a larger omnibus territories bill, backed by the administration.
Amata’s waiting for the Senate to pass the measure and send it over to the House.
The cabotage measure is identical to language in a bill Amata worked on with Interior Assistant Secretary Esther Kia’aina and introduced in the House in February.
Amata is confident Congress will pass it—
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The House Natural Resources Committee approved by voice vote, Congresswoman Radewagen’s “Ensuring Access to Pacific Fisheries Act,” giving American Samoa’s fishermen access to fisheries in international waters…and a greater say in fishery management in the western Pacific.
A similar, but not identical bill, is waiting for Senate Committee action, but would have to be conferenced with the House version before final action.
And Radewagen is pressing with the other delegates for investor visa reforms that correct the inadvertent exclusion of US nationals from American Samoa from jobs created nationwide under the EB-5 program…and make the territory, the only one outside the US for immigration purposes, eligible for EB-5 investments.
