U.S. Sen. David Vitter was named to the legislative conference committee to finalize the Highway Bill between the U.S. House and Senate. Vitter stated that he’ll work to make sure the RESTORE Act and the Realize America’s Maritime Promise (RAMP) Act will be included in the final version of the bill.
“As a leading Republican conferee tasked to hammer out the final version of this highway bill, I’ll place keeping the RESTORE and RAMP language in the bill as an absolute top priority, ” Vitter said. “ Louisiana’s coast and our ports play such an important role for our national economy that I’ll be pushing to get bipartisan consensus.”
U.S. Sen. David Vitter helped get the highway transportation reauthorization legislation known as Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) passed through the U.S. Senate in March. Vitter, along with U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Ranking Member Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) are the original co-sponsors of the bill.
Both the RESTORE Act and the RAMP Act have been added to the MAP-21 legislation as amendments. Vitter is an original cosponsor of both the RESTORE Act, which would ensure that at least 80% of the fines BP must pay under the Clean Water Act (CWA) would be set aside for Gulf Coast states rather than just going into a general fund, and the RAMP Act, which helps restore the revenue from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund for maintenance and dredging.
Vitter is the ranking member of the subcommittee that had jurisdiction of the bill and worked to get it passed through the EPW Committee unanimously in November, 2011.
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Dredging Today Staff, April 25, 2012;