Tucked into the compromise federal budget for the remainder of fiscal 2011, a somewhat watered down version of the so-called Jones amendment would bar the Obama administration from initiating any new catch share programs on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts during the spending cycle that ends Sept. 30.
New language was added last weekend to the bipartisan bill, launched by Congressman Walter Jones, that would allow the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to continue spending on development of the controversial fishery management regimens. The changes were added by staffs of the House and Senate Appropriations committees.
But the dispute over catch shares creates for the president a discomforting intra-Democratic Party clash between green interests — investment bankers allied with some environmentalists — and the small fishing boats and waterfront businesses who are supported by big cogs in the Democratic coalition, including U.S. Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Chuck Schumer of New York.
The catch share budget is $36 million, a small fraction of the scale of modern American government spending. However, the anti-catch share amendment written by Jones, a coastal North Carolina Republican, and co-sponsored by Congressmen Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Frank Pallone of New Jersey, both Democrats, was more about flagging down the administration's rush to steer fisheries toward a commodities market, with fishermen buying, selling, leasing or trading "shares" of tightly allocated catch limits among themselves or to larger boat and corporations and outside investors.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.