| Print | Close Window | AMO Currents - Posted: December 18, 2012 |
In remembrance: Sen. Daniel Inouye, 1924-2012
Sen. Inouye, who at his passing served as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was a powerful force behind the Maritime Security Act, which was signed into law in 1996 and reauthorized in 2003. This legislation established the Maritime Security Program, which today sustains 60 militarily useful, privately owned and operated U.S.-flag merchant ships in commercial high seas trade, and which provides jobs for members of American Maritime Officers.
Sen. Inouye also was the Senate's most prominent and most persistent advocate of the cargo preference laws that hold specific amounts of government-financed imports and exports for U.S. merchant vessels, including many that employ AMO in all licensed positions. He was, for example, the author of the 2008 farm bill amendment that gave the Department of Transportation exclusive authority to determine when these laws apply, and to enforce them across the board.
Sen. Inouye will be remembered as well as an architect of the 1985 farm bill cargo preference "compromise" amendment that raised the U.S.-flag share of PL-480 food aid exports from 50 percent to 75 percent. A last minute, little-noticed provision in this year's surface transportation authorization bill overturned this compromise, and Sen. Inouye was in recent months working quietly and diplomatically to restore the 75-percent U.S.-flag PL-480 share in a practical way.
As his state's first Congressman, and as its senior Senator since 1962, Dan Inouye often defied powerful Hawaiian business interests by defending the Jones Act, which holds all waterborne commerce between and among U.S. ports for merchant vessels owned, built, flagged and manned in the United States. He understood the law's value as a no-cost economic and national security asset, and he knew that the Jones Act is all that stands between Hawaii and predatory exploitation by foreign-owned, flagged and crewed shipping lines.
According to a statement from his office in Washington, Sen. Inouye's last word was one U.S. maritime labor and industry representatives in the capital had long been accustomed to from the Senator: "Aloha."
On behalf of the AMO members working aboard U.S. merchant vessels coast-to-coast and worldwide, I extend our condolences to Sen. Inouye's widow, Irene Hirano, to his son, Daniel Ken Inouye Jr., and to his stepdaughter, Jennifer Hirano. We are forever grateful to Sen. Inouye for his career-long commitment to the U.S.-flag merchant fleet and American merchant mariners.
Tom Bethel
National President
December 18, 2012
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