Alaska Tourism Recovery Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, we are at a much better place at this moment in time for the people of the State of Alaska, who have been anxious. We have all been anxious throughout this time of COVID, but we have been particularly anxious as we have watched our tourist sector just be decimated. And when I say ``decimated,'' I mean in the sense that when you have such a significant portion of one economic sector, the tourist sector, come to your State by one means, by one mode--and for us, in the State of Alaska, that is cruise ship.

We have had an extraordinarily robust tourist economy, growing over the years. People want to come and see the beauty and the splendor, and for many, they want to be on the comfort of a ship and watch the views go by, see the glaciers, see the whales come on up. It is a great place to visit. But for the past year, ships have not been sailing to Alaska. This is due to not only the CDC and the no-sail orders the CDC has imposed but also because of the limitations that have been put in place by Canada in terms of no sailing through the Canadian waters.

So there has been an effort to, as we try to regain our footing, rebuild a tourist sector, but you can't just flip a switch here. You just can't get an industry back on its feet this quickly without everybody pulling together, and this has been a struggle to get everyone pulling together. But I think we are at a place where there is a glimmer of hope for Alaska's tourism industry.

We were here on this floor just a couple weeks ago, Senator Sullivan and myself, talking about how significant cruising is as an element to Alaska's economy. At the time, I shared a chart with colleagues that showed that in 2019 we had 1.3 million visitors come to Alaska on a cruise ship, and in 2020 we had 48 come to Alaska on a cruise ship. I said at the time: That is 48 passengers, not 48,000.

You can just guess what that did to our economy--the statewide unemployment rate rising from 6.2 to 11 percent; municipal and State revenues dropping significantly; and every day that passes, more lost revenues, more lost salaries, more economic distress. So the effort that we have made to, again, try to get ships back in the water, try to get them heading north, has been considerable.

We have heard from so many in not only our coastal communities but, really, communities around the State about the economic impact and the hit they have taken.

In the Indian Affairs Committee, we had a hearing just yesterday about the impact on Native tourism due to COVID, and we had the CEO of Huna Totem Corporation, Russell Dick, describe to the committee the profound ``disruption of our local economy, as 80 percent of our local tax base comes from tourism,'' he said. Consequently, ``leadership from the city of Hoonah, the community, and Icy Strait Point are all eager for cruise ships to return.'' Consider that. Eighty percent of your local tax base comes from tourism, and if you don't have passengers coming in, if you don't have visitors coming in, you basically have nothing. So we needed to address this. We needed to fix this.

We have been working aggressively, not only the Alaska delegation here working with Congressmen but working with all members of the administration. We have the Secretary of Homeland Security, who is literally on speed dial, the Director of the CDC, who really doesn't want to hear from us anymore because I think we have been so constant. We have been engaging with the Secretary of Commerce. We have taken this to the head of the Canadian Government as well, with letters to Prime Minister Trudeau and to his Cabinet, to his Parliament. So the effort that has been underway has been considerable.

We had an opportunity on the floor a couple weeks ago to discuss this very issue. We heard concerns raised by Senator Blumenthal about some consumer protection provisions. We heard concerns from Senator Lee about the Passenger Vessel Services Act, the PVSA. We weren't able to come to a resolution at the time, but I think what was good at that time was a commitment to keep working on this. We kept working on this, and we are now to the point where we have successfully passed this temporary PVSA fix through the Senate.

I want to state, though, that this is not a fix for the cruise companies, if you will. This is help, this is a fix, if you will, for the communities in Southeastern Alaska, the communities around Alaska for whom opening up some semblance of a cruise season this summer is literally going to determine their future--not just whether they are able to open this year but whether they are able to open at all going forward.

To tell people that they have to hold on through 2022, hold on for yet another 14 months--that is just not possible because it has already been 19 months that these communities have been so severely and so significantly impacted.

So the timing of this is key. It is critical. It is literally every day counting, every day that matters, so that our communities can get the folks back in the little store, get your teams hired up to take the tourists out on the attractions, get us back to a place where again we can be more stable from an economic perspective and with regards to the benefit to Alaskans and the employment.

We are ready to go back to work. We have been working hard on the vaccine. We have advertised ourselves as a State to be coming to if you are looking for your travel adventure and do so in a safe place. But we have been tied--our hands have been tied--in our ability to get the season back up and running and in a way that is going to provide for a level of safety for all.

We are continuing to make progress with CDC. I think that is an important part to add to because that has been an impediment to us. The CDC has been slow--torturously slow--in laying down their guidance, but I am optimistic that we are very close. Hopefully--hopefully--we are going to have the necessary certainty for cruise companies to ramp up their operations to again prepare to cruise to Alaska.

With the CDC paving the way over there and the PVSA issue, we are very hopeful--very, very hopeful--that we will be able to advance over in the House, working with our colleagues over there, to be able to provide this certainty for a very short season that will allow Alaskans to have some glimmer of hope here.

But I want to end with a comment and a statement that came from Mr. Russell Dick, again, the CEO of Huna Totem Corporation. Mr. Dick is indigenous from the Hoonah region. Hoonah was his community, his village that he grew up in. And he reminded us of the situation that Canada has really placed us in.

The reality is, he has a community where they may have literally no economy this summer if you can't get cruise ships in. Eighty percent of the employees that work at Icy Strait there are local and native hire. But his comment was that we are dealing with this because Congress, in his words, hasn't dealt with the PVSA. And he says: This is not Canada's fault; this is the Federal Government's fault. And he says: Let me be clear. The PVSA right now is preventing us from hiring Americans in an American community that desperately needs those jobs. The U.S. Congress is responsible for this problem.

I think Russell made it very, very clear to us that we have to address this. We have to address this. What we have done just now is we have shown that when Canada is going to make some tough decisions, we are not going to stand by. We are not just going to say ``pretty please,'' withering on the vine here until another country--until Canada--catches up with our level of readiness. It should be up to us to be able to restore our economy, and we will take the first steps to do just that.

So I want to thank Senator Sullivan, absolutely, for his leadership throughout all of this, but I also want to recognize Senator Lee, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Cantwell, and Senator Wicker and their teams for helping us get to this place today where we can be in a spot where we can tell Alaskans the light is coming on.

With that, I will yield to my friend and colleague Senator Sullivan

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