The two senators are chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which has jurisdiction over insular affairs.
“Having a companion bill in the Senate may get us to passage more quickly,” Sablan said. “I very much appreciate that Senator Bingaman and Senator Murkowski agreed to help out in this way.”
In the last Congress Sablan’s submerged lands bill passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 416-0. And the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee recommended it for passage by the Senate. But along with other lands bills, Sablan’s legislation was blocked.
A late attempt to win passage, by including the submerged lands conveyance in a basket of lands bills that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., proposed, ran out of time in the final days of the 111th Congress.
Sablan has re-introduced his submerged lands bill in the 112th Congress as H.R. 670. The new companion bill introduced by Bingaman and Murkowski in the Senate is S. 590.
