EDITORIAL
Congress should pass on new cruise line deal
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
We can't imagine why taxpayers or their representatives in Congress would contemplate for a moment an instant replay of a scheme that appears to have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars.
On the first go-round, Congress, led by Hawai'i's Sen. Dan Inouye and Mississippi's Sen. Trent Lott, granted American Hawai'i Cruise Line a virtual monopoly on interisland cruising for more than two decades, and cut it an exemption to long-standing law allowing it to sail the foreign-built Patriot between Hawai'i ports while awaiting the delivery of what would have been two brand-new U.S.-built ships.
After American Hawai'i filed for bankruptcy protection, however, it defaulted on millions of dollars in federal loan guarantees. One of the ships — standing on the ways in a shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., nearly in sight of Lott's home — is half-built and abandoned. The other was never begun.
Now comes Voyager Holdings, a subsidiary of the D'Arcinoff Group, which proposes to sell Congress on extending much the same deal to itself, including a $1.64 billion construction loan guarantee. But this time, a shipyard near Baltimore would be a beneficiary. The company isn't even interested in exploring the completion of the two ships in Mississippi.
There were plenty of questions about the first deal with American Hawai'i from the get-go. And its "virtual monopoly" had no effect on keeping Norwegian Cruise Lines from moving into Hawaiian waters before American Hawai'i's wake was cold.
Purists may object that Norwegian isn't an American company, but the United States spends a great deal of time and energy lecturing other countries about free trade. And we'd point out that Norwegian set up shop here, to all appearances successfully, with no government subsidy whatever. We wonder what interest American taxpayers have in putting up hundreds of millions to finance a new cruise line to compete with it.
We support the cruise industry in Hawai'i, and we're not surprised to hear business people talking about room for more ships. We urge the state to expedite improvements to harbors and piers to help out.
But the best way for Congress to help the developing Hawai'i cruise industry is to grant an exemption from the Passenger Services Act to allow more international cruise lines like Norwegian to set up shop here, without having to resort to phantom trips to Kiribati.
These lines are ready, willing and able — and don't need labyrinthine and highly leveraged shipbuilding deals to get them launched.
