FINDINGS.

SEC. 501. FINDINGS. The Congress finds that— (1) current coastwise trade laws provide no administrative authority to waive the United-States-built requirement of those laws for the limited carriage of passengers for hire on vessels built or rebuilt outside the United States; (2) requests for such waivers require the enactment of legislation by the Congress; (3) each Congress routinely approves numerous such requests for waiver and rarely rejects any such request; and (4) the review and approval of such waiver requests is a ministerial function which properly should be executed by an administrative agency with appropriate expertise.