What do the original 1986 congressional roll-call and bill text for the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (MDLEA) show about authorship and votes?
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Executive summary
The Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (MDLEA) emerged in 1986 as part of larger anti‑drug legislative packages rather than as a freestanding, single‑sponsor bill, and the provided congressional records describe it as incorporated in multiple related bills and public laws rather than attributing sole authorship to a single Member of Congress [1] [2] [3] [4]. The sources supplied do not include the original roll‑call transcript or a standalone “author” line for an MDLEA bill, so definitive statements about an individual lawmaker’s formal sponsorship or about specific yea/nay tallies cannot be confirmed from the reporting provided here [5] [1].
1. How the MDLEA appears in the 1986 legislative record: embedded in larger bills
Congressional summaries and bill pages show the MDLEA’s text and substantive provisions were incorporated as parts or subtitles of multiple 1986 anti‑drug bills—appearing in Senate and House measures such as S.2850 (Drug Enforcement Act of 1986), S.2878 (Anti‑Drug Abuse Act of 1986), and H.R.5484 (Anti‑Drug Abuse Act of 1986) and eventually codified in public laws cited in U.S. Code annotations [1] [3] [2] [4]. These official summaries describe the maritime provisions—making drug manufacture, distribution, or possession with intent illegal on U.S. vessels and vessels subject to U.S. jurisdiction and expanding Coast Guard and interagency roles—showing the MDLEA was a subtitle within larger omnibus drug enforcement statutes rather than a discrete stand‑alone statute filed by a single authoring Member [1] [2] [3] [6].
2. What the bill text and statutory citations show about legislative form and enactment
The statutory and U.S. Code records tie the maritime provisions to Public Laws enacted in late 1986 (Pub. L. 99–570 and Pub. L. 99–640 are cited in the MDLEA chapter notes), and the House‑and‑Senate bill summaries and U.S. Code editorial language confirm these provisions were enacted as amendments and subtitles within broader drug control legislation [4] [1] [2]. Academic and legal analyses likewise characterize the MDLEA as departing from traditional maritime jurisdiction to extend U.S. authority for drug interdiction on the high seas—framing it as a policy strand embedded within the 1986 anti‑drug legislative surge rather than as the product of an isolated, named bill sponsor [7].
3. What the provided roll‑call record material shows (and does not show)
The set of sources supplied includes a link to “Actions” for S.2850 but the snippets do not include an original roll‑call table or vote‑by‑name transcript for the MDLEA language; those roll‑call details are not present in the excerpts provided here, so the precise yea/nay vote counts or how individual Senators or Representatives voted on the specific maritime subtitle cannot be affirmed from this collection [5]. Congress.gov typically retains roll‑call records for floor votes, but the current excerpts do not include that roll‑call content; therefore any claim about the exact roll‑call numbers or a single sponsoring Member based on these snippets would go beyond what these documents show [5] [1].
4. Claims of individual authorship, contested attribution, and the evidence gap
A partisan Substack claim asserts that Senator Chuck Schumer “wrote” the MDLEA, but that assertion is unsupported in the official bill summaries and statutory notes supplied here, which show the maritime provisions were placed within larger omnibus bills and public laws without attributing sole authorship in the materials provided [8] [1] [3] [4]. Given the absence of a standalone bill text or a sponsorship credit in the snippets provided, the responsible reading of the records is that the MDLEA resulted from committee and omnibus drafting processes typical of major legislative packages; the supplied sources do not corroborate a simple single‑author narrative and do not include roll‑call evidence linking one Member as the drafter [1] [3] [5].
5. Bottom line and reporting limitations
The documents provided establish that the MDLEA’s text was enacted in 1986 as part of broader anti‑drug statutes and show statutory citations tying it to Public Laws of that year, but the supplied materials do not contain the original roll‑call vote transcript or a formal authorship credit that would definitively identify an individual Member as the act’s sole author; therefore the most accurate conclusion supported by these sources is that the MDLEA was incorporated into omnibus legislation with bipartisan backing in 1986, and specific roll‑call or sponsorship attributions require consultation of the complete Congressional Record, bill sponsorship data, or roll‑call archives beyond these excerpts [1] [2] [3] [5] [4].