# The Brianna Lieneck Boating Safety Act of 2025

This bill asks the Coast Guard to study how people learn to operate recreational boats and report back to Congress within six months. Right now, boating education varies wildly depending on where you live. Some states require people to take a boating safety course before operating a boat, while others don't require anything at all. Some offer online courses, others require hands-on training, and the quality and content of what people learn can be completely different from state to state. This bill wants to understand what's actually working and what isn't.

The Coast Guard's study will examine existing training programs run by organizations like the Coast Guard Auxiliary and Power Squadrons, as well as state boating education programs. They'll look at what's being taught, how it's being taught, how people are tested, and whether the training actually addresses the real dangers boaters face. The study will also investigate whether experienced boaters should be allowed to skip training and just take a test, and how different states could work together so that a boating license or certification from one state would be recognized in another.

The bigger picture here is whether the federal government should create a uniform national boating education and testing program instead of leaving it up to individual states. The report will analyze what minimum standards should exist, how a federal program could work alongside state programs, and whether training should apply to all waters in a state or just certain areas. This is essentially a fact-finding mission to determine if boating safety could be improved through more consistent, standardized training across the country. The bill itself doesn't create any new requirements or programs—it just orders an investigation to see if one should be created.