High Risk Nonprofit Security Enhancement Act of 2004

Mr. President, I am very pleased to present this appropriations bill to the Senate. It is the culmination of a lot of hard work by all of the members of our subcommittee, as we conducted hearings to review the proposed budget from the Department of Homeland Security, and as we listened to those who have responsibilities for managing the various directorates and other agencies and activities that come within the ambit of the responsibilities of the Homeland Security Department.

We learned a lot in the hearings. We learned about new procedures that were being developed and deployed. We learned about new technologies that were being explored. In the bioterrorism area, we were learning about the research that is being done to make our capacity more sophisticated and capable of protecting the health and safety of all Americans from attacks in that area.

We have been challenged as we have never been challenged before to look again carefully at how we go about protecting the citizens of our great country. The experience of September 11, of course, stays in our mind as something that is unthinkable. The fact that it did happen is still unbelievable, and we realize that we have the responsibility-- representatives of the people of this country serving in Congress today--to try to get it right so that kind of thing can't happen again.

We are blessed to be served in the administration by people such as Tom Ridge, the new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. The President recommended this new Department be created. The Congress responded. The Governmental Affairs Committee, on which I served at that time, dealt with the challenge of the legal framework of defining the responsibilities of a new department and what activities would come under the Department. We brought together under this one Department 22 different Federal agencies, or at least parts of 22 different agencies. Some, such as the U.S. Coast Guard, were transferred underneath the jurisdictional responsibility of the Department to help make our effort more coherent, more effectively and efficiently managed, and to achieve the goal of making our country safer and more secure for the citizens who live in the United States. I think we have made great progress.

This bill specifically provides funding of $33.1 billion for the Department of Homeland Security for this next fiscal year, 2005. This is the second appropriations bill to fund the Department which began its operations short of a year and a half ago. The new Department has made substantial progress to merge the agency functions and the employees who were transferred under its responsibilities and to undertake its new duties to better secure and more effectively protect our great Nation.

We also have seen a new system put in place called the US VISIT Program to screen visaholders and to stop potential terrorists and those who may be dangerous, because they have committed crimes in the past, from entering our country to start with. US VISIT, through biometrics and other new innovations, has already identified, apprehended, or arrested more than 400 individuals. Through the science and technology directorate, the Department has aggressively moved forward on the successful testing of the first commercial portal monitors and handheld radiological identifiers to detect the smuggling of materials which could be used to build weapons of mass destruction. Federal air marshals have been deployed. State-of-the-art technologies have been introduced, and cockpit doors have been modified to increase the safety of air travel.

I know there can be criticism leveled at the efforts of the Transportation Security Administration which has been the agency identified with the responsibility for overseeing aviation security and many other areas of responsibility. But let me remind Senators--and this is contained in our committee report--I invite the attention of the Senate to the report, on page 31, where we talk about aviation security. My good friend, the distinguished Senator from West Virginia, mentioned people who might bring in bombs or material that can be used as explosives to blow up planes and otherwise harm us.

The Transportation Security Administration aviation

security account [in this legislation] provides for Federal

aviation security by employing the most efficient screening

of all passengers and baggage, deployment of onsite law

enforcement, continuation of a uniform set of background

requirements for airport and airline personnel, deployment of

the most current explosive detection technology, and creation

of a model workplace.

The aviation security activities include funding for

Federal and private contract passenger and baggage screeners,

including personnel compensation and benefits, training, and

human resource services; passenger checkpoint support; air

cargo security; procurement and maintenance of explosive

detection systems; and checkpoint support.

I suggest that the $4,386,083,000 for aviation security contained in this bill is designed to meet the needs we have for improved and safer air travel, working with the airlines who are spending

their own money in many of these and other areas. I suggest we have the safest air transportation system in the world. And we are going to continue to monitor the activities. We are going to continue to engage in oversight and interaction with the Federal agencies involved, as well as Department of Homeland Security officials, to see that we stay on course and that we continue to upgrade, improve, and take advantage of the latest technologies to guarantee the safety and security of American citizens.

Looking at another area, efforts have been undertaken to increase our stockpile of antibiotics, vaccines, and other medications to protect Americans in the event of a terrorist attack and to identify and develop new countermeasures to protect Americans against new biological threats. Today our first responders, those who work at the fire departments, the police departments, the emergency medical centers, have been provided with resources from the Federal Government to buy necessary equipment, to increase training to better protect our communities throughout the country.

Including the resources in this bill we are presenting today to the Senate, over $12 billion will have been appropriated to our State and local partners across the country, over $2.5 billion to firefighters alone.

The Department of Homeland Security has made important strides in this last year. The bill we present to you today will allow the Department to continue to build on its success and make our Nation even more secure.

If Senators look at the provisions in the bill, they will see that it reflects suggestions made by Senators on both sides of the aisle. This is a bipartisan bill. It is not a Republican bill or a Democratic bill, it is an American bill. It is a bill to protect the safety and security of all Americans. Our committee held hearings and listened to every suggestion made by all Senators for the levels of appropriations for all of these activities.

This is the second year of this bill, as I said, but I think we have made important strides forward. I particularly thank again the distinguished Senator from West Virginia for his cooperation, his support, and his assistance during the development of this bill and the conduct of our hearings and the presentation of the final work product to the Senate today.

I am going to close my remarks--and I will be prepared to receive any suggestions for changes in the bill or amendments or other statements from Senators--by quoting from something Tom Ridge said with which I was particularly impressed. Our Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security said:

Homeland security is about the integration of a nation,

everyone pledged to freedom's cause, everyone its protector,

and everyone its beneficiary. It's about the integration of

people and technology to make us smarter, safer, more

sophisticated, and better protected. It's about the

integration of our national efforts, not one department or

one organization, but everyone tasked with our Nation's

protection. Every day, we work to make America more secure.

Every day, the memories of September 11th inspire us to live

our vision of preserving our freedoms, protecting America,

enjoying our liberties, and securing the homeland.

I am happy to compliment the distinguished Senator for his description of the damages in Florida. We are all keenly aware, because the of the images on television, and the description in the newspapers, conversations with friends and family members in that State, how terrible those storms have been and the devastation that has been caused.

One thing that reminds me of the history of my own State is the terrible force of the wave action. I can remember when Hurricane Camille struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast in, I think, 1969, that storm did more damage than any other hurricane that had ever hit that part of the gulf of Mexico. I recall going down to the gulf of Mexico and visiting that area, seeing how devastating the damage was and how long it took to recover from it. As a matter of fact there are still scars. There is one shrimp boat about 2 blocks inland now that is sitting there as a reminder of the force of that hurricane.

The fact of the matter is, and the Senator is correct, the $2 billion the Congress has approved for a supplemental appropriation for the Federal Emergency Management Agency is targeted just to the Disaster Relief Fund. This is, as the Senator knows, to provide emergency assistance of food, shelter, debris cleanup--taking care of the emergency situation that exists. That fund was going to be exhausted this morning when the President signed the bill appropriating this additional money. So, with this funding, that account is taken care of.

As the Senator indicates, there is a lot of other damage that is outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Department of Agriculture and other Federal agencies may have responsibilities and they may not have sufficient funds to meet all the needs for which some people are entitled to reimbursement or some kind of disaster relief under Federal law. For that reason the President indicated in his request to Congress which he submitted on September 6--and I'll read this. He said:

The enclosed request requires immediate action by the

Congress to ensure that the immediate response efforts to

these recent disasters continue uninterrupted. I anticipate

making a further request in the coming days that will provide

for a comprehensive response and recovery effort addressing

the impact of both of these hurricanes. In addition, federal

government agencies will continue their response and recovery

efforts using existing resources and programs.

What we get from that is the President is submitting and, we have been advised by the President's staff, that in the coming days there will be another supplemental appropriations bill requested by the President. It will not be the bill that we are considering today, though. This is the annual appropriations bill that funds the entire Department of Homeland Security, Coast Guard, the Secret Service--the 22 various agencies that are combined within the ambit of the Department of Homeland Security.

I suggest to the Senator we would welcome any suggestions he has for inclusions in the additional supplemental that will be before the Congress soon, at the request of the President.

Mr. President, before we start agreeing on times for votes, that is above my pay grade. We have a distinguished majority leader, and we will have to consult with him and other Senators.

It depends on what his amendment is. We may all rejoice and vote for it. Who knows? Again, we may not.

Mr. President, a point of order. I have no objection to the dispensing of the reading of the amendment, but a point of order. Is there already an amendment pending from the Senator at the desk? Is this the second amendment or is this a different amendment?

Fine.

Mr. President, it is always instructive to listen to the distinguished Senator from New York talk about programs and activities that are of major concern to his constituents, particularly in the New York City area, but New York State generally. We appreciate his observations and his expression of concern about technologies and advancements and new ways of protecting the citizens of his State and our country against nuclear threats or other threats to our security. We think the Department has made important progress in these areas, analyzing and understanding the technologies that are available.

We have included, for example, encouragement for additional investigations in this area. I am reading from page 84 of the committee report now. It says:

The Committee expects a significant expansion of the

Countermeasures Test Bed being conducted with the Port

Authority of New York and New Jersey in testing technologies

to detect radiation/nuclear threats to include railway,

general aviation facility monitoring, expanded roadways

coverage, and an additional seaport.

The Committee is aware of technology proposals developed

with national laboratories to facilitate the inspection of

containerized cargo for fissile materials as a part of the

normal off-loading process at the Nation's seaports.

The Department is focused on the importance that we all believe should be paid to this area of interest and concern. We know that existing technologies are being deployed by agencies at ports of entry, including the U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. They provide an effective nuclear countermeasure system, but continued focused development can considerably extend these capabilities in order to develop technologies for application to specific locations, including those in the intermodal transportation system, in the maritime domain, at border ports of entry, and in the aviation industry.

Specifically, the committee included in this section of the bill to which this amendment is directed great latitude in approving grants that can be the subject of applications from not only States but local jurisdictions such as port security areas.

Of the total provided by the committee for urban area security initiative grants, $150 million is for port security grants; $150 million is included for rail and transit security grants; $10 million is available for inner city bus security grants for the improvement of ticket identification, the installation of driver shields, the enhancement of emergency communications, and further implementation of passenger screening; $15 million is also included for trucking industry security grants to continue the Highway Watch Grant Program.

This committee had the responsibility of trying to help ensure that across the broad range of urban area security concerns funds were available for grants to local areas and to States to deal with these new challenges.

The committee believes the Department's practice over the past 2 years to allocate appropriated funds could be improved. We suggested, for example, that they all not be made available

early in the fiscal year but to leave some opportunities for later grantmaking authority so that if any new discoveries or intelligence of recent terrorist threat information became available, these funds could be targeted to higher risk areas and where we would get more for our money.

It is easy to offer an amendment to double an appropriation, and that is what this amendment does. We have $150 million in the bill for this one particular grant program within the broad urban area security initiative grants. What the Senator from New York is doing is asking that be doubled.

You can just about go through this bill, I suggest, and find every incremental amount that is in this bill and pick out one and offer an amendment to double it and make a good persuasive case why it would be better off if we could spend twice as much money as we have allocated for that one activity. That is a pretty easy argument to make. But it is also a cheap shot, and the reason I am calling it a cheap shot is that we have within this Urban Area Security Grant Program $1.2 billion for discretionary grants to high-threat urban areas. The Secretary has to make these decisions on the basis of the applications and the proposals that are submitted to the Department.

If we in the Congress are going to go back through the bill and try to second-guess every one of these accounts and double it and ask for a vote, you could easily double the whole cost of the bill. We have a $33.1 billion bill. It probably would be harder to get a vote to double that to $66 billion, but you could make some arguments why we could spend that amount of money. But could we spend it in a thoughtful way that would efficiently and responsibly use the taxpayers' dollars in this area of concern, homeland security?

We have had 2 years of experience in writing this bill. Last year, we ended up having to make points of order on the basis of the fact that some of the amendments were in excess of the allocation that was given to this subcommittee.

I understand the full committee has been meeting this afternoon during the last hour to review the amount of funding that would be available to each subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. And I understand soon, if it has not already been done, there will be filed with the Senate this allocation, and this subcommittee will have a limited amount of money to use in writing this bill.

I am not suggesting we have gotten the cart before the horse, but I am suggesting that before we vote on this amendment, I want to be sure I know what the allocation amount is for this subcommittee. It is not just targeted to the amendment of the distinguished Senator from New York that I do this, but any amendment that would come in and double an amount without any more justification than it would be good if we could spend twice as much as we are spending. And that is really the argument.

Sure, it would be good if we could spend twice as much as we are spending in a lot of areas, but we have to make the choices within a framework of funds available to the committee for a wide range of activities, all of which are very important. We have to choose among programs of the U.S. Coast Guard, programs of the Transportation Security Administration, of the Secret Service, of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and many others whose accounts are funded in this annual appropriations bill.

I am hopeful we can withhold action on this particular amendment and let us have an opportunity to review the committee's work.

So awaiting the further advice of the chairman of the Appropriations Committee or his staff, Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the Senator talks about we have sort of rubberstamped what the President has asked for in some of these areas. We have agreed with the President on some of his initiatives because we thought he was right, but when we thought the administration was wrong or where they have requested funds, as he pointed out, in the railroad area, for security programs there, this committee has recommended and the Congress has agreed to add funds over and above what has been requested by the President.

In this particular area, where the Senator is coming in now and doubling the amount of money we have in this one particular grant program--we have appropriated for this program almost $500 million, specifically for port security grants, since fiscal year 2002. We are addressing this issue. This is the point, and I am not apologizing for the decisions this committee has made and that have been ratified by both Houses of Congress and approved in the appropriations conference report. We have appropriated almost $500 million specifically for this program. We have asked for another $150 million this year. That is not enough, he says; double it.

We can talk about it on and on and on and go into all the other accounts that involve security in urban areas, high threat areas, but we have to realize there is a limit. Some Senators think we can come in and double the amounts in individual accounts and it will not matter, but if we keep on doing that before this bill is passed, we will have added no telling how much to the deficit. We would have put the administration in a position where they are going to have to either ask for deferrals or recisions of funds. If they cannot possibly get grants out to people who are qualified to use the money or can justify the use of the funds, we cannot pour the money on the ground, and I am not going to stand here and go along with suggestions that amount to spending more because it sounds as if we are going to be doing more. It does not necessarily follow.

I am hopeful we will have in place within the next few minutes some information about the total allocation of funding to this committee, because without that we can continue to add money for individual accounts in this bill for the rest of today and tonight and on into the weekend and then we will have to go back through and start striking funds that have been added so we will be consistent with the allocation to the subcommittee.

What I am asking the Senate to do, and the reason I put in the suggestion for a quorum when I first made the point of order, is to await the advice of the Committee on Appropriations. I am told they sent the information over electronic device, but we need it written on paper so Senators can read it and can understand what the limitations are. So I am hopeful we can await the advice of the full committee on the action that has been taken today. I would appreciate it very much.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I indicated earlier that the Senate Appropriations Committee met earlier this afternoon to approve the subcommittee funding allocations. The allocations approved are the same as those provided earlier by the full committee, for this subcommittee's information. For Homeland Security appropriations, the approved fiscal year 2005 discretionary spending allocation is $32 billion in budget authority and $29.873 billion in outlays. The bill reported by the committee is at the $32 billion discretionary budget authority allocation and $144 million below the outlay allocation. The allocations for this bill are $897 million in budget authority and $730 million in outlay above the President's request, showing the priority the committee has placed on Homeland Security accounts and its appropriations.

This is a fiscally responsible allocation and Members will be required to provide offsets for any additional spending proposed by amendments to be added to this bill, or the amendment will be subject to a 60-vote Budget Act point of order, I am advised. Therefore, I make a point of order against the Schumer amendment under section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act that the amendment provides spending in excess of the subcommittee's 302(b) allocation.

Mr. President, I think the Senator asked for a parliamentary inquiry. I don't have standing to rule on parliamentary inquiries. That is the responsibility of the Chair.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate vote on the motion to waive in relation to the pending Schumer amendment at 4:45 p.m. today, with the debate until that time equally divided in the usual form.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Have the yeas and nays been ordered?

Madam President, it occurs to me that this is an issue that probably ought not be on this bill. As a matter of general principle, it is a legislative decision. It seems to me the committee of jurisdiction would probably be the committee chaired by the distinguished Presiding Officer.

Having said that, that doesn't make this amendment go away by itself. We have to dispose of it. We have to deal with it. Frankly, I am confused about how the amendment got added to the House Appropriations Committee bill. I am told it was an amendment offered on the floor and it was adopted by the House. This seems to me an amendment that ought to be at least discussed in conference. If we adopt the Leahy amendment without changing it at all, then we are stuck with the language, it seems to me. I don't know how you get away from having this provision in the final version of the bill, and this appropriations process would have been subverted and it would have been distorted.

This is not an appropriations amendment. We are not talking about an amount of money to be appropriated for any particular purpose. Immigration services are provided, of course, by the Department of Homeland Security and apparently the Department feels it ought to have flexibility in the administration of that program. We are singling out an employment circular to prohibit its effectiveness on an appropriations bill. I think it is fairly convoluted.

I don't like the process. The Senator from Wyoming comes in and offers a modification, which basically requires the Department to provide information on its intentions.

It must submit to Congress not later than 60 days before making an award.

This is an award for providing services under the auspices of the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Before it makes an award to someone to provide these services, it has to go through certain steps and make this disclosure to the Congress.

It seems to me that this is an appropriate place to at least call time out and let us put this issue on hold and give the Appropriations Committee an opportunity to consider it in conference. We would have to resolve the differences between this amendment and this provision in the Senate and the one adopted by the House.

I fully support the amendment offered by the Senator from Wyoming.

Let me add one other note. The administration submits to the committee after we write a bill in the Appropriations Committee a Statement of Administration Policy. Looking at their Statement of Administration Policy on the bill as reported by our Appropriations Committee, you get down to the bottom of page 2 where it talks about competitive sourcing, it states:

The administration has adopted a reasonable and responsible

approach for ensuring the fair and effective application of

public-private competition. On a government-wide basis,

competitions completed in fiscal year 2003 are estimated to

generate savings, or cost avoidances, of more than $1 billion

over the next 3 to 5 years. The House version of the bill

contains a provision that would block DHS from using

competition to choose the best public or private sector

source to handle basic administrative tasks associated with

the processing of immigration applications and benefits. We

understand an amendment may be offered on the Senate floor

that would also preclude public-private competition and turn

back DHS' efforts to significantly improve customer service

for immigrants. If the final version of the bill were to

contain such a prohibition, the President's senior advisers

would recommend that he veto the bill.

So I can't stand idly by and see this provision be included in the bill and risk the veto of this Homeland Security appropriations bill that we have worked very hard to craft, after hearings and hearings, and with the good assistance of other Senators on the subcommittee such as the distinguished Senator from Vermont. I would hate to see all of our work go for naught and have to start over with a vetoed bill.

I am urging Senators to vote for the Thomas amendment and let us take this issue to conference and see if it can be resolved in a way that gets the bill signed and takes care of the concerns expressed by the distinguished Senator, my very good friend from Vermont.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. President, so there is no illusion about who is responsible for suggesting we have a vote on the Thomas amendment, it is me. It is not the majority leader. As the manager of this bill, I think we ought to follow the regular order. The Senator from Vermont laid down an amendment. The Senator from Wyoming offered an amendment to the amendment. It is in order.

We have had a debate on it. He is entitled to a vote on his amendment. We ought to have it. If his amendment prevails, then we vote on the amendment as amended. Nobody is going to filibuster the bill on this side. I am not going to. I am not going to filibuster my own bill because of this amendment. I want people to understand it is not this big an issue. It is not going to bring down the Senate and block consideration of this bill as far as I am concerned.

I will give a quick answer. I am not going to, by unanimous consent, deprive any Senator of a right to offer an amendment. That is what I would be doing if I would, by agreement, say that you can offer an amendment and have a vote on it without any other Senator having an opportunity to modify it.

That is not in the rules of the Senate. It is inconsistent with the traditions of the institution to do that.

Reserving the right to object, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I do not know what the amendment is. It was sent to the desk. It would be nice to know what it is so we would know whether we should agree to the unanimous consent request to limit 2 minutes to a side.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry. If this is an amendment that has already been before the Senate and to which an amendment has been added, is it in order for the Senator to put before the Senate the same amendment as an amendment?

Mr. President, I have no objection to the request for the time agreement.

I strongly urge Senators to vote against the Leahy amendment.

Mr. President, I send to the desk three amendments that are making technical changes to the bill. They have been cleared on both sides of the aisle. I ask they be considered and agreed to en bloc.

I ask my statement on each of these amendments be printed in the Record.

Madam President, this amendment makes necessary technical changes in the bill language authorizing the Government Accountability Office--GAO--to perform review activities to verify air carriers' calendar year 2000 security costs and makes funds available to GAO for this purpose.

Amendment No. 3587

This amendment makes a technical correction to the bill in conformance of Public Law 108-271 renaming the General Accounting Office the Government Accountability Office.

Amendment No. 3588

This amendment makes technical corrections to bill language for the Government Accountability Office to report on the progress of the Secure Flight program.

Madam President, it is certainly OK with me for Senator Byrd to offer his amendment any time he wants to offer it. We are not putting one Senator in front of another. But he is the distinguished ranking member of the subcommittee, and we would be happy to see him offer his amendment when he wants to in the morning.

If it suits Senator Byrd, it suits me. There are some amendments on the list that we have been reviewing hoping to agree those would be the only amendments in order to the bill. I don't know how close we are to reaching an agreement on that or whether the acting leader is empowered to sign off on those agreements. We probably should wait until Senator Byrd is here though.

Madam President, I encourage Senators to let us know if they intend to offer an amendment to this bill. We would like to have a finite list of amendments so we can expedite final conclusion of this bill tomorrow or as soon as possible.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I thank the Senator from Alabama for his kind words. He is both a colleague and a neighbor to my State of Mississippi. As neighbors, our two States have a strong appreciation for a strong and capable Coast Guard.

As the Senator from Alabama is well aware, the Coast Guard has been moving slowly on the Maritime Patrol Aircraft Modernization pending a review of their requirements for specific types of aircraft throughout the Coast Guard. I am very sensitive to the Senator's concerns with this slow pace of Maritime Patrol Aircraft modernization. I would say to the Senator, that I firmly believe and am committed to the Coast Guard's modernization effort under the Deepwater program, which includes the Maritime Patrol Aircraft requirement.

I share the Senator's assessment that the extension of our maritime surveillance is critical to our security interests. The Coast Guard selected the CN-235 as the optimal solution for the Maritime Patrol Aircraft mission and I continually encourage the Commandant to aggressively pursue the modernization of all assets to address the mission needs of the Coast Guard. It is clear that the Maritime Patrol Aircraft requirement has been delayed due to the Coast Guard review and I support any expedited effort to ensure that the long-term maritime patrol mission requirement is addressed.

I thank my colleague from Nevada. I would be happy to set a time limit and then have a vote on the amendment.

That is fine with me. Maybe we could have a few minutes for the majority and a few minutes for the minority.

If my colleague will yield, I can assure him it is a good one.

Thank you, Mr. President. I will be offering an amendment on nuclear security in a few minutes. But first I would in general address this bill.

Let me first say at the outset I am glad we are doing this bill now. As you know, many of us on this side of the aisle asked that this bill come up much sooner. But to do it right here as our first order of business when we return from the summer break after the two conventions I think is very good. I am glad we are on this bill.

The second point I would make is this: I don't think anyone on this side--certainly not the senior Senator from New York--wants to obstruct or not have this bill pass. We want it to move forward. So there is no intention to delay. As my good friend from Mississippi has seen by my asking for a short period to debate this amendment, having spent 18 years in the House of Representatives, 45 minutes is a lifetime there, but here in the Senate it is a relatively short amount of time. There is no intention for dilatory tactics or anything of that sort.

I believe, being head of our Democratic Task Force on Homeland Security, and having talked to many of my colleagues about further amendments, my friend, our chairman of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security Appropriations, will find similarly short time limits are being called for. That is all the good news. The bad news is many of us think this amendment being brought before us is woefully inadequate. I would like to discuss that in general.

I have been quite hawkish on the war on terrorism, having supported the President's request to go into Iraq. I supported the $87 billion and I believe we need a strong and muscular foreign policy overseas. Mistakes are often made. We should do a lot better in terms of those mistakes. But inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.

I am for fighting a vigorous war on terror overseas. I believe what our President said--former President Bill Clinton--is exactly right. To have strength and intelligence--that is exactly what he said, something to that effect--are not mutually exclusive categories when fighting a war on terror. If we are fighting a strong war on terror overseas, we are certainly not doing it here at home.

If I had to choose perhaps the greatest weakness of this administration in its war on terror, it would be the inadequacy of what we are doing here at home. The bottom line is this: We get a lot of rhetoric. We don't get the focus, the thoughtfulness, or the resources, the dollars to do what we need to do. Sure, if you think this is a 20- year plan, maybe we are doing enough. But we sure don't think it is a 20-year plan when we go overseas, nor should we. It is not a 20-year plan here.

Let me say this. This is my own view. We have a window in this global war on terror. In other words, my view is that this war on terrorism we face can be described in a single sentence; that is, the very technology which has blessed our lives and accounted for so much of the prosperity we have seen over the last two decades here at home has an evil underside, and that is that small groups of bad people can get hold of that technology and use it for terrible purposes. You can be in a cave in Afghanistan, and as long as you have a wireless connection to the Internet you can learn as much about America as any of us knows. If you took 500 random people anywhere on the globe from the most highly intelligent and well-read and studied to maybe the guy who sweeps the floors at night and injected them all with an evil virus so that they all decide to spend the next 5 years figuring out how to do terrible damage to the United States and then implement it, the odds are too high they can succeed.

This is not simply a war against al-Qaida. Al-Qaida is the first group who learned how to use this technology to cause the terrible events in the city from which I hail and which I so love. Al-Qaida is on the run. We have not done enough maybe in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but clearly al-Qaida is weaker today than it was then. But it is only a matter of time before new groups--maybe the Chechens, maybe the East Timorese, maybe even the skinheads in western Montana--figure out they can use this technology and do terrible damage. So we have a window. It may be 2 years, it may be 4 years, it may be 6 years, but it sure as heck ain't 10 or 20 where we can tighten up our defenses, because even though we have to fight the war on terror overseas we also have to prepare a defense at home.

If 500 people can do such terrible things, the odds we will be able to catch all of them before any of them implement the first strike against us is rather small.

Like anyone who follows sports knows, to win a game you need a good defense and a good offense. Whether you agree with this administration or disagree, you can't take away that they are focused on that offense. When it comes to defense, they are not home. They would be ranked as one of the worst defenses around. I have tried to figure out why this is, why we are doing so little on homeland security at home; why when it comes to our ports or our trucks or our rails or our borders, we are making such slow and halting progress, almost grudging progress, if you will.

I am not a person inside the brain of the President or his chief advisers, but having talked to people who have worked there and left-- some of them in disgust--I can tell you that part of it is a lack of desire to spend the dollars necessary. Spend whatever it takes overseas, fine; spend whatever it takes here to make us secure, the money is not there.

There is also the mistrust of Government, a sort of antigovernment view that Government is not a good thing, that Government is not going to do it right, that Government should be the place of last resort. Unfortunately, when it comes to the war on terror, it is only the Government that can do it, whether it be overseas or here at home.

But as a result, this administration, in my judgment, whatever grade you give them in fighting the war overseas, would get a D or an F in most areas in terms of fighting the war here at home.

Let me give some general places where we are not close to doing

enough. Regarding the air, we have done a good job making sure another September 11 does not happen specifically in the way it did; in other words, simply bolting the cockpits of all our planes greatly cuts down the average of a plane being hijacked. Putting air marshals on the planes makes a great deal of sense. We have made progress inspecting baggage and luggage. In fact, I think the TSA has done a good job and is an example that Government can do a good job. They are doing better than the private sector did when they were hiring people at minimum wage who hardly spoke English. However, even in the air we are vulnerable to terrorists using shoulder-held missiles and taking down our planes. We can stop that.

There will be an amendment offered here either by me or by somebody else that will push us to do more, much more quickly. Are we doing nothing in these areas? Absolutely not. We are doing a little bit. Again, if you believe that we can take 20 years to tighten our defenses before, God forbid, terrorists strike again, that is fine. If you believe we have a window that may be 3 or 4 or 5 years, it is a dereliction of duty. It is a dereliction of responsibility, the same as not protecting our troops overseas.

Take the rails. We learned in Madrid that terrorists may want to hurt people by blowing up trains and railway stations. The best way they do that, the most efficacious way, is by using regular explosives. We have the technology to develop devices that can be like smoke detectors. They can be put on every railroad car, in every railway or subway station. If someone walks in with nitrates, they will be detected. We do this, of course, on airplanes. We have sniffing devices which are now used in a few airplanes. I went through one of the devices in Rochester. It works well. That does not work for crowded trains and commuter rails and subways. We can increase the technology and it can be like a smoke detector. Place it on the ceiling, and it goes off if somebody carries explosives, thereby thwarting a blowing up of a train or a railroad station. We are not doing that.

Nor are we protecting the egress and ingress at most of our train stations in case, God forbid, something blows up. Penn Station, the busiest rail station in the country, still has tunnels a mile and a half long without ventilation and without escape routes. Two or three years ago we allocated $500 million to improve that. Only $100 million has been spent.

My colleague from California, Senator Boxer, will have an amendment on rail security that will address some of these concerns. She and I will be talking about that.

What about the ports? We are still only inspecting, at best, 5 percent of all incoming containers. I was speaking to a few people who run the container operations in parts of New York. They say it is more like 1 percent that we are inspecting. Who knows what is in the containers? Shoulder-held missiles, nuclear weapons, terrorists themselves. They caught someone actually in a container trying to smuggle himself into Toronto. We do not inspect these containers. Almost anything can be in them. Again, the technology is there to do more, quicker, and better inspections, to detect explosives or biological or radiological compounds and to put a lock on the container so it cannot be opened again and something be placed in it. My colleague from Washington will be offering an amendment on port security.

How about trucks? We have learned al-Qaida is now using truck bombs as a weapon of choice. This is what our intelligence picked up when we had the last scare that said something might occur during the political season, either at the conventions--which, thank God, it didn't--or maybe closer to the political season. There were indications that truck bombs might be used. There are things that can be done, things that are technologically available and feasible to deal with truck bombs. We can, for instance, require any truck that carries hazardous material have a GPS system so we know exactly where they are going. If they go off course, we will know. If they are stolen, we will know. A truck was stolen in Pennshauken, NJ, my neighboring state, that contained hazardous material. It is missing. It has been missing for 3 months. Who knows who has it. The odds are it was robbery, but it is always possible someone for far more evil purpose was stealing that truck.

In Brazil, a country hardly as technologically advanced as we, every truck has a GPS system. When they go off course, it cuts off so the truck cannot run any further if they are worried. Brazilian truck companies did this to prevent theft. Why aren't we requiring it here? The cost is minimal. Put a GPS system in your new Cadillac, it costs a couple hundred bucks more. We can do the same thing for trucks.

We can have some controls on how ammonium nitrate is sold, which is used in truck bombs. We cannot stop it or limit it; our farmers need it. But certainly when someone buys a lot we could require they identify themselves and call an 800 number to make sure they are not on a terrorist watch list or a previously convicted felon.

We can put taggants in the explosions. With nanotechnology, the marking devices are very tiny and do not interfere with either the cost or the effectiveness of the explosive. That way, we can find out who tried to buy certain materials. It serves as a deterrent, as well. We are doing virtually none of that.

By the way, there will be an amendment on truck security.

Are our chemical plants secure? Absolutely not. My colleague from New Jersey, Senator Corzine, has been the leader on this issue. His State is one of the leading chemical producing States in the country. A terrorist can easily scout out a chemical plant and make plans to blow it up, creating huge damage. All these areas are not areas where we do not know what to do. We know what to do. They are not areas where the technology is not yet able to be developed. It is able to be developed.

I have talked to experts in all of these areas until I am blue in the face. We do not have the urgency coming from this administration when, time and time and time again the Senator from West Virginia, who has been such a leader on this issue, Senator Byrd, or any who have been focused on this area, have brought amendments to the Senate to provide the dollars to make these things feasible, we have been told we do not have enough money.

I ask, would most Americans rather see these things being done and have maybe half a percent less cut on the top tax rate? In other words, say we go, instead of from 39 to 35.5 percent, that would give us enough money to do all of these things. This is not a political choice. This is hardly pork. This is protecting our homeland every bit as much as providing our soldiers overseas with the weaponry, the backup, that they need. Yet no one is home. There is some rhetoric, but every time the dollars aren't there, there is not the focus, there is not the alarm, the sense of urgency some Members feel.

As we debate this bill, many Members will offer a series of amendments on each of the areas I have talked about and then some others.

These amendments are not intended for any political purpose. They are intended out of a sense of urgency, out of a sense of anxiety, out of a sense of even anguish that we are just not doing enough. I will be here making sure we vote on every one of these amendments. It will probably take us a day to debate them all, a full day, and if others say we do not have that kind of time, I would argue we do. If the majority leader thinks we have to work late to consider these amendments, so be it. But we are just not doing the job.

One final issue which I will be bringing up is our first responders. Our hospitals, our police departments, our fire departments--Senator Mikulski will have an amendment on the fire grants--are stretched. They have done a great job in their respective areas. Our police do a great job on the war on crime. Our fire departments keep us safe. Our hospitals are more and more advanced. But each of them has been asked to do special things since 9/11. Each of them has new burdens placed upon them and we are not giving them the dollars they need to do it.

Now, you may say, well, let the localities pay for it. But the hospitals in the localities are not paying. With Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements what they are, with the HMOs being more and more efficient, they do not have the money on their own. So if we do not do it, no one will.

With police and fire, it is not much different. We all know how our localities' budgets are strapped. We all know that the property taxes are a huge burden on people. To ask them to raise the property tax burden to do this means it either will not be done or will not be done in the full way that it should. Yet we are not helping our first responders: our police, our firefighters, our hospitals.

So there will be another amendment, I neglected to mention, which I will offer to increase funding overall for first responders. Senator Mikulski will have an amendment on the fire grants. But the bottom line is this: There is, as I said, a dereliction of duty, a dereliction of responsibility on homeland security. This administration almost has a disconnect. Dollars do not matter when it comes to fighting the war overseas, when it comes to defending our soldiers. Dollars cannot because their lives are precious. But dollars almost are the end-all and be-all when it comes to homeland security, and we do not do close to what we should be doing.

So in terms of my general remarks, I look forward to debating this bill. I hope some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will join us in supporting these amendments.

The bottom line is very simple: No one knows how the war on terror is going to twist and turn over the next generation. That is why I tend to like proactive policies both abroad and at home. But no one is a genius. There are a few geniuses, but not enough of them. No one can foresee the future, so we do not know what is in store for us. We certainly want to cut down the odds of a terrible, terrible incident occurring again the way one did on 9/11 in my city.

I wear this flag in memory of those who we lost. I put it on September 12, and I wear this very flag every day. I knew some of the people. I was friends with a firefighter who died, a guy who I played basketball with in school who died, a businessman who helped me as I was on my way up politically. So it is sort of personal. But the anguish I feel is maybe one-tenth the anguish, one-one-hundredth the anguish, one-one-thousandth the anguish of the families who live with this every day. But they would want us to do everything we can, and we are not.

It is my hope this debate will, at the very least, elucidate places where we are not doing what we should, and maybe even provide the kind of dollars, resources, and focus that have been so sorely lacking thus far.

Amendment No. 3580

With that, Mr. President, I now send an amendment to the desk to address the critical issue of nuclear security in our ports in terms of research and development.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this amendment deals with, to me at least, the greatest nightmare that--how much time does our side have, Mr. President?

Oh, we did not have a time agreement? Thank you, Mr. President. I only intend to take another 10 to 15 minutes on my own, and then maybe if my colleague from Mississippi speaks in favor of the amendment I will not even speak further. But if he speaks against it, I will try to answer what he has to say.

Mr. President, if you think of all the terrible things that terrorists could do to us--and there are so many you almost run out of mental space thinking about them--perhaps the worst that I can imagine is that a nuclear weapon, and I am not talking about a dirty bomb, which would be bad enough, but a real nuclear weapon would be smuggled into this country and exploded anywhere in the country, but particularly in one of our large cities.

The damage would be unimaginable. It is guessed if it were even a 10- kiloton device--smaller than the devices that were exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki--that over 100,000 people would die immediately, hundreds of thousands more in the next month, and then perhaps even millions over the years from the radiation. The economic loss would be incredible, not just in the city where it was exploded but wherever the wind currents blew in terms of where the radiation blew. It would probably, in many ways, change the way of life that we cherish for every American, no matter in what part of the country you lived.

So it seems to me we should be doing everything we can to prevent a nuclear weapon from being exploded here. Part of that, of course, is to try to buy up the nuclear weapons we know parts of the former Soviet Union have had and a few other countries have had. We should be funding Nunn-Lugar. But the amendment does not go to that. The other is to prevent them from being smuggled in.

There is good news and bad news about nuclear material. The good news is, in terms of detection, every one of them emits something called gamma rays which can be seen and detected through metal, through anything but lead. Lead is very heavy, so it is hard to detect a device totally surrounded by lead. And then you can detect lead anyway.

The bad news is, right now the detection devices we have are not very proficient. They still have to detect the nuclear material at relatively close range. A Geiger counter needs 3 feet. Some of the other ones that have been developed need a little bit more space.

They are not foolproof, to say the least. I have talked to scientists in my State at Brookhaven National Laboratory and to scientists in many other States, and devices could be developed that, No. 1, detect any kind of nuclear materials from 70 or 80 feet away and detect them in a far more foolproof way than the present devices.

Now, the only way a nuclear device can be smuggled into this country very easily--the only remaining way--is in large containers that come into our ports by the tens of thousands every day or in a truck that goes over the Mexican or Canadian border.

It is very easy to imagine that we could place these detection devices on every crane that loads a container coming to our country. You may say: Well, there are thousands of cranes all over the world. That is true, but already we only allow containers to come into this country that are loaded from 15 ports. I do not have the list of them, but it is Antwerp, Singapore, places such as that. You do not want to detect them here because then they could be exploded while the ship approaches our shores and is not yet here. It could be placed on every toll booth. We would basically prevent any nuclear weapon from being smuggled into the country.

But the devices that really work well and can detect radiation far enough away and do it well and sensitively are not yet developed.

Scientists say that with a couple of years of research they can do it. They right now detect small amounts of nuclear material in cyclotrons and atom smashers at a great distance, but those devices are too large and delicate. They can't be bounced around very much to work.

All it takes is spending some dollars, maybe $150 million, maybe $250 million--it sounds like a lot, but it is not in terms of the $1.7 trillion budget--and then installing them in the ways that I have stated.

I have tried for 3 years to get this body to do it. A few years ago we accepted an amendment that would have at least put in $150 million for these devices. But when it came back from conference, only $35 million was left. Guess what. That was in the 2003 budget. They still haven't spent it. Is that amazing? It is $35 million to start on this research, and Homeland Security still has not let the contracts.

What is going on here? This is a huge catastrophe that could, God forbid, happen, and we are just asleep at the switch.

This amendment seeks to rectify that. This amendment will provide all of the necessary funding to develop the devices and then install them in places we need them. My guess is the whole process would take 2 to 3 years, if we really put the energy and the muscle into it. It is true that there are a few places where we are doing this with rudimentary, more primitive types of detection devices. Yes, one of them is in my harbor, Howland Hook on Staten Island. I have visited. I see how it works. It is better than nothing. But it isn't close to good enough. That is one container port, and there are 40 or 50 in New York alone.

We all know the terrorists have access to the Internet, and they know exactly where nuclear devices are being detected, the few ports that they are, and the huge number where they are not. They also know that the detection devices could be a lot bigger.

What we really want to do is develop a super Geiger counter, one that can detect nuclear materials from a distance and one that is more accurate. Again, you put it on every crane that loads a container bound for the U.S., on every toll booth that has a truck that will go into the U.S., you have dramatically reduced the odds of this type of catastrophe occurring.

Is there anyone who doesn't believe we should do that? Is there anyone who thinks the funding we are asking here, which is an additional $150 million, isn't worth the cost? Yet my guess is that when we have this rollcall vote in a short while, people will just march up to the podium and vote no, and there is no good answer.

I hope my colleagues will not do that. One hundred fifty million dollars is not going to break this bank. It is quite broken already. It is not going to break it much further, and it will do a world of good.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I hope, if we are going to support the amendment, that we will see it through in conference and not do what happened a couple of years ago where it was knocked out in conference and a much smaller amount of money was provided for and then that money was not spent.

I am ready to sit down. I know my colleague from Mississippi wants to move the bill forward. I do not disagree with that. I think the argument is pretty clear and pretty succinct. I hope we will be off to a good start on this bill by supporting this amendment and by not ignoring homeland security, particularly a catastrophe that could occur if a nuclear weapon were smuggled into this country.

Amendment No. 3580, As Modified

Mr. President, I have a modification of my amendment at the desk, and I ask unanimous consent that it be so modified. It is just changing one number.

It is actually a reduction in the amount of money by $50 million.

I urge my colleagues to support this deeply significant but, in terms of dollars, modest amendment so we can cut down the odds of a nuclear weapon being smuggled into this country and, God forbid, creating a catastrophe.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum be dispensed with so I might answer my friend from Mississippi.

Mr. President, I make this point. We were here 2 years ago, and a year ago, and my good friend from Mississippi, with the same eloquence, made the same argument: The amount of money is the amount of money we have; yes, we could double it, but let's leave it up to the wisdom of the Department and the committee.

We did that, and in the last year, we have had no money spent on developing better nuclear detection devices. That is a cheap shot? In all due respect to my colleague from Mississippi, and I would say in all due respect this could happen in New York and it could happen in Houston, TX, and blow over to Mississippi--this could happen anywhere in the country, and I am sure just as I would want to protect the citizens of every other State, so would my colleague from Mississippi.

This is hardly an urban issue. Chernobyl did not occur in an urban-- it may have been in an urban setting, but it ruined millions of acres of farmland, which I know my colleague cares a great deal about, as do

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: My friend from Mississippi said the outlays were still $144 million below what had been allocated by the committee. If I were to ask unanimous consent to make this amendment instead of $150 million, $144 million, within the outlays, would a point of order still lie?

I ask the Chair. Given the Budget Act, if this amendment were to be modified instead of $150 million of new money, given what we just heard, if the outlays were below $144 million, below the full committee allocation to the subcommittee, would a point of order still lie?

Continuing my parliamentary inquiry, that would mean a point of order would lie even if we were within the outlays?

Just one further parliamentary inquiry: If we said zero budget authority but $144 million in outlays, would that be in order?

Mr. President, I imagine it is not. So pursuant to section 904 of the Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive the applicable section of that act for purposes of the pending amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to lay aside the pending amendments so I can propose an amendment to the current Homeland Security appropriations bill.

Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of myself and Senators Lautenberg, Schumer, and Boxer, and ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, this amendment addresses one of the most serious security threats facing our Nation: the threat of a terrorist attack on

a chemical facility. As in my State, the great State of North Carolina has had some accidents with regard to chemical plants recently, and many people believe it is one of the greatest vulnerabilities in our infrastructure.

I have discussed this issue many times, as it is vital to my State, which has a heavy concentration of chemical plant facilities. There are thousands of these facilities across the Nation that can release and expose tens of thousands of Americans to highly toxic gases--some fatal, some leading to great illness. It should not be lost on the American public that we will be remembering the 20th anniversary of Bhopal this year where as many as 7,000 people have ultimately passed from a chemical plant explosion. It was tragic at the time.

There are many other instances, and there is a great risk associated with these plants. The reality is that many of them were built at an earlier time in our economy where now there are surrounding densely populated areas. That is why this has been a great concern to people who think about homeland security right in our neighborhoods. It is the reason we need to make sure that what could be attractive targets for terrorists are properly addressed in the Homeland Security appropriations process.

Unfortunately, there are currently no Federal standards for chemical facilities. The private sector has been left to do whatever it chooses completely on a voluntary basis. I believe there are many chemical facilities where people have done a good job. It is in their self- interest to protect their employees, themselves, their proprietary interests, and they have done a good job. But that does not mean that all facilities have. Quite frankly, since there are no standards and no accountability requirements, we don't know. We are vulnerable, at least according to all of the experts who review homeland security. We are putting at risk literally millions of Americans. It is an unacceptable risk, from my standpoint.

According to EPA, there are 123 facilities in 24 States where a chemical release could expose more than 1 million people to highly toxic chemicals. We have a chart showing where about 100,000 Americans are at risk. But there are 123, 8 of which are in my State, where 1 million people could be exposed to toxic chemicals. There are about 750 facilities in 39 States where a chemical release could expose more than 100,000 people, and there are nearly 3,000 facilities spread across 49 States where a chemical release could expose more than 10,000 people to toxic chemicals.

It is a broad problem around the Nation. It is acknowledged. I have discussed many times this issue in the Senate Chamber, on the Environment and Public Works Committee. It needs to be addressed. I don't think we ought to be discussing this after there is a problem; we ought to be talking about it and correcting the issue ahead of time. There are no standards. The numbers are pretty staggering.

There are others who might define exposure somewhat differently. I noticed recently the Department of Homeland Security, instead of looking at a 360-degree circumference around a chemical plant, has tried to talk about the prevailing wind patterns in an area and lower the numbers. But we are still talking about literally millions of Americans being exposed to the possibility of toxic air masses coming out of one of these plants. It is time to act. It is not enough to just use words and talk about voluntary standards. Frankly, there is ongoing work in the EPW Committee to come up with a compromise proposal. I am supportive of the idea that we want to move forward.

This security issue is real and present and needs to be dealt with. In fact, the Department of Justice, a year and a half before September 11, issued a report on April 16, 2000, about chemical plants. That was mentioned in the Hart-Rudman report. In almost every situation that someone speaks to homeland security, chemical plants show up in the discussion. But the Justice Department writes in the April 18, 2000, report:

We have concluded the risk of terrorists attempting in the

foreseeable future to cause an industrial chemical release is

both real and credible . . . Increasingly, terrorists

engineer their attacks to cause mass casualties to the

populace and/or large-scale damage to property. Terrorists or

other criminals are likely to view the potential of a

chemical release from an industrial facility as a relatively

attractive means of achieving these goals.

It couldn't be stated more clearly. And that was before September 11. If we thought there were risks then, we have to believe there are risks now. That report should have awakened us.

We have comments after September 11 from people who are importantly involved in our homeland security efforts. For example, in congressional testimony, Governor Ridge said:

The fact is, we have a very diversified economy and our

enemies look at some of our economic assets as targets. And

clearly, the chemical facilities are one of them. We know

that there have been reports validated about security

deficiencies at dozens and dozens of [plants].

Let me tell you about some of the reports to which Governor Ridge may have been referring. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review conducted a major investigation about chemical plant security across the country-- Pennsylvania, Houston, Chicago, New Jersey, elsewhere. They found that intruders had unfettered access to some of the Nation's deadliest stockpiles of toxins and explosives. Security was so lax that in broad daylight a reporter could easily walk up to tanks, pipes, and control rooms. If there is any intellectual integrity in these reports, this is absolute proof that we have inconsistency, at best, with regard to implementation of security requirements or security arrangements at a lot of our chemical plants.

I am not just relying on press reports. In fact, I have visited chemical facilities myself, seen lax security, some in my own State. The fact is, we have to move on this. I visited one plant in New Jersey that had gaping holes in the security fence. Along with a reporter from CBS 60 Minutes, I walked right onto a plant. This is one that was a member of the society that is espousing voluntary standards. While it was not all that much fun moving into one of these plants, it was easy to have accomplished. Had we been terrorists with just a small explosive device, we could have easily caused a tragic and truly catastrophic release of toxic chemicals.

It is uncertain about what the loss of life would be, but it happened to be another plant in New Jersey that is located right under a freeway, with no guards or anything to keep somebody from pulling up, faking a flat tire, and tossing a hand grenade over the side wall of an overpass into a chemical plant facility. It is actually one of the largest exposures of the various plants in America. And, again, it was a plant that was a member of the Chemical Society, which talks about standards.

This is something which I think we need to recognize, that it is not always the highest common denominator we have to work with. We have to worry about the exposures at the lowest common denominator. It is a real threat and problem. We need to address that.

Let me add that I have not come down to bash the chemical industry, because I don't believe this is representative of everyone in the industry. Many are doing everything the standards ask and call for. We need to assure the American people we are doing that everywhere. We would not accept that we have OK security at one nuclear powerplant but not at another. We have standards and accountability applying to those situations because it is a risk to the people in and around those communities. We demand 100-percent attention to detail. These plants can be as deadly and as negative for the communities they are in as anywhere else.

We need to make sure everyone is acting in good faith--not only the good actors but everyone. That is why I feel so strongly that we need to move the kind of legislation Chairman Inhofe is working on in the EPW Committee. We all need to get together and get away from purely voluntary standards and into something that is actually more important for all of us to do in order to make sure all facilities are addressed.

That is why, 3 years ago, I first introduced the Chemical Security Act. My bill would have required chemical facilities to assess their vulnerabilities, establish priorities in the Nation, develop plans to improve security, and use inherently safer technologies. We have had to move away from that to get something done. But I think we still need those plans and we need accountability to make sure the plans

are in place. I would like to see us work with safer technologies that are available. I think we can help some of the companies transition financially if that were necessary. But I do think we need to move forward.

So far, we have not been able to get legislation passed and the exposure continues at least with some subset of the facilities around. I think it is time for us to move. I thought my approach was common sense, fairly simple, and it actually gave a lot of flexibility. It has been frustrating not to see this legislation dealt with. When it was first introduced, it got a 22-0 supporting vote in the EPW Committee, until the process of lobbying and other considerations came into play and a lot of folks backed away from it.

I am hopeful people will wake up to the reality that there is real exposure in our communities. It is time to act. Hot air and lots of words by people doing television shows, ``60 Minutes,'' and writing newspaper articles is not enough. We need to have accountability and real standards to protect the American people. I know I feel that way about our folks in New Jersey, and I am going to feel as if I have not done my job if one of our plants is attacked and people lose lives because we have not done what we need to do to make sure they are safe. This is a place that recognizes the problem--by the way, every time we send out a Code Orange, we cite plant facilities as one of the areas that needs to be attended to by State and local law enforcement. That is where my amendment comes in today. I am not actually talking about this particular bill at this point in time. It actually hasn't come through another process.

In this particular amendment, the appropriations bill, I think there is the opportunity to make a modest first step by appropriating money to support State and local efforts to enhance chemical plant security. As I said, when we raise the code levels, we are asking State and local folks to go out and provide extra security around these plants. By the way, you may wonder why the public is doing the work in providing the security; but since it is happening, I think we ought to provide resources to make that happen.

The amendment I am introducing would provide $100 million for that purpose. Funds could be used, for example, to strengthen law enforcement's presence around chemical plants, prepare officials for responding to a terrorist attack in a chemical facility--a complicated issue, not exactly like fighting fire; it is somewhat different. It will provide assistance to plant managers and other steps State and local officials might take to protect their communities.

This is a straightforward amendment. We need to put money and resources into this potentially deadly concern in our homeland security. Not unlike port and rail security, I think this is an area where there is general recognition that there is exposure and we need to move forward.

As I have said, there are literally millions of people who have exposure. We have a legacy of these chemical plants being located in densely populated areas, not everywhere. We should prioritize. We ought to have a different standard for ammonia plants in South Dakota than when you are in Carney, NJ, in the midst of 12 million people in the metropolitan area of New Jersey and New York. There is a difference. But we need to make sure we have security plans that people are held accountable to, both industry and the local communities. So I am hopeful we will be able to positively consider this $100 million first step--a small step--and I will ask for a positive conclusion.

Assuming that a point of order is raised against this amendment--I don't see anybody on the floor, but maybe the Chair will do it. It may not happen. I will leave that for another time. I hope we can have a positive consideration of this amendment to protect chemical plants.

Madam President, I see the Senator from Massachusetts rising. I certainly don't want to stand in the way of his accessing the floor. I was going to speak as in morning business on the economy. I intended it to be for 10 to 15 minutes.

I appreciate that courtesy from the Senator from Massachusetts.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for up to 15 minutes to speak as in morning business with respect to the economy.

Madam President, over the summer, I came to the floor and gave a series of various discussions on something I care deeply about, at least from my background, and have some reason to have opinions about, and that is the state of our economy.

It is absolutely vital for all of us in the Senate to try to get economic policies that put people to work and make sure the economy is growing in a way that everybody shares the benefits of America's bounty. I think there is a tremendous responsibility on all of our parts to be serious about examining policies that lead to long-term economic growth that can put us in a position where Americans are at work, they have access to health care, and they have access to a very constructive quality of life as we go forward.

Quite obviously, I think we can do better. In fact, I am one who believes the 1990s was one of the greatest periods of economic well- being our Nation has seen throughout its history. We can go through the litany of 22 million new jobs, incredibly solid productivity growth, went from huge budget deficits to a balanced budget.

As one who came from the private sector, I saw incredible entrepreneurial energy in the 1990s. It maybe got a little too energetic at the close of the decade, but the fact was that we were moving ahead. Real wages were moving ahead. We were reducing poverty. There were lots of good indicators going on. We were actually beginning to edge away a little bit at even the health insurance problem in this country.

Things have changed in the last 3\1/2\ years, for lots of reasons. We have suffered a very severe set of economic setbacks, in my view. One does not have to be a rocket scientist or analyst to understand that we have lost jobs, on balance, over the 3\1/2\ years. It may be growing at the moment, but the composite picture is we have lost jobs. We have not gained 22\1/2\ million; we have lost jobs. We have outsourced a lot of our high-quality jobs. We have lost whole industries to the exporting of jobs overseas.

A lot of our manufacturing jobs--in New Jersey, we are down to one auto manufacturing plant that is going to close in another 18 months. It used to be the heart and soul of our business. We had a great textile industry, just like I am sure was the case in North Carolina. It is gone. Many of those jobs have gone overseas. The quality of jobs that have replaced them has often been lacking, certainly, in economic well-being, absolute status of those jobs, and benefits that accompany them.

While we have had a recovery of sorts with regard to our stock market, we are still way off the top of where stock values were in the 1990s, and certainly for the last year we have been bouncing along. There has been no direction and it is not one that I think anybody would say is a strong economic boon for those who are interested in equity values.

Maybe more importantly, we have mortgaged our future. We have a budget deficit that exploded. We actually have another deficit, the trade deficit, the current account deficit, which are really long-run indicators of the eroding health of our economy. They may not bite us tomorrow or a month from now, but one cannot continue to have to borrow more money overseas to finance both personal debt and Federal Government debt--which is what we are doing right now with the kind of current account deficit--without having our dollar erode and the underlying values in America lost over a long period of time. It is coming. It is not whether, it is when.

We have a zero savings rate in this country. That is not the way to build productive capacity as we go forward.

There is a huge difference between the 1990s and where we are now. I think, though, when one puts all of this

together, maybe the most significant problem facing our country gets down to the human level. It is the issue that is on the minds of individual Americans, and that is the continuing and dreadful squeeze that we see on the middle class.

The vast majority of Americans who go to work every day, who drive this economy--two-thirds of our economy is driven by consumer expenditures, and that is the middle class. Those folks are suffering right now from what truly is a squeeze. Real income has declined. It is not debatable. It is real. The last 3\1/2\ years we have seen real income for the Americans who are in the lower 60 percent or the 60 percent from the bottom up diminish even more than the top. But every American on average has lost real income in the last 3\1/2\ years. They have been forced to pay higher prices that have outstripped income.

By the way, for the most vital elements of a family's budget, it is worse, it really is. Even though the Consumer Price Index might register one way, when one is talking about things that are absolutely vital to a family's well-being: health care, access to higher education, college tuition costs, energy prices to fuel the car and heat the home and keep the air-conditioner running, or property taxes, we may have cut taxes in Washington, but what is going on at the State and local level--in New Jersey, they are up about 10 percent each year over the last 3 years cumulative, and we have seen the real cost of living for individuals, apart from these questions of CPI and PPI and all the indexes, the things that really bite at an individual, the middle class family's pocketbook, has gone up.

I think there is a real problem. Between 2000 and 2003, family income fell by $1,535 or 3 percent. In fact, it has declined every year under the current administration, and the declines have been even steeper for those who are not lucky. I talked about the 60 percent of families, building up from the lowest level income in the country, and there it has declined by 4.6 percent. So it is a real deal. This is not something that can be denied. These are factual numbers. It is something that we seem to turn our backs on.

Contrast that with the record in the 1990s and during President Clinton's tenure in office. The typical family income increased $7,200 compared to a $1,500 decline. I think that is a pretty decent standard to measure whether things are working for middle class Americans and for Americans in general.

Let us look at what happened at the cost of living: gasoline prices up 19 percent over the last 3\1/2\ years, college tuition costs up 28 percent, family health care premiums up 45 percent. I did not put out the figures on property taxes but, as I said, they have gone up 10 percent each year in my home State. I know it is different in other places.

Another cost that has gone up under President Bush, an indicator of the current state of our economy, is the cost of Medicare. Just 1 week ago today, mysteriously the Friday before Labor Day, we had an announcement that there has been a 17-percent increase in Medicare premium costs. It kind of gets lost in the shuffle, although I do not think this one is going to get lost because people are going to find out that they are paying a heck of a lot more for their Medicare premiums. We tried to slip through this 17-percent increase, which by the way is reflective of a 72-percent increase in Medicare premiums in the last 3\1/2\ years.

By the way, from 1996 to 2000, it was 7 percent. Again, we are talking about the 1990s versus what we now see. Let us compare that with that little bit under 3-percent increase in Social Security benefits that has gone on over the same period of time. We are spending everything that comes out, or close to--actually it is about 60 percent of what we have had in increases in Social Security premiums right into Medicare premium increases that are being charged now.

This is a problem. Given these dramatic price increases and the decline of family income, there is no wonder that families feel squeezed. They have to. We are moving in the wrong direction on way too many of these indicators, and I think it is time that we take a look at the policies that are leading to this.

Under President Bush, moving on to another perspective, we have lost 1.6 million private sector jobs. Mysteriously we have actually created a lot of jobs in the Government sector. That reduces that job loss down to about a million. We are growing the Government, but we are not growing our private sector. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. It is unprecedented in modern times that we are actually losing jobs.

Remember, the population is growing and productivity is going up. And we are losing jobs? We may have had a growth spurt of sorts--it has actually been pretty anemic by any historical standards because we need almost 200,000 jobs a month just to stay up with population growth. But the fact is, we have had the first administration since the 1930s--it is not that we have a Hoover-level economy, but it is the first President since Herbert Hoover that we have actually seen job losses in this economy.

It is hard to believe. That is a pretty tough standard. Americans want to work. They want to build a better world for their kids and their grandkids. Creating jobs is how we do that, and that is not happening. It is certainly not happening with quality jobs.

We have all heard when you lose a job and then you get a job, afterwards there is a big deterioration in the economic well-being associated with that job. On average it is $9,000 less. In those industries that are contracting versus where people are hired, going from $33,000 down to $24,000, that is not the way to drive a healthy economy, particularly one that is so consumer-driven. I believe people will spend a little less money if they were making $33,000 and now they are making $24,000. You can talk about it in terms of arithmetic or you can talk about it in terms of well-being of the family and ability to pay, this is a problem in terms of quality of jobs, numbers of jobs, and the ability of people to have real income.

I believe it is reflective of the poor policies to truly stimulate job growth in this country. We are putting all our eggs in a very narrow segment of people who are already doing well, whether it is through tax cuts or the advantages we have in this society. This is not a complaint about people doing well. That is great. But we need to have the resources to invest in other things that will make a difference in people's lives. We need to have tax breaks that get our American companies to produce jobs here at home, not outsource them. We need to have the resources to help corporate America and small business do something about health care. We need to share that burden so they are not cutting jobs because the cost of benefits is too high. We need to do something about that now, and we need the resources to do it without blowing up the budget deficit way beyond where it is when we have an entitlement problem just around the corner on Social Security and other elements.

We talked earlier about 19 percent fewer people have health care now. The reason is, it is so costly. A lot of individuals just avoid it because they can't stick with those costs. Companies are cutting their health care benefits because it has turned into the biggest expense they have, certainly the biggest growing expense. We need some policies that actually address that and are making an effort on that. We have not heard anything on that in the last 4 years.

There is a real plan on the table, talking about catastrophic health insurance, making sure every child is insured, making sure we have tax credits for small business and offering Federal employees health benefits to small business so we have bigger pools. There are a lot of things to do. We are not doing it, and it is undermining the basic health and well-being of our economic society. And that is outside the context of realizing that 5 million people are without health insurance.

There is a lot to be done here. There has been a lot lost. All of this is in the context of where we have gone from budget surpluses--a couple of hundred billion on an annual basis--to what was announced this week of a $422 billion deficit, the largest ever, and there is not much of a prospect we are going to get that under control in the next few years. This is from the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office. I think we are

talking about $2.3 trillion over the next couple of years, with a whole bunch of things missing. It is a difficult, severe economic circumstance that I believe our current set of policies allowed to be.

It is time for a change. I think our colleague Senator Kerry has great plans.

I ask for 1 additional minute.

There is so much to do--on health care, job creation, and job training. We need the resources to be able to do it. We need to have sound policies to be able to underwrite rational Medicare policy, health care policy. We have put ourselves into a position where we have no money to invest in that, not in a serious way.

There is a lot of work to do. The American people understand there is a difference between the economic success we have had because we had the discipline and the foresight to do the things that make a difference, to create those 22 million jobs, to create real income growth, and what we have had in the last 3\1/2\ years, which has done just the opposite and particularly has been heavyhanded and harsh on middle-class America. I hope when we get to elections we will make the economic choices that will relieve that economic squeeze and make a difference in people's lives because it is truly important if we are going to have a longrun, sustained economic well-being for the Nation in the years and decades ahead.

Madam President, I send to the desk an amendment and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, I have offered this amendment on behalf of myself, Senator Nelson of Nebraska, Senator Jeffords, Senator Lieberman, and Senator Feinstein.

I rise today to offer an amendment that would end an ill-advised attempt by the Department of Homeland Security to privatize jobs that are vital to keeping Americans safe. This amendment would prohibit DHS from spending money to contract out immigration information officer, contact representative, or investigative assistant positions. I am pleased to have Senators Ben Nelson, Lieberman, and Jeffords as cosponsors. The House voted for this exact amendment earlier this year by a vote of 242 to 163, with 49 Republicans supporting it. I trust that we will have a similar bipartisan majority in the Senate.

Immigration information officers, IIOs, are responsible for screening applications for immigration benefits for fraud and for performing criminal background checks on applicants. There are more than 1,200 IIOs and contact representatives around the Nation working for the Citizenship and Immigration Services, CIS, branch of DHS. The work they do in attempting to discover and prevent immigration fraud--and prevent dangerous people from abusing the immigration system--is clearly ``inherently governmental,'' making them an inappropriate target of a privatization effort.

As our Nation continues to face the threat of terrorism, CIS carriers a heavy burden in its attempt to process immigration and naturalization applications while ensuring that terrorists--along with other fraudulent actors--do not abuse our immigration system. Information officers have played a vital role in meeting this burden. Indeed, the agency's own job description requires that IIOs have the ``[s]kill to identify fraudulent documents in order to prevent persons from appealing for benefits for which they are not eligible,'' a skill that is obviously all the more important in this era. They are also required by DHS to have ``[k]nowledge and skill in interviewing techniques and observation of applicants in order to determine if an applicant is misrepresenting the facts in order to appear eligible for a benefit.'' I am offering this amendment because I believe that weeding out potential fraud in our immigration system must remain a responsibility of Government employees, especially when the perpetrator of the fraud may be a dangerous criminal or terrorist.

In addition to their security-related work, these IIOs perform duties that are directly related to achieving President Bush's goal, stated during his 2000 campaign and since, of providing more efficient services to lawful immigrants. IIOs increase efficiency by, as their job description states, exploring ``all avenues of assistance available to the customer; determin[ing] the benefit most advantageous if more than one exists, and try[ing] to motivate the customer to file the appropriate application(s).'' IIOs also have extensive knowledge and use discretion in their positions--they are required to have ``knowledge of the exclusion and deportation regulations'' and ``knowledge and familiarity with the immigration and nationality laws.'' As CIS continues its efforts to reduce the backlog faced by immigration applicants to 6 months, the last thing we should be doing is replacing knowledgeable immigration professionals with inexperienced contract workers.

Should a private contractor win the work currently performed by IIOs, that contractor will be responsible for adjudicating immigration benefits and detecting fraud and criminal activity, requiring the contractor to make decisions that are both sensitive to national security and have a huge impact on the lives of millions of immigrants. This would be a bad idea in any era, but it is particularly inappropriate now.

I have a personal interest in this issue because about 100 fine Vermonters currently work as IIOs. I know the fine work they do, and I know that my staff and, indeed, all of our staffs rely on them and their counterparts throughout the country when we are seeking to help our constituents. I know that our Nation will be better off if these fine men and women remain in their current positions.

Thirty-five members of this body are already on record in opposition to contracting out the IIO positions. We wrote to Secretary Ridge a year ago, seeking the cancellation of the A-76 process. I have since joined with Senators Lieberman, Byrd, and Kennedy in obtaining documentation from DHS about its decision to launch the A-76 process to hire private contractors to perform the work currently done by IIOs. The documents the Department has provided have proven illuminating. They have shown that officials within CIS did not think there should be private sector competition for these jobs, and believed that the IIOs were performing inherently governmental work. These officials took their concerns to the leadership at DHS, but their views were overruled, and the competition proceeded.

Grant Thornton and PEC Solutions, outside consultants hired by DHS, drafted memoranda and presentations to demonstrate that going forward with the job competition was unwise. These views, too, were ignored.

The decision to contract out these positions is all the more disturbing because it has the hallmarks of a decision made simply to meet a quota. The Bush administration set a goal of privatizing 15 percent of Government jobs shortly after it took office. When the original decision to submit the IIO positions to competition was made, they were still INS and Department of Justice employees. According to a senior official at CIS, that original decision was made when the Office of Management and Budget informed DOJ that it had only hours to submit 1,200 positions that could be privatized. Only James Ziglar, then the INS Commissioner, even knew that the IIO positions would be submitted to OMB.

After the INS was transferred to DHS, the new Department had to decide whether to continue with the competition. DHS announced its decision to subject the jobs to competition in August 2003, and DHS documents suggest that the 15-percent goal remained a major factor in the decision, with the leader of the DHS privatization office referring to the need to meet OMB's 15-percent goal as recently as October 2003. This was true even though Congress prohibited agencies in February 2003--10 months earlier--from applying or enforcing any numerical goals or targets for subjecting employees to public-private competition, and even though the administration grudgingly announced it would abide by the law forbidding this quota in July 2003.

This amendment would also protect the jobs of investigative assistants. These CIS employees work in the Fraud Detection Unit, searching a variety of private, governmental, and criminal databases to find information about applicants for immigration benefits. These positions were created in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, to ensure that only qualified personnel would have access to highly sensitive databases. Despite the nature of the position and the circumstances under which it was created, DHS has demonstrated interest in privatizing these positions as well. This amendment would put a stop to that misguided effort as well.

In conclusion, this amendment would protect Federal employees who are trying to weed out fraud in the immigration system and assist lawful immigrants seeking benefits to which they are entitled. It had overwhelming bipartisan support in the House, passing with nearly 50 Republican votes. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Madam President, I will summarize what this is about for my colleagues. There is an attempt to privatize a number of jobs in the Department of Homeland Security. These jobs are vital to our American security. I do not believe they should be privatized. A majority of the other body feels the same way.

My amendment would prohibit DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, spending money to contract out immigration information officer, contact representative, or investigative assistant positions. That is why I am glad Senators Nelson of Nebraska, Lieberman, Jeffords, and Feinstein have cosponsored this amendment.

This is not a partisan issue. The House voted for this exact amendment. They just copied the wording of it. They voted overwhelming for it, 242 to 163, with 49 Republicans supporting it. I hope we will have similar bipartisan support in the Senate.

Let me explain immigration information officers. We call them IIOs. They are the people who screen applications for immigration benefits for fraud. They perform criminal background checks on applicants. There are more than 1,200 of these IIOs and contact representatives around the Nation. They work for the Citizenship and Immigration Service, a branch of DHS.

The work they do in attempting to discover and prevent immigration fraud and prevent very dangerous people from abusing the immigration system is clearly inherently governmental.

This is not a custodial service. This is not a landscape service. These are things preventing immigration fraud. It is clearly inherently governmental. So it should not be part of a privatization effort.

As we all know, our Nation continues to face the threat of terrorism. CIS carries a heavy burden to attempt to process immigration and naturalization applications, but they have to ensure that terrorists, along with a lot of fraudulent actors, do not abuse our immigration system. They play a vital role in meeting this burden. In fact, the agency's own job description requires that ``they have the skill to identify fraudulent documents in order to prevent persons from appealing for benefits for which they are not eligible.'' That is a skill obviously all the more important in this era.

They are also required by DHS to have knowledge and skilled interviewing techniques in observation of applications. What they have to do comes from years of experience. They have to be able to find those people who are seeking a benefit who are not eligible.

I have spent a lot of time on immigration matters and I believe that weeding out potential fraud in our immigration system is a major responsibility of our Government. It is a major responsibility of our Government employees. We do not turn it over to somebody else, especially when the perpetrator of that fraud could be a very dangerous criminal or a terrorist. I do not want to have it turned over to Fraud Catchers USA. I want it within our Government so we know what standards are being followed.

They also perform duties that are directly related to achieving President Bush's goal of providing more efficient services to lawful immigrants. They increase efficiency, explore all avenues of assistance available to the customer to determine the benefit most advantageous when more than one exists, again based on vast experience.

The administration wants to reduce the backlog faced by immigration applicants to 6 months. Well, suddenly putting in a whole new service to do it makes little sense. If a private contractor does it, that contractor is going to be responsible for adjudicating immigration benefits and detecting fraud and criminal activity that will require the contractor to make decisions that are sensitive to our national security. It is also going to have a huge impact on the lives of millions of immigrants. I think this would be a bad idea in any era, but with the terror threat we face now, I think it is a very bad one.

The amendment would also protect the jobs of investigative assistants who work in the fraud detection unit. These positions were created in the aftermath of September 11 attacks. Despite the nature of the position, despite the circumstances under which it was created, DHS has demonstrated interest in privatizing these positions as well. I think that is a mistake.

As I said, this passed overwhelmingly in the other body, Republicans and Democrats alike supporting it. I hope we would do the same.

I see the distinguished Senator from Nebraska on his feet, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, I have great respect for the Senator from Wyoming. He is a friend. I understand what he is saying. Unfortunately, the reason why this position was not taken in the other body is what he has asked for is something they could do anyway, simply ask for a reporting requirement. What they have done, in asking for that, they simply put it over for another 60 days and then do exactly what they want. I don't think anybody questions the reporting that would come back from the very department that wants to do this would be to say: Do what you want to do. They accept the report, they accept the way it will be done. Rather than needing 60 days, they could probably do it in 6 minutes.

What I am concerned about is the reason why there is such a bipartisan support for this in the other body--not for the gutting amendment of the Senator from Wyoming but for our amendment--was this makes sure that these very critical services are in the hands of Government agencies.

There are jobs that can be privatized but I think sometimes we privatize what we should not. We sometimes privatize law enforcement and we have seen some of the problems we have had in our prisons when we have done that. Otherwise we privatize investigations and we find that people have their records and their reputations ruined by private companies that do not meet the standards they are supposed to follow and afterwards they say, Sorry, we made a mistake.

Frankly, if you vote for the second-degree amendment you are voting to outsource positions that are critical to our security. We have had 35 Senators who have already written to Secretary Ridge, asking him not to do this. Basically the second-degree amendment simply says tell us why you think you should do it and just go ahead and do it anyway.

I hope we would not vote for it.

Madam President, I have served for over a quarter of a century on the Appropriations Committee with the distinguished senior Senator from Mississippi. I hope this doesn't hurt him back home when I can state unequivocally that nobody works harder than he does. Nobody is more conscientious in going through legislation. I know he has worked very hard on the appropriations bill before us. As he knows, I have supported him in the subcommittee on a great deal of measures in this bill. We have similar views.

On the question of vetoes, I can remember the last time a piece of legislation I was working on with the White House, saying they would veto legislation if we put in the TRICARE provisions to provide health care for our National Guard and Reserve members and their families, even at a time when an extraordinary, unprecedented number of National Guard and Reserve members were being called up for the war in Iraq and were being required to serve way beyond the time anyone ever anticipated. Nobody could understand why the White House would do that which basically undercuts the brave men and women who are going over there. Fortunately, Republicans and Democrats came together in this body and the other body and passed the legislation with very strong bipartisan support and somehow the veto threat disappeared.

I suspect the same thing. This bill is not going to be vetoed on this issue. I understand the threats. I have been here for 30 years, and I have seen Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents and administrations. It never comes through the Presidents. It says their senior advisers would recommend a veto threat. I have seen hundreds of these in my 30 years I have been in the Senate. I have probably seen about a dozen vetoes come out of the hundreds and hundreds of threats, even though they have been ignored.

The distinguished chairman of the subcommittee has a responsibility to bring that forward. But he knows, as I do, that we hear veto threats almost as though they were being printed and cranked out when any bill comes along.

I think it never would have passed a body as tightly controlled by the Republicans as the House of Representatives, it would never have passed with the overwhelming support had they really thought there would be a veto.

I ask unanimous consent that the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Feingold, be added as a cosponsor to my amendment to the underlying amendment.

Madam President, I would say only this: If the Thomas amendment is adopted, it effectively kills the Leahy amendment and allows the outsourcing to go forward on what is a critical governmental responsibility.

As I have said before, I would be happy to see a private enterprise stake. As we know, this administration has dramatically increased the number of Government employees. They went down substantially during the 8 years of President Clinton's administration, and they have increased more than any time in a dozen years by this administration. Maybe they could look for areas of outsourcing but not outsourcing in those areas that are critical to our lives and our national security and fight against terrorism.

I am perfectly willing to go to a vote on the Thomas amendment, but I would remind everybody that it kills the Leahy-Nelson et al amendment and allows at a time of heightened terrorist threat the Department of Homeland Security, which dramatically increased the number of employees, to take some very key governmental employees and turn them over to the private sector and say the private sector can handle our security from terrorists who might try to come in under the immigration rubric better than our own Government could do.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I wonder if I might ask the senior distinguished Senator from Mississippi a question. He has said this matter has to go to conference. He is absolutely right. He will hold the majority votes in the conference. Why not this: Why not set both the Thomas amendment as a freestanding amendment, the Nelson-Leahy, et al, amendment, as a freestanding amendment, take them both to conference?

The reason I suggest it is because the Senator from Wyoming is in the Senate, and it is his amendment. That way he could be part of it.

The Senator from Mississippi is absolutely right. We go forward with a vote--I was suggesting a way to save having to put the other amendment up at another time. It still becomes a matter of conference. If the distinguished Senator from Mississippi wishes to go forward with the vote on the Thomas, that is fine with me.

I would state, as I have before, that is a defeat of the underlying Nelson-Leahy, et al, amendment which will come up in another form at a later time. I am perfectly willing to go ahead and vote now.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of myself, Mr. Nelson of Nebraska, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Jeffords, and Mrs. Feinstein, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. President, if I could have the attention of the managers, we have had the basic debate on this amendment. I ask that we have 2 minutes on each side and then go to a vote, if that is agreeable. I will make that request.

I ask unanimous consent that we have 4 minutes equally divided and that it then be in order to request the yeas and nays and go to a vote.

I apologize. I thought the distinguished Senator from Mississippi had been advised of this amendment. It is basically my underlying amendment as freestanding.

Mr. President, as I said before, the amendment I have offered is the same amendment that passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives, with strong Republican support.

It says on these very critical--very critical--steps based in the former INS in which they try to weed out possible terrorists on immigration applications that this not be contracted out to a private company but be done by professionals. That is really the bottom line. We can talk about it for hours. We have had the debate before.

I withhold the remainder of my time, and I will ask for the yeas and nays once time is yielded back.

Mr. President, do I have time remaining?

Mr. President, we are talking about people who attempt to discover and prevent immigration fraud, prevent dangerous people from abusing the immigration system. This is inherently governmental. We have kept inherently governmental things like law enforcement within the Government. We should do it here with these 1,200 immigration information officers who contact representatives around the Nation. We have an inherent body of expertise that we need in this fight against terrorism.

I yield back my remaining time and ask for the yeas and nays.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 3581, As Amended

Mr. President, less than 1 year ago, we wrapped up work on the port security bill that was signed into law as the Maritime Security Act of 2002, MTSA. That act mandated and outlined changes that are needed to shore up security in our ports, and established for the first time a system to coordinate, plan and implement port security at U.S. seaports. While this was landmark legislation, much still needs to be done with respect to the implementation of the requirements mandated by this law.

I am very dissatisfied with the current Administration's disinterest in paying for port security, and would point out that we are approaching a crisis, as Federal mandates are being rolled out for security without Federal support. I have tried over and over to focus the attention of the Administration on this crucial need and pushed to no avail in the Senate to get the resources necessary to address this problem. But to date, I have gotten little support. In addition to appropriating much needed funds for port security, it has become apparent that keeping up with security needs at our ports is an ever evolving task, and that we may have to refocus our efforts and push harder to ensure that we coordinate our policies and maximize the limited resources that we have in this area.

Today, in order to keep up with these needs, I am introducing the ``Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2004'', along with Senator McCain, and Senator Breaux. I am pleased to have worked on this with Senator McCain, the Chairman of our Committee, as I often remark, while he has no coastline, he has worked with those of us who do have ports to work on these crucial port security issues. I am also pleased to introduce this legislation with Senator Breaux, for he has truly been one of the leading advocates of the importance of maritime shipping and the merchant marine in the U.S. Senate. He has done invaluable work for us on the Commerce Committee, and is a true expert in the field. He will be sorely missed for his expertise on all maritime issues, although I am sure, that in the future, he will still be the Captain of some small boat, yacht, or maybe even a ship.

Even though the Coast Guard, Customs and other agencies charged with the implementation of these measures have aggressively taken initial steps necessary to set up our future structure for seaport security there is still much to do, and effective action needs to occur to help coordinate and crystallize security policies and objectives. The Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2004 would attempt to mandate a coordinated Federal approach to several areas of concern in port security. It would also attempt to set performance standards for certain areas in port security and add a few enhancements to last year's legislation. Most importantly the bill would require a user fee to be established to help pay for the port security mandates.

Specifically, this bill would impose in rem liability to secure payment of penalties and fines under the Act and to help ensure compliance with the security requirements imposed by the MTSA. The bill would also include provisions to increase security in waterside cargo areas, and ensure that cargo contents of imported marine cargo containers would be required to be cleared within 5 days of entering a U.S. port, or alternatively removed after 5 days without being cleared, to a regulated warehouse where it would be opened and reviewed to verify its contents. This would in no way change any claim to possession of the goods. Importantly, the bill would require DHS to evaluate the policies and practices of sealing empty containers. According to the Federal Maritime Commission, over 4 million containers were imported into the United States empty. At a recent hearing, a representative from the ILWU longshoremen's union pointed out that treatment of empties and the sealing practices of these containers varied from locale to locale. This bill would require an analysis of current practices at U.S. ports in order to determine what steps need to occur in order to make sure that the transport of empty containers does not present a threat of terrorism, and whether a Federal policy is justified in this area.

The bill would require the Administration to produce a coordinated plan for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating maritime intelligence information collected by Federal agencies on ships, cargo, crew members and passengers. This intelligence is used to determine which ships, cargo, or crew warrant further inspection. This section of the bill requires further development of a maritime intelligence system to collect and analyze information concerning the crew, passengers and cargoes carried on vessels operating in waters under the jurisdiction of the United States. This mandate essentially restates existing law since it appears that the agencies have actually grown further apart since the passage of the Maritime Transportation Security Act. The provision in this bill would require a plan on how the Administration will coordinate collection and analysis of maritime information, and how agency personnel might be co-located to maximize resources and coordinate analysis. This plan must also indicate when long range vessel tracking will be integrated into this intelligence information. Additionally, the plan would require the government to analyze private sector resources to evaluate how they could be used to help monitor and differentiate legitimate moves of trade from those actions and players that are more suppositious. The Federal Government does not have a lot of experience monitoring commercial maritime activity, and I believe they will have to employ private sector expertise to assist in this endeavor.

The report shall also consider the abilities of the Department of Navy to collect and analyze commercial maritime information. The U.S. Navy probably has the most resources dedicated to the evaluation of commercial shipping activities, but are precluded from sharing this information. In light of our need for better information on commercial shipping, this policy has to be reevaluated. A maritime intelligence system needs to be set up to work together so that Federal agencies, State, local and the private sector can coordinate their law enforcement activities. Maritime intelligence on commercial ocean shipping is currently gathered by the Coast Guard, Customs, INS, and other agencies such as the Federal Maritime Commission under separate systems. Only the Coast Guard and the Navy currently work together. We lag far behind in this area, and each agency is operating independent of others. We are not getting the full picture of what is happening out there. It is crucial that we have the best information available so that we can target our relatively limited resources with maximum efficiency. Further, the information has to be disseminated in a fashion to maximize its utility, while still protecting that information which needs to be kept confidential. Collection and analysis of commercial maritime information is a key element of our port security that needs more focus and has to be addressed if we are to adequately protect our Nation.

Importantly, the bill will require the Administration to come up with cargo security plans to evaluate targeting systems to determine whether they are effective in deterring and protecting against potential acts of terrorism from cargo. In the event that targeting is inadequate protection, DHS would be required to increase the amount of cargo being non-intrusively inspected or x-rayed by two over the next year. The bill would also require the consolidation of intermodal cargo security programs that have the same security goals while establishing criteria and

performance goals for these security programs, which are currently operating completely independent of each other, and require certain other cargo security program enhancements. Voluntary cargo security programs are not the answer to the important problem of securing our Nation from terrorist attacks. Firm standards and goals must be in place to ensure that items that we know we don't want in marine containers are not actually in marine containers. The legislation will also require a report on the amount of actual inspections that are being done at foreign seaports.

While the Container Security Initiative was rolled out with great fanfare to work with foreign ports to inspect cargo before they get to U.S. ports, the question remains whether we are actually getting much bang for the buck. The fundamental question that needs to be addressed is whether foreign nations have been willing to use their security screening equipment for our benefit, and to what degree have they been willing to screen cargo for the benefit of our Nation. The legislation will require a report to determine whether this program needs adjustment, or is a cost-effective measure to ensure safe cargo movements into the U.S., and to update us on the progress in the installation of a system of radiation detection at U.S. ports.

Additionally, this legislation will redirect our efforts to help ensure that we can verify that security is in place to prevent an act of terrorism, and not place us in a position of having to rely on documentation and the attestations or documentation of third parties in order to determine whether we need to take actions to protect the public. The Administration has not even started to implement the certification program required to certify ``secure systems of transportation,'' 46 U.S.C. 70116, and they must get going on this vital initiative. Otherwise, it would only take one good liar to breach our system of defense. Although I understand we cannot inspect every piece of cargo, we have a credible system in place to actively increase cargo inspections, and implement a system that would ultimately allow us to reopen U.S. ports to commerce, in the event of an attack.

Additionally, the bill also would require a report from the Coast Guard on the benefits of utilizing joint operational centers at United States seaports to implement area security plans. This report should incorporate lessons learned from the three centers that have already been established, such as ``Operation SeaHawk'' in Charleston, SC, and consider which security programs could be effectively fused into these joint operational centers. The Commandant of the Coast Guard would be required by this bill to report on the effectiveness of these centers for port security and determine if it would be beneficial and cost effective to establish centers in additional areas that pose a significant security risk, and to utilize them to implement area security plans.

The bill will also make sure that port security grants are reviewed and approved, as was mandated under the terms of the MTSA, and all grants are subject to the review of the Coast Guard Captain of the Port, the regional Maritime Administration representative, and other Transportation Security Administration security officials as well as other DHS security experts, before the grants are approved. This grant program is not open-ended, it is intended to help the private sector and State and municipal governments achieve compliance with Federally approved facility plans and area maritime security plans, and the changes to the statute will ensure that the grant program operates the way we intended it to operate.

The bill also requires the Maritime Administration and the State Department to evaluate existing foreign assistance programs to determine whether the existing aid programs can be utilized to help foreign nations achieve compliance with the international standard set for port security. The MTSA requires the Coast Guard to set up a mechanism to review the practices of foreign ports to ensure that they have implemented adequate security measures, and ultimately, they can take steps that would result in the closure of commerce from ports in non-compliance with international security standards. It is in the best interests of everyone potentially impacted by such a policy implication, if we review our foreign aid programs to determine whether aid can be used to implement the necessary security measures.

The bill also requires the Maritime Administration to work with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, FLETC, and other DHS port security agencies such as TSA, Coast Guard and Customs to determine how to supplement their training programs to include a greater familiarization with commercial maritime practices. Port security law enforcement is much different in the aftermath of September 11, and officials involved in regulation and policing shipping will now have to approach it from a different perspective, and to be able to identify anomalies and irregularities, in order to best focus our limited police resources over an immense volume of trade. It is my understanding that the Maritime Administration has been utilizing resources at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and working with FLETC to formalize port security training. I think that this change will help our Federal agencies bolster their existing training programs, and achieve a greater understanding of potential security issues that could arise, and will be a healthy addition to work already done by the Maritime Administration and FLETC.

The bill rewrites the DHS mandate to conduct research and development, and would require the Science Directorate within DHS to be more accountable to Congress for those actions they are taking to develop the types of technology necessary to address security at our seaports. Importantly, the bill also requires the Coast Guard to evaluate the security risks and policies very carefully of nuclear facilities on or adjacent to navigable waterways to ensure that we have security policies in place to prevent acts of terrorism from occurring from on or under navigable waterways. Most nuclear facilities are on or adjacent to navigable waterways, and I want the Coast Guard to exercise the highest degree of security in their treatment of these facilities and the threat posed as a result of maritime commerce or the proximity to navigable waterways.

Most importantly, this bill attempts to address the fundamental issue that will face the nation as we implement the MTSA--will sufficient funding be in place to assure that our ports and agencies will robustly pursue security, or we will have to rely on sham security programs, or efforts severely restricted by funding that result in de minimus or desultory security efforts. When the Senate and House conferenced on the port security bill in the fall of 2002, the Senate conferees insisted on establishing direct funding for port security programs through a user fee, identical to the airline security fee, which would help defray the significant costs for the new port security mandates. The Administration declined to dedicate any resources for port security, and they declined to support the Senate's user fee. Unable to reach agreement with the House conferees and the Administration, I agreed to authorize just the necessary funds, but the President was required by law to report to Congress within 6 months on a funding proposal to assist States and their ports in complying with security mandates for Federal security plans. That report has never been prepared and is 9 months overdue.

When the President's budget for FY 2004 came out, after the U.S. Coast Guard had estimated that it would take $7.4 billion of funding in order to comply with the port security requirements, there was no funding for port authority compliance in that year's budget resolution. I offered an amendment to the FY 2004 Budget Resolution which was unanimously accepted to add $1 billion to help defray the first year costs of port security--ultimately it was dropped from Conference. Two weeks later, the President was presented with a direct opportunity to fund port security programs: Congressional consideration of his emergency supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the war in Iraq and bolster homeland security. Again, the Administration funding request included no funding for port authorities to help them comply with the Federal mandate, so I offered an amendment to add $1 billion to the supplemental specifically to help ports meet the new security mandates. Despite unanimous approval in

the Senate 3 weeks earlier, the amendment was opposed by the Administration and defeated on the Senate floor on a straight party line vote.

Last year, I made another effort to address the port security funding inadequacies during consideration of the FY 2004 Homeland Security Appropriations bill. Again, the Administration proposed no funding for port security grants in their 2004 request, so I offered an amendment to the bill to direct $300 million specifically to port security grants without increasing the overall cost of the bill. The Administration opposed the funding increase, and the amendment was defeated largely along party lines with only three Republicans supporting the amendment.

Until this year's budget the President has not requested one dime specifically for port security. He has opposed efforts to mandate the funds be raised from the users of the system, and this year's budget request is for only $46 million. Despite opposition from the White House, Congress has directed appropriations that have resulted in grants of $450 million to ports to help ensure compliance with the Federal security mandates, and so I know that this issue is an area of major concern. Ultimately, the funding issues must be addressed, and this bill proposes a user fee to pay for the costs of compliance of port security. I had considered the possibility of authorizing the Administration to either generate funds for port security via a user fee, or alternatively mandate that funds be directly transferred from funds collected by Customs duties, but because of jurisdictional issues determined not to do so. The maritime industry supports this approach, and I am not opposed to this approach, but want only to ensure, that one way or another, we have the necessary funding in place to set up the system of port security that this nation deserves. Simply put, there is just too much at stake to hope that security emerges.

This bill seeks to continue the work to correct the security and terrorism prevention needs at our maritime borders. There is much to be done and there is a continued need for government and industry cooperation. This bill works on some of that need, yet the major need is funding for port security, which I hope that we will be able to address in the Senate very soon.

I ask unanimous consent the text of the bill to be printed in the Record.