Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2005

Mr. Speaker, we have now gone about 1,000 days since the attack on this country on 9/11, and this bill is supposed to deal with our efforts to protect the homeland. I think that to evaluate how good those efforts are, we need to compare the challenges with the resources that we are applying to meet those challenges. And if we do, I think there will be no doubt that we are mistakenly trying to do this job on the cheap.

Let me give my colleagues some examples of inadequacies in this appropriations bill.

Air cargo. Air cargo is a huge threat to the safety of the flying public. If the public understood what a tiny percentage of cargo that is shipped on passenger planes is actually inspected, they would be shocked. It is a tiny percentage. We ought to do something about that. This bill prevents us from doing that.

The gentleman from Florida discussed correctly the need for more in- line explosive detection devices at airports. We wanted to try to do that in the bill; but, again, we are precluded from doing that by the budget ceiling. The chairman of the committee himself has indicated how important that is. Yet we are not going to be able to make any significant advances on that front under this bill.

If we take a look at the problem that we have with military pilots being able to communicate with commercial pilots, if you have a terrorist incident or a potential terrorist incident and a military aircraft is trying to track a civilian aircraft, it would be kind of nice if those two pilots could talk directly to each other and to the ground. But right now, we do not have the software system in place that will enable that to happen. That is a dumb omission.

We also have some problems with respect to ports.

Now, the new idea in protecting our ports is to establish inspectors at foreign ports so that they can review what goes into those cargo container boxes before they ever leave that port on their way to the United States. But we have a big problem. There are only 20 ports out of the 45 major ports that we need to cover where we have that kind of inspection activity going on; we have none going on in China, and China imports three times as much through cargo shipping as does Hong Kong, for instance.

Worse yet, the inspectors on the job in those foreign ports are assigned temporary duty for about 6 months apiece. They cannot get to know the territory; they cannot get to know the people they work with in those ports during that time. They should be long-term assignments, but we do not have the money in the bill to do that.

The northern border. The PATRIOT Act, with all of its problems, the PATRIOT Act required that we have a specific number of inspectors on the northern border. We are 2,000 short of the number that was supposedly guaranteed by the PATRIOT Act. First responders, those are the policemen, the firemen who deal with the incidents where they occur in the local community, on the ground, we have been told by the Rudman- Hart Commission that there is about $90 billion worth of need that we need to address. We have only met about 15 percent of that need.

We have fewer firefighters in this country today than we had on 9/11. Do you call that progress?

And then, we have the massive problems in the Homeland Security Agency. Of the 500 career slots in that agency, or roughly 500 career slots, 171 of them are vacant. Twenty-five percent of the slots in that agency are filled by political appointees. Is it any wonder that there is considerable chaos?

More than a year after the reorganization, that agency still does not have a phone directory. I was talking to a fellow 2 days ago who was trying to talk to the Homeland Security Agency about getting a contract, to meet a need that they were advertising; he did not even know who to call or how to find out because they do not have a phone directory.

It does not make a lot of sense.

General Zinni has made the point that when it comes to dealing with this terrorist threat that we have a lot of tactical activities going on but not very many strategic. I just think we need to face the fact this bill is not adequate.

And then, as has already been mentioned by several other Members, it has this weird feature which allows the Homeland Security Agency to give a contract that would be valued up to $10 billion to a company for the purpose of tracking who crosses our borders, they want to give that contract to a company that has already jumped our borders and decided they will locate for tax purposes in Bermuda. That means they duck their taxes, and your constituents and mine get the privilege of making up the difference.

Great deal. Great deal. That is why I would urge every Member of this House to vote against the previous question on the rule so we can offer amendments to correct these problems and to vote against the rule if we cannot bring down the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I am inserting in the Record at this point the text of the comments I made in the report accompanying the Homeland Security Appropriation bill made in order by this rule.

Additional Views of David Obey

It has been a thousand days since al Qaeda launched its

first successful attack within U.S. borders. Since that time

many changes have taken place inside our country and in the

way we deal with other nations around the world. Most of

those changes have been justified as steps that were

necessary to insure that nothing like September 11th ever

happens again. But how much progress have we really made? How

far have we come in reducing the likelihood that it will

happen again?

One thousand days has often been viewed as a period of time

for communities and even whole nations to stop and take

stock. What have we done right? What have we done wrong? What

are our largest remaining areas of vulnerability? What are

our prospects of getting hit again?

I think our efforts to prevent future terrorist attacks can

be divided into three stages. The first step was to hit al

Qaeda and hit them hard. Take the battle to them. Destroy

their leadership; their ability to communicate; their ability

to raise and transfer funds; their ability to obtain weapons

and to move members between countries and most importantly,

their capacity to organize attacks against the United States.

The second step was to understand the factors in the Arab

and Muslim worlds that feed this kind of senseless anger and

why that anger has been directed toward the United States.

Why did so many ordinary people in the Muslim world cheer on

September 11th and what does it take to reduce or at least

redirect the anger that is now so focused on us.

Thirdly, what are we doing to upgrade our defenses here at

home? What goals have we set? Do they make sense? How well

have we performed in reaching those goals?

Attack Against Al Qaeda

With respect to the first goal, I think the United States

has for the most part performed well particularly if we look

at the early stages of our effort and if we view al Qaeda as

an organization, rather than an idea or a cause. The

organization's leadership has been significantly diminished.

While a number of its most senior leaders have survived, the

best evidence indicates that they have grave difficulty

communicating with others in the organization or playing any

kind of day-to-day leadership role. Significant numbers of

lesser figures in the organization are still at large and

they are very dangerous. But they face much greater

challenges moving about the world, receiving the training

necessary to successfully execute large scale attacks and

getting the materials and support necessary to launch such

attacks.

The initial phases of our attack against al Qaeda were

highly successful. The planning and execution of the

overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan was a high-water mark

in our efforts against terrorism. The initial cooperation

that we received in the wake of September 11th--from our

traditional allies in Europe and also from nations across the

globe that have at times been less than friendly to U.S.

interests was also impressive.

losing focus in afghanistan

But somehow, we lost our focus. Having destroyed the

Taliban's capability to rule Afghanistan we did not move

aggressively to insure that the government that we support in

its stead could fill the void. We did not invest anything

like the level of resources for Afghanistan that was needed

to make rapid, noticeable changes in the quality of life.

Because of that, in a large portion of the country, we did

not have the leverage to strengthen the hand of central

government, extend the rule of law, and deny terrorists safe

haven. We also did not sufficiently exert our influence to

insure that the Afghan army that we were attempting to build

was representative enough of the various ethnic and tribal

groups across the country to become a credible force for

stability and unification.

But the attack on al Qaeda began to loose steam outside of

Afghanistan as well. Talented intelligence operatives with

highly specialized knowledge of Arab culture, language and

political behavior were diverted from the listening posts and

operations centers across the Arab world where al Qaeda

activity was most likely to surface to undertake a quite

different mission. Financial resources, talented

administrators and trainers who might have helped our allies

in the Arab world improve their own military and intelligence

capabilities against indigenous terrorist organizations were

also diverted. The striking momentum that characterized the

early phases of our efforts against Al Qaeda has greatly

dissipated. The organization has lost much of its backbone,

but many of its pieces are still out there attempting to

reorganize and regenerate the segments that have been lost.

We no longer have the focus to our effort to insure that that

does not happen.

Still, you would have to say that our efforts against al

Qaeda have been a success--at least if al Qaeda is viewed

simply as an organization. The problem is that al Qaeda is as

much as idea as it is an organization and ideas are hard to

kill. Bullets can kill organizations--they sometimes only

strengthen ideas.

As General Anthony Zinni said recently in a lecture before

the Center for Strategic and International Studies, while we

may be winning the war on terrorism on a tactical level, on

the strategic level we don't appear to even have a plan.

Osama bin Laden never intended al Qaeda to be the command

structure for the jihad against the United States. The term

``al Qaeda'' means simply, ``the base.'' Bin Laden wanted to

create a network to support and encourage jihad. He wanted to

attack and overthrow the Arab governments around the world

that he viewed as corrupt and out of sync with his views on

the teachings of the Koran and he wanted to attack the

foreign power that stood behind most of those governments--

the United States. Bin Laden's challenge was to create a

blueprint that could be used for such attacks and to inspire

large numbers of disgruntled members of the Arab and Muslim

world to follow that blueprint. He wanted to create a

movement that represented more than a small army of

terrorists--a movement that could bring down moderate Arab

governments and, with the overwhelming support of Arab

peoples, drive the United States from the Middle East.

American Image in Arab World

While bin Laden has suffered huge organizational setbacks

over the past thousand days, he has been enormously

successful in progress made toward his one strategic

objective. He has captured the attention of the Arab world

and much of the Muslim world. To a remarkable degree he has

even won their sympathies, and in some instances, their

commitment. If we wish to reverse that, we must begin to

think strategically as well as tactically. We must succeed in

our efforts to take the second step, to reshape the image of

the United States in the Arab and Muslim worlds. We must not

only strengthen the determination of our friends in the

region to resist terrorism but also encourage them to address

the underlying problems that feed it. Even for many of the

brightest and most industrious young people in many Arab

countries, hope is in short supply. While the energy

resources of the region have brought great wealth to a few, a

chance has largely been missed for many governments to use

those resources to build opportunity economies.

How we change our image in the Arab world and what policies

we should pursue to accomplish it is an issue that will spark

debate and some division in this country. That debate needs

to begin and it is the responsibility of leaders in both the

executive and legislative branches to begin it.

Upgrading Our Defenses At Home

Given how poorly we have done over the past thousand days

in stemming the anti-American passions in the Middle East, it

is even more important that we do a good job in the third

step required for a successful strategy: upgrading our

defenses here at home.

In evaluating our performance on that front, it is

important that we distinguish motion from movement. I am

afraid that in many respects we have had more activity than

we have had progress.

On September 11th, we had more than 130 agencies and

activities of the federal government engaged in some aspect

of homeland security. Those pieces of the bureaucracy were

spread across most of the Departments of the federal

government. There was no central capacity to oversee or

monitor how well they worked together. Many of these agencies

had only a fraction of the resources necessary to accomplish

the security tasks that experts in the field believed could

prevent future attacks.

So, after a thousand days, what has changed?

Homeland Security On The Cheap

Well, we are certainly spending more money. The government

is spending about $5 billion a year more just on airport

baggage and passenger screening. We have expanded the size of

the customs service and the immigration service. We have

bought new equipment in our ports to screen cargo coming into

the United States from international shipping and we have had

a significant

growth in law enforcement activities. But if you compare

the challenge we face with the resources we are using to

meet those challenges, it is clear we are trying to do

this on the cheap. We are like someone with a good paying

job who must get to work on time every day in order to

keep that job. But instead of building the most reliable

car he can find, he gets a fifteen year old model--one

that will get him there most of the time but will

eventually cost him his good paying job.

Failure in establishing our defenses against terrorism

places lives at risk. It also puts at risk our capacity as a

society to generate wealth. Although the greatest loss would

most certainly be measured in human life, penny pinching on

necessary security is foolhardy from a simple economic

perspective.

This legislation continues funding failures

Many in government, including the President and the

Attorney General, have warned that we are likely to be

attacked by terrorists on our homeland within the next nine

months. Given this information, you would think that we would

be doing everything humanly possible to improve the security

of our homeland. The legislation accompanying this report is

the prime vehicle to provide the resources to do that.

Unfortunately, it represents a stark failure to improve

protection of our citizens in any meaningful way against the

wide-ranging scope of the threat facing us today.

The fact is that we are not doing all we can to protect

Americans from another terrorist attack. The legislation

accompanying this report provides an increase of $2.8 billion

or 9.4 percent over the previous year. Yet excluding Project

Bioshield and user fees, the bill is only $1.1 billion or 5

percent above the previous year. Despite the Department's

huge security responsibilities, this is only slightly above

inflation.

This legislation provides a resource level equal to only

slightly more than inflation for our customs and border

protection and enforcement operations and for port security.

Worse, this legislation cuts funding for programs designed to

improve the response capabilities of our local police,

firefighters and emergency responders by $327 million or

seven percent from 2004.

OMB's homeland security spending analysis

OMB has prepared an analysis of homeland security spending

which is seriously flawed. Programs that were not counted as

homeland security a few years ago have now suddenly been

shifted into the homeland security category in order to

convey the impression of a greater increase in effort than

has actually taken place. Nonetheless, the OMB exercise is

instructive for getting a big picture sense of what we are

doing to address critical security issues. In total, OMB

argues that we have gone from spending $20 billion a year--or

about two tenths of one percent of GDP in fiscal 2000--to $46

billion a year, or less then four-tenths of one percent

today. That means that, even based on OMB accounting, our

increase in homeland security spending has been less than two

tenths of one percent. To provide some perspective on that

number, the share of GDP paid in federal taxes has dropped

from 20.8% to 16.4% during that same period--a decline of

4.4% or twenty two times the size of the increase in

spending to protect against terrorism.

Another perspective on the level of effort we have made

thus far is the oft-used analogy of Pearl Harbor. Pearl

Harbor led us to the creation of the concept of Gross

Domestic Product. The Roosevelt Administration believed that

it might require 50% of our total output to take on the

Germans and the Japanese simultaneously. They asked the

Commerce Department to develop a method of measuring national

output. They not only produced the concept that is now used

around the world to measure economic activity, but they were

also actually able to reach that goal of spending nearly half

of the nation's output on the war effort.

We do not need to put 50% of our output into this war or

even 5%. Whether you think that our war effort in Iraq is

associated with the war on terror or is a separate and

competing activity, expenditures related to that activity

account for more than 1% of GDP--more than twice as much as

we are spending on activities directly related to protecting

the homeland. Given that fact, it is blatantly ridiculous to

pretend that we cannot afford what we need to protect against

terrorist attacks.

Another major attack could erase a trillion or two trillion

dollars from the total valuation of the New York Stock

Exchange. It could substantially slow the pace of economic

growth for a year or more. Again, the most important

consequence of a terrorist attack is the loss of human life,

but penny pinching on homeland security makes no sense. Even

if we consider only the economics of the issue, the Institute

for the Analysis of Global Security found that the cost of

the 9/11 attack was nearly 2 trillion dollars, including the

loss in stock market wealth, lower corporate profits and

higher discount rates for economic volatility.

Now it should be noted that the Administration's FY 2005

budget attempts to make a case that in future years we can

reduce the size of federal deficits from the current record

levels and still afford additional tax cuts. In making that

case their projections for future year spending levels in

various categories of the budget are revealing. Homeland

Security spending is essentially locked into place at current

levels. In fact, what OMB is telling us is that unless the

American people or the Congress force a change in priorities,

what we have now for securing the nation is all that we are

going to get and could decline by as much as $900 million.

But the question we should be asking is: Are we really

doing enough? Are there things that we really ought to be

doing that the resource levels we have allocated to the

problem prevent us from doing?

aviation security gaps remain

One lesson from September 11th that virtually no one could

miss is the need to secure our airlines and our airways. We

have spent considerably more on this objective than on any

area of homeland security. But there are a surprising number

of resource issues still unaddressed with respect to

protecting our airways.

For example, we still do not have an effective system of

explosive detection. Put more directly, it is still much too

easy to get explosive materials onto passenger airlines.

The Transportation Security Administration has identified

equipment that could have provided us with that capability.

It's expensive, (it would have cost close to $3 billion to

install the equipment nationwide) but it would have

dramatically improved our capacity to detect explosive

materials. It also would have significantly reduced the

number of screeners required in airports around the country.

In fact, the savings in TSA personnel costs from the use of

this equipment was estimated to be large enough to offset the

entire cost of the equipment.

The Transportation Security Administration proposed to OMB

that the agency purchase much of the needed equipment when it

was preparing its plans to meet the 2002 explosive detection

requirement set in law. But OMB decided that the expense

could not be accommodated within the tight, arbitrary limits

for homeland security spending which the President and the

Director of OMB had decided to impose. Republicans in

Congress then adopted a budget resolution that did not

provide the Appropriations Committee with the latitude to

move forward with the purchase. As a result we do not have an

effective system of detecting explosive materials and that

failure is due entirely to artificial constraints on

resources and incompetent budgeting. TSA has recently

acknowledged that the more expensive machines would pay for

themselves within 3 to 5 years.

Following September 11th there was broad recognition of the

fact that we needed to restart the sky marshals program and

insure that there were enough marshals on domestic and

international passenger flights so that potential highjackers

would always have to think twice about the likelihood that a

sky marshal might be present on a targeted flight.

Now the exact number of marshals that the President and the

Congress agreed were necessary has remained classified. But

few people realize that we are no longer operating at that

level. No one has come forward with convincing arguments that

the level was too high or that adequate safety can be assured

at a lower level. We have simply once again allowed arbitrary

budget limits, applied to one small portion of the budget, to

drive a decision that may unnecessarily put a great many

Americans at risk. Under the President's budget submission

for Fiscal 2005, we will have 20% fewer sky marshals than the

President and the Congress agreed that we needed just two

years ago. That is in spite of the fact that there has been a

significant increase during that period in the number of

domestic and international flights and in the number of

passenger miles flown.

We have had--and continue to have--serious communications

problems between military pilots who have the ultimate

responsibility to insure that commercial aircraft are not

used to crash into buildings (and the commercial aircraft and

the FAA system that controls them). Quite simply, military

and commercial flight systems cannot easily and quickly talk

to one another and the potential that leaves for

miscalculation and mistakes it horrific.

Despite the fact that this problem could be solved for

relatively little money, the military felt the commercial

system should foot the problem and the FAA and the airlines

felt it should be addressed in the military budget. OMB

decided the cheapest solution was not to decide.

Finally, last fall, I decided for them. The $10 million

that was needed was earmarked in the Defense Appropriation

bill. I suppose that's a good ending to the story, except

that the delay in funding means that the system will not be

operative until 2006. That gives you one more thing to think

about when you board a plane. It also provides more than a

little insight into how decisions about homeland security are

being sorted out within the executive branch.

rail vulnerabilities

These examples of inaction with respect to airway security

are serious, but they do not begin to compare with the nearly

total abdication of our responsibility to assure the safety

of rail transportation. As the recent attacks in Spain have

demonstrated, our enemy is not wedded to attacks on any

single transportation mode. He will watch and wait until he

finds a vulnerability that can be exploited.

Rail is vulnerable in two ways. One is from attacks against

our freight rail system that handles a huge portion of the

materials,

products and chemicals that allow our economy to function.

The second is from attacks (like those in Spain) against the

roughly 13 million Americans who use passenger rail systems

each day.

Luckily, the Department of Transportation and other

agencies in the executive branch began a process of sharing

classified threat information with the nation's rail freight

carriers in the late 1990s. The plans developed as a result

of that process are in place and provide a foundation for

significant security upgrades. But the plans are dependent

upon the federal government meeting certain obligations it

accepted during the planning process. Under those plans

federal security forces are specifically required to monitor

tracks and facilities. Not only have we failed to do that but

we have not even designated the agency or department that

will supply the forces or establish a means of training them.

As disquieting as the lack of progress in securing our

heavy freight and passenger rail systems may be, the security

efforts on behalf of transit systems is even worse.

lack of progress in transit security

The White House has failed to mediate the dispute between

the Departments of Homeland Security and Transportation over

who is actually in charge of transit security. A General

Accounting Agency report recommending a resolution of the

issue has been rejected by both departments. The impasse

continues despite the fact that it is halting any significant

progress in securing the systems and despite the fact that

transit systems have been the most frequent worldwide targets

of terrorist attacks.

Neither Department is willing to spend even a small

fraction of the security related costs most experts feel is

necessary. Department of Transportation security funding for

transit systems totals $37 million in the current year and

the Department of Homeland Security has allocated only $115

million over the past two years. This legislation contains

only $111 million for rail and transit security needs. In

contrast, the transit industry estimates that $6 billion

is needed for security training, radio communications

systems, security cameras and limiting access to sensitive

facilities.

What is the Department of Homeland Security's answer to

these unmet needs?

They testified this spring that more funds are not

necessary until they have had a better opportunity to define

the problem. Now, that is an orderly approach, which we

should applaud as long as the Department can guarantee al

Qaeda's cooperation with their schedule. My concern is that

the Department is likely to get some help they have not asked

for in developing a definition of the transit security

problem.

The Department has clearly become aware of how vulnerable

they are to criticism about their lack of serious attention

to transit issues. Only two weeks ago, in a classic move to

cover their bureaucratic backsides, they issued a directive

to transit systems ordering them to take a series of actions

that the Department's own data collection system indicates

have already been completed by the vast majority of transit

authorities across the country.

cargo container vulnerabilities

Since September 11 the vulnerability that has most troubled

many experts has been maritime cargo and the exposure of our

ports to a nuclear, chemical or biological attack from a

weapon placed in a shipping container. As the president of

the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue, has pointed out,

such an event could cause death and destruction on a scale

far beyond the attacks launched on September 11. It could

virtually shut down our global trading system for an extended

period of time. The economic consequences would be almost

incalculable. Terms like ``economic downturn'' or

``recession'' would not begin to describe the aftermath.

The Bush Administration has spent billions looking for new

technologies with the capacity to knock a nuclear warhead out

of the sky if it were launched in the nose cone of an

intercontinental ballistic missile. It has invested heavily

in the development of other technologies that are intended to

serve that purpose but probably cannot. But they seem

unresponsive to the fact that a rogue or a terrorist

organization can simply place such a weapon in a shipping

container and explode it upon arrival in New York Harbor or

in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans or Boston. A ship

can bring into this country a far less complicated weapon

than one which could be placed on an ICBM. It can be massive

in size and its does not need to even be thermonuclear in

order to cause massive numbers of casualties, destruction and

economic chaos.

So what have we done to protect ourselves? Protecting our

ports is not unlike protecting our airports. We need to have

multiple security perimeters. The first should be overseas.

That requires a whole new approach to cargo inspection. It

requires that our inspectors leave the United States,

establish cooperative relationships with port security

officials in countries around the world that ship to the

United States. It requires that they establish a system of

certification and best practices with major exporters

around the world.

This is not a Democratic proposal. This is roughly the

proposal that George Bush's own appointed head of the Customs

Service, Bob Bonner, took to the White House in months

immediately following September 11th. It is the proposal that

the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force, headed by former

Senators Rudman and Hart had endorsed. It is the proposal

that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has written editorials to

support.

But the White House waited until last year to request the

first dime for this effort. Whatever presence the United

States has had in foreign ports over the past one thousand

days has been entirely as a result of Congressional increases

to homeland security spending--increases that were opposed by

the White House, increases that the White House threatened at

various stages in the legislative process to veto, and

increases which on one occasion the White House did veto.

Last year, the White House reversed themselves and finally

requested a portion of the funds that were needed for

container security. Their position changed from, ``we can't

afford it'' to ``we needed to wait.'' That is a turnaround

and I suppose we should welcome it. But the $126 million that

the president has proposed for FY2005, and is contained in

this legislation, will not adequately fund the program. It

will not even allow us to fully staff the 45 foreign ports

where DHS had planned to inspect all manifest documents. It

will not permit our current foreign inspection programs to

become permanent. We are currently in only 17 ports. We

currently have no container security presence in China, the

biggest U.S. trading partner in terms of cargo containers.

The number of cargo containers arriving to the U.S. from

China is more than three times those arriving from Hong Kong.

More troubling than the mere question of resources is the

lack of political or bureaucratic clout behind this critical

initiative. If having inspection agents working with foreign

customs officials is to be a truly effective means of

understanding what is in foreign ships before they leave for

U.S. ports, it requires developing long term relationships

between our agents and those who control the foreign ports we

wish to monitor.

This involves a new level of training and expertise for our

customs agents. It involves establishing continuity in the

relationship we have with host governments in terms of what

we expect to get and what incentives we can provide to those

who cooperate. Nothing could be more destructive to this

effort than to rotate in and out of foreign ports agents with

only a few months of experience based on a deliberate system

of staffing through temporary assignment. But that is

precisely what we have done. In the few foreign ports where

we do have a presence, that presence is a U.S. customs

officer detailed there on a six-month temporary duty

assignment. Those agents don't even know what the problems

were between the U.S. and the host government when the

program was initiated. They are certainly not people that

officials of the host government would want to invest much

time in getting to know--they will be gone before there is

any pay off from developing a relationship.

port vulnerabilities

If the overseas effort to identify the contents of cargo

containers is the outer perimeter for protecting our ports,

the ability of the Coast Guard to interdict, board and

inspect U.S. bound shipping at sea is the next perimeter. Yet

the Coast Guard's capacity to perform that function has also

been restrained by lack of resources. The Administration

frequently states that the Coast Guard is now boarding all

vessels that are deemed to be ``high interest.'' That means

80% of all other vessels are not boarded.

Observing, tracking and controlling ships as they approach

and enter into American waters is the next perimeter in

securing our ports. Systems have been developed that are very

similar to the systems by which air traffic control directs

airplanes entering into U.S. airspace and approaching U.S.

airports. These systems, however, are available in only nine

ports, leaving 45 major ports without such a system. Again,

this is penny wise and pound foolish. It is also a bad

decision in terms of long-term cost effectiveness. More

automated systems permit more rapid detection of ships that

are not following control directives; they can be operated by

fewer people and are long-term cost savers.

And, inside our ports, there are numerous critical issues.

One is preventing unauthorized persons from having access to

ships, containers or post storage areas. A second is

protecting hazardous chemicals and materials from attack. The

Coast Guard estimated that the 185 commercial seaports in the

United States would need about $7 billion to assess

vulnerabilities and take necessary action to correct those

vulnerabilities. These port authorities do not, in most

instances, have the revenue raising authority to pay any

significant portion of these costs. This year was the first

time the Administration requested any money whatsoever for

this purpose, and it only requested $46 million. The Congress

has been able to appropriate only $587 million or less than

10% of the money needed to do the job. This legislation

includes an additional $125 million for port security, which

will keep us on the slow-moving path to addressing all of our

port vulnerabilities.

securing our land borders

Another major priority has been securing our land borders--

in particular, the 3000 mile U.S. border with Canada or 5000

miles if we include Alaska. Despite our continuing strong

economic and political ties to Canada, the situation of the

two nations with respect to potential terrorist attacks is

quite different. Canada's smaller role in world affairs and

the image of Canada in the eyes of

the international community make it a much less likely target

of attack than the U.S. At the same time, Canada's vast

geography and relatively small population have led to far

more lenient immigration policies than those in place in the

United States.

As a result there will continue to be significant

differences between the two countries on how external

security concerns are managed. That means that the question

of how to control our border and the movement of people and

cargo across that border is suddenly a matter of much greater

concern.

Recognizing that concern, the Congress included language in

the Patriot Act calling for the tripling of the number of

border agents and inspectors on the Canadian border above the

levels we maintain on September 11th. As of October 2003, we

were still more than 2000 people short of this goal. In

addition, there was a clear need for significant additional

equipment on the Canadian border to insure that those new

people would be efficiently put to work: equipment like air

stations, radiation monitors, and surveillance equipment.

To date we have fewer than 4000 agents and inspectors on

the border. In other words, about one third of the positions

promised in the Patriot Act are still unfilled. The FY 2005

budget promises no increases from current levels. And the

President' out-year budget projection provides a strong

indication that personnel strength at the border will

actually decline rather than increase over the next five

years. With respect to equipment, we have provided the first

air station (again one not requested by the Administration)

and some radiation monitors, but have made no critical

investments in things such as surveillance equipment.

preparing those who respond to terrorist attacks

The events of September 11th made clear that the brave men

and women serving in the police, fire and emergency medical

units in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, District of Columbia

and Maryland needed a significant amount of additional

equipment and training to more effectively respond to the

types of attacks that occurred on that day. It was also

apparent that first responder units across the nation did not

have most of the equipment they would need to deal with a

nuclear, chemical or biological attack.

The needs of local first responders were spelled out in

considerable detail in the Rudman-Hart reports. But the

federal government has already allowed most of the burden to

fall on local governments. Since the capacity of those local

governments to support such investments in the tough economic

times is limited, progress in equipping first responders has

been minimal.

Of the $98 billion in first responder needs identified by

the Rudman-Hart report, the Feds have provided less than

$14.5 billion, or 15%. As a result only 13% of fire

departments can effectively respond to a hazmat incident. An

estimated 57,000 firefighter's lack the personal protective

clothing needed in a chem-bio attack. An estimated \1/3\ of

firefighters per shift are not equipped with self-contained

breathing apparatus and nearly half of the available units

are 10 years old. Only half of all emergency responders on

shift have portable radios. And we still have massive needs

for interoperable communications equipment. On site emergency

personnel working for different agencies need to be able to

talk to each other. We will probably never know how many

victims in the World Trade Centers could have been saved if

they had known that they needed to evacuate the buildings. We

know that was a communication problem of disastrous

proportions.

This legislation cuts funding for programs designed to

improve the response capabilities of our local police,

firefighters and emergency responders by $327 million or

seven percent from 2004. These professionals are put on the

front line risking their lives every day. They are especially

put at risk when terrorists attack our homeland, as we saw

from the number who died at the World Trade Center. These

professionals need to be prepared for the various types of

attacks we may face and they are not fully prepared today.

It is disgraceful that this legislation provides less

funding in this area, not more.

These are only a few examples of where corners have been

cut in establishing the line of defense here at home.

inadequate homeland security leadership

But there is more to the story than simply talking about

resources. In many instances, we have not had the leadership

necessary to organize available resources in effective ways.

Prior to the creation of the Department of Homeland

Security, the White House identified 133 separate agencies

and activities within the federal government that played a

role with respect to homeland security. The creation of a

Department was the Administration's answer as to how to

better manage and coordinate those disparate activities. The

problem, however, is that only 22 of those 133 activities

became part of the new department. A total of 111 agencies

and activities, including the FBI, the CIA, the Defense

Department and many other key components of the overall

effort remained on the outside.

But for whatever reason, the effort to have centralized

control and coordination of all of those activities within

the White House was diminished. When Tom Ridge went to DHS

his replacement within the White House was not given the same

clout to knock heads together and insure that Departments and

agencies are working together toward a common mission. Too

frequently, we have had 112 units of government headed off on

their own with no central coordination, as Attorney General

Ashcroft's press conference and the reaction within the

administration to that press conference last week so clearly

demonstrated.

And even within the new department there have been serious

problems. In its first year of operation, DHS has

disappointed even those with low expectations. Bureaucratic

snarls have been so intense that on its first anniversary the

Department still did not have a working phone directory. My

staff has been asking for one for more than six months and

has yet to receive it. It has also been reported that when

callers phone the Department's hotline number, it just rings

and rings. Members of Congress from the President's own party

have expressed grave concerns about the inability of the

Department to respond to requests for information in any kind

of a reasonable time frame.

One possible cause of the rampant chaos at the department

has been the injection of a huge number of political

appointees. Since the creation of the Department more than

one quarter of all personnel who have been hired for

departmental operations have been political appointees. These

individuals often appear more fixated on positioning

themselves politically than on the nuts and bolts security

problems, which the Department must address. We have seen a

huge number of press releases promoting the Departments

efforts but we have few concrete efforts worthy of such self-

promotion. We, for instance, still do not have regulations

regarding the licensing and registration of hazardous

material truckers nor do we the detailed guidance for

flight and cabin crew training to prepare for potential

threat conditions which was mandated by the Aviation and

Transportation Security Act more than two years ago.

Typically, political appointees remain in their appointed

positions for less than 24 months. At that point, they are

off to some other part of the administration or headed back

into the private sector. That means building true long-term

competency within any Department is heavily dependent on

recruiting a committed professional career staff. But the 114

political appointees now swarming the halls at DHS have--if

anything--impeded that process. Of the 500 career positions

needed to run the department, 171 remain vacant. One of the

most critical positions in any Department is that of Budget

Director. In only 14 months DHS has had three budget

directors.

Ironically, this legislation provides funding that is

sixty-two percent higher than this year for Departmental

Operations. Even though we were told that formation of the

Department of Homeland Security would not cost us a dime, it

now appears that the Administration has realized that this

was not true: $65 million is provided in this legislation for

the Department's headquarters and $70 million is provided for

the ``security-critical'' new personnel system. I do not

question the need for this funding. But I do think that it is

instructive that these are higher priorities for the

Administration and the Committee majority than are protecting

our border, ports, transit, and aviation system.

Instead, this $135 million could have been used to purchase

and install hundreds of additional radiation portal monitors

at our borders and ports. The Committee majority admits that

it is, and I quote this report, ``aware of a need for over

1,000 more'' radiation portal monitors than are funded by the

Committee.

Instead, this $135 million could have been used to inspect

a much greater percentage of air cargo for explosives than we

do today. While the Committee report calls for a doubling of

the screening for explosives of cargo carried on passenger

airplanes, this ``doubling'' still leaves a large percentage

of such cargo at risk.

Instead, this $135 million could have been used to secure

additional critical infrastructure, like chemical facilities,

transit systems and ports. The Committee majority agreed with

the Administration's plan to have only thirty-five percent of

protective actions that it recommends actually implemented

for ``first tier priority critical infrastructure

components''. What this means is that sixty-five percent of

the actions the Department recommends to protect the public

will not be implemented next year.

The Administration and the Committee majority seem to be

very patient when it comes to protecting our citizens on our

homeland. Unlike them, I remain unconvinced that terrorists

will wait a decade for their next attack.

congress should not abdicate its role

About a year and a half ago I spoke to a group of reporters

at the National Press Club about where the country stood at

that time in protecting itself against terrorist attacks. I

feel that the coverage of that event was fair and I think we

exposed some problems that, as a result of that coverage,

have been fixed. But I also think that the press and the

public have a presumption that this is such a complex issue

that we simply have to trust the President and his advisors

in the Executive Branch to do what is right. I think many of

my colleagues in Congress have felt the same way. While I

understand people's tendency to leave this complex calculus

to the ``experts,'' I think this town is currently awash in

new information about the decision making process within this

administration which indicates that is a bad idea!

First of all, that is not the approach to decision making

that the Constitution requires of us. It is our job to

second-guess. When so much is at stake, the Congress, the

press and the public have the clearest possible obligation to

insure that the decision making within the Executive Branch

is measured, deliberate, based on the best available

information, and consistent with the quality of judgment

befitting the seriousness of the risks to which we are

exposed. Had that happened in the wake of 9/11 or even a year

and a half ago there are many points in this statement that I

might have been able to leave out.

One problem in all of this, frankly, is that it was hard

for the press and the public to believe much of what I

reported a year and a half ago. While the facts presented in

that statement were well documented they presented a picture

of executive branch decision-making that was wholly

inconsistent with what the nation or the press corps wanted

to believe. It was hard to accept the idea that in this

moment of great national crisis we did not have systematic

methods of screening information, examining policy choices,

debating the pluses and minuses of each alternative, and

making strategic choices based on an exhaustive effort to

find the best possible alternative. But in recent months we

have learned time and time again that this was not the nature

of decision-making within this administration.

Ron Suskind, using the exhaustive notes and papers of

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, tells of an extraordinary

decision making process in which information is collected on

the basis of decisions that preceded them. Richard Clarke

describes a process both before and after 9/11 that was quite

similar. So does Bob Woodward.

My own experience with the President himself, demonstrates

that this President has listened as infrequently to those in

the Congress who know something about homeland security as he

did to our allies or the career American military before

rushing into Iraq.

But any one who has been listening these last few months is

pretty well aware of the fact that we were not vigilant and

were not picking up on clear information of elevated threat

levels prior to 9/11. We did not respond in the summer of

2001 to that threat in the same manner that we responded 18

months earlier when similar threat information triggered a

massive response to the millennium threat. We did not have an

orderly or honest process to measure the pluses and minuses

of invading Iraq. People at the highest levels silenced,

dissent and criticism and irreversible actions were taken

based on flawed information.

We based our plans for security and reconstruction of Iraq

on intelligence from a single organization outside of this

government which both the State Department and the CIA said

was unreliable. Unfortunately, that is all spilt milk. Even

if we understand those mistakes, we can't go back and try it

again.

What I am talking about today is not spilt milk. We can

correct these policy mistakes and we can possibly correct

them in a time frame that will prevent the next attack. It

all depends on whether we are ready to get real.

Now, I am not optimistic by nature. Perhaps it is merely my

nature that leads me to believe that the cauldron that is

today boiling in Southwest Asia, North Africa and the Middle

East will likely spill over once more onto the shores of

North America. If we are not ready, I do not want to look

myself in the mirror for the rest of my life and wonder why I

didn't ask tougher questions or insist on more responsible

and responsive policies. I think the overall performance of

our government to date in the area of homeland security

merits a greater sense of skepticism and urgency on the part

of the press and the general public as well.

We lived in a more dangerous world prior to September 11th

than most Americans realized. Our efforts to making the world

safer have met with mixed results and the numbers of persons

who wish us harm and will go to great lengths to inflict harm

have grown steadily during the past thousand days. Clearly

some of our efforts have done little more than fed the flames

of discontent and hatred.

That places even greater pressure on our last lines of

defense, protecting our borders, our transportation systems

and our capacity to respond to terrorist acts in this country

if, God forbid, they are again committed. But as the facts I

have today outlined well document, those efforts remain under

funded and poorly managed. The President proposed that we

have 20% fewer sky marshals than we had a little more than a

year ago. We have hired only two-thirds the people that the

Patriot Act mandated for protecting our Northern Border. We

have invested one-tenth what is needed to protect our ports.

We have only just begun to take the steps needed to protect

our rail and transit systems. Our first responders have only

a fraction of the tools they need. And worse still, the

agencies that have been entrusted with the responsibilities

are still wallowing in bureaucratic chaos.

As we saw last week the Justice Department and the Homeland

Security Department are still in the business of surprising

each other. Simply hoping that these problems will somehow

work out is not unlike the wishful thinking that many engaged

in as they prepared to invade Iraq. Misinformation and bad

planning can lead to excruciatingly painful results. The time

to reexamine our security, our security budgets and our whole

thinking in this area is now. The Congress must act to put a

stop to this mindless, non-information based approach to

policy and national strategy. It is as likely to prove

catastrophic in the defense of our homeland as it has been in

installing democracy in Iraq.

Congress may control nothing more than the purse strings--

but that is enough. The Congress has all the power it needs

to reopen this discussion, insure that assumptions are well

founded, the information is the best available, the

management is sound and the resources are adequate. What it

will take to significantly improve the systems that protect

this nation is small in the relative scheme of things--a few

tenths of a percent of GDP may be no more than we are now

spending on Iraqi reconstruction and one-twentieth of what

we have handed out in tax breaks. Given the stakes, we

cannot afford to do less.

amendment offered in committee to provide $3 billion more

That is why I offered an amendment in Committee to provide

$3 billion to fix some of the most critical security holes.

Our homeland security agencies could do more with this

additional funding--

They could put more radiation and surveillance monitors at

our borders and ports;

They could increase surveillance on our transit systems;

They could increase surveillance by local police of

critical infrastructure facilities;

They could improve the ability of our police and

firefighters to communicate with each other and be suited

properly;

They could inspect additional containers coming into the

United States;

They could put more air marshals on flights;

They could increase our stockpile of antibiotics;

They could increase air patrols of our borders; and

They could fix some holes in our current aviation security

screening system.

This $3 billion, however, would have only been available to

do this if the President agreed. It is disappointing and

shortsighted that the Committee voted along party lines not

even to give him that choice.

The Chairman of the Committee said during markup that he

would probably support my amendment if he had additional

budget allocation. The budget allocations are severely

restricted because the Administration has decided that tax

cuts and the costs of a war should go hand-in-hand. This

squeezes spending on virtually everything else.

We need to stop being penny-wise and pound-foolish. We need

to push the Department of Homeland Security to make needed

security investment now, so that we can be protected

tomorrow. If we do not make those investments until tomorrow,

our protection may come too late.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to be here to present to the body the fiscal year 2005 Homeland Security Appropriations bill, the second such bill ever written by the Committee on Appropriations.

The bill before us provides $32 billion for the Department of Homeland Security. That is $1.1 billion above the current year, and $496 million above the President's request.

Mr. Chairman, it is very hard to believe that the Department was created just a year ago. There have been growing pains, but tremendous progress has been made. This is not an easy task to get our arms around, but I think the Department is succeeding, and their success is significant.

In just one year, for example, the Department has inventoried the Nation's critical infrastructure to include more than 33,000 facilities. The Department is identifying and reducing vulnerabilities at chemical facilities, nuclear power plants, national monuments, subway and light rail systems, and commercial sites. The Department has streamlined the process used to get the money out to first responders, setting up a one-stop shop. They continue to work with State and local governments to identify choke points so that money can flow quickly and get where it is needed. The Department regularly communicates threat information with State and local officials. Last year, the Department issued 41 warnings and advisory notices to State and local entities.

The Department established a two-way communications system with State and local homeland security personnel. This system was recently used in Kentucky when there was a smallpox scare in the small rural town of London. The information was quickly passed on to the Department and other Federal officials and appropriate action was immediately taken. The system works.

The Department has increased their presence to more than 38 ports in 18 different countries, prescreening all high-risk cargo before it reaches our shores. The Department has established three Homeland Security Centers of Excellence, created standards for first responder equipment, and installed and operated sensor systems in 30 high-risk cities to detect biohazards. Those are just some things that they are doing.

There is no doubt, Mr. Chairman, that more work needs to be done, but the Department is clearly on the right track, identifying our vulnerabilities, matching them to threats, and putting out specific guidance on ways to protect our homeland.

Fiscal year 2005 will be the second full year of operation for the Department. This bill continues the successes of the past year and includes initiatives to move us closer to our goals of prevention, preparedness, and response.

The bill provides $4.1 billion for our first responders, the first line of defense. These brave men and women are the first on the scene whenever there might be a problem. They are the backbone of our communities.

Since 9/11, this Congress has provided $26.7 billion for these first responders. Those dollars have helped train more than 285,000 police, fire, and emergency medical personnel around the Nation to respond to acts of terrorism, including weapons of mass destruction. No community in America, whether urban or rural, is immune from acts of terrorism. This bill strikes a balance between funding high-risk communities and providing support for States and localities, striving to achieve and maintain minimum levels of preparedness. For 2005 we propose an additional $1.175 billion to improve security in our urban and most populated areas.

The United States is the most open nation in the world. Our borders are the gateway for billions of dollars in commercial trade and millions of visitors. However, these same borders are potential entry points for terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. This 2005 bill provides $9.8 billion for border protection and related activities. This funding will continue our efforts to create smart borders that keep terrorists out of America without stemming

the flow of commerce or legitimate travel. Funding will be used to operate and expand the container security initiative. Funding will be used to design and to identify, target, and search high-risk cargo before it enters our ports. We also fund advanced inspection technologies, including personal radiation monitors and detectors.

This legislation fully supports security for all modes of transportation, providing $5.7 billion to the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Air Marshals.

Since September 11, Congress has provided $14.3 billion for aviation security. Funding has been used for a host of purposes, including securing all of the cockpit doors on commercial flights, installing new technically advanced metal detectors at the airports, searching checked bags for explosives, and federalizing the screener workforce. We continue our commitment to aviation security in 2005 and fully fund the baggage and passenger screening efforts, as well as new technology to improve screening procedures at America's airports and giving Federal Air Marshals the funds they need to cover high-threat domestic and international flights.

The bill also includes $118 million for air cargo screening which will support the hiring of 100 new air cargo inspectors, development of new cargo screening technology, and expansion of canine enforcement teams. The bill also requires TSA to double the number of cargo inspections on passenger aircraft.

The bill funds several initiatives for rail security, providing $111 million for grants to high-threat systems, technology to screen passengers and baggage, and furthering intelligence-related activities.

Security assessments for the 14 subway systems and 278 light rail systems have been completed. And this will continue in 2005.

Additional funds are also provided for radiological, political, chemical and high explosives countermeasures to both rail and transit systems. There is $1.1 billion, Mr. Chairman, for the science and technology directorate. We are targeting funds for research, development, and the discovery of new technologies that can and are being used in our cities and towns today, including environmental sensors to detect biohazards and nuclear detection technology for cargo.

We also continue to fully fund research and development for antimissile devices for commercial aircraft, the so-called ``man pads.'' The bill includes $855 million for information analysis and infrastructure protection. These funds will be used to complete an inventory of critical infrastructure, enhance current communication between Federal, State and local homeland security personnel, and assist local communities as they put protective measures in place. Funds will be used to train State homeland security advisors and local law enforcement on best practices for protecting their critical sites.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, this bill fully supports the traditional missions and operations of agencies that were merged into the Department including the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and, of course, disaster relief. I believe, Mr. Chairman, we have produced the right mix for this Department. It builds upon the progress of the past year and furthers the protection of our beloved homeland.

House of Representatives,

Committee on Appropriations,

Washington, DC, June 15, 2004.

Hon. Bill Thomas,

Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means,

Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Thomas: Thank you for your letter regarding

H.R. 4567, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations

Act for fiscal year 2005. As you have noted, the bill is

scheduled for floor consideration on Wednesday, June 16,

2004. I appreciate your agreement to expedite the passage of

this legislation although it contains a provision involving

overtime pay that falls within the Committee's jurisdiction.

I appreciate your decision to forgo further action on the

bill and acknowledge that it will not prejudice the Committee

on Ways and Means with respect to its jurisdictional

prerogatives on this or similar legislation.

Our committees have worked closely together on this

important initiative, and I am very pleased we are continuing

that cooperation. I appreciate your helping us to move this

legislation quickly to the floor. Finally, I will include in

the Congressional Record a copy of our exchange of letters on

this matter. Thank you for your assistance and cooperation.

We look forward to working with you in the future.

Best regards,

Harold Rogers,

Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham), a very hardworking member of this subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the very distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Sweeney), who has been on the subcommittee and a very valuable Member.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sweeney) for bringing this important matter to the attention of the committee and the Congress. As overseers of homeland defense and security, I believe the committee acted responsibly in supporting the Department's request to make certain geospatial information management falls under the direction of the Chief Information Officer.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue

to yield, I look forward to working with the gentleman as we move forward and will certainly work to strengthen the report language in conference as events dictate.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp), a very hardworking member of the subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Fossella).

(Mr. FOSSELLA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson), a very hard-working member of this subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. King).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), a member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security, the authorizing committee.

(Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that we take up the Weldon amendment now, then the Turner amendment and then the regular order.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman has worked tirelessly on this effort, this amendment, and the SAFER funding, and the committee thinks this is a wise move. Our first responders are in great need, and we depend upon them, and I am happy to accept his amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman has offered what I consider to be a very helpful amendment. I think it is needed, and we are happy to agree to it. The ranking member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security has been very helpful to us.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would remain at the desk, I really appreciate the gentleman bringing this issue before us, interoperability of communications amongst our first responders. One of the great lessons we learned, of course, out of 9/11--and the evidence has been ongoing since that time--is to go all out to try to create interoperability. It is a fairly complicated matter, as we now find out, and very expensive.

So the gentleman's amendment that would set aside more money to examine how this can take place really is not necessary, because the Department already has an ongoing operation to collect that data from the States and the communities and the first responder units.

Not all the States, of course, have decided what grant money will be spent on; and, of course, all the data is not yet automated. But the Office for Domestic Preparedness is currently building a master database, it is supposed to be completed in the next few months, to automate all state and local spending details, so we will then have what I think will be a fairly comprehensive inventory of where we are, which is what the gentleman, I think, is seeking in his amendment.

So I would hope, perhaps, that the gentleman might withdraw the amendment, with my assurance that the Department is already involved in exactly what I think he seeks in his amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, since 2002, we have included language in either the Transportation bill that preceded Homeland Security, and then the Homeland Security bill in 2004, language that limits the number of screeners to no more than 45,000 full-time equivalents. In my judgment, that language is necessary to force TSA to use taxpayer dollars reasonably and efficiently.

When TSA was first organized, it overhired and mismanaged millions of dollars. When they first came to the Congress when it was a part of the Transportation Department, they said we think we can get by with 30,000 screeners. They came back later and said no, we think it is going to be 35,000. Then they came back later and said 40,000, then 45,000, then 50,000, then 55,000. Finally, I said ``Time. Let us talk. What is going on here?'' And others did the same thing.

And so we went through their needs and we were careful to determine the optimum amount of people that would

be necessary to screen our customers at the airports.

During this zealous hiring phase at the outset, many airports, particularly small ones, had TSA employees screening a couple of passengers a day. For example, Clinton County Airport in New York, and I do not want to pick out examples necessarily, but there is no other way to do it; Clinton County Airport in New York had 20 screeners. How many passengers a day did they have? Twelve. Twenty screeners for 12 passengers a day.

Other airports, Massena and Adirondack, both in New York had the same number of screeners as daily passengers. What we had at that time, and people said so, is that TSA was an acronym for Thousands Standing Around, waiting for a passenger that needed to be screened.

Over the last 2 years, this cap has forced TSA to reshape that workforce so that more screeners have now been assigned in high-traffic airports and fewer in small airports, while still maintaining high levels of security. TSA has also begun to hire part-time screeners to work just during the peak hours, and the rest of the day when we do not need them they are not there. TSA recently created a summer plan to mitigate the anticipated effects of a busy travel season, given the size of the screener workforce. They are right sizing even as we speak.

TSA needs to do more. The agency is still too focused on screeners. It is doing a poor job of phasing in new technologies that would reduce our dependence on screeners.

Here are two examples of cost-savings that can result from using technology: Lexington, Kentucky, an airport I fly in and out of each week, invested just $3.5 million to install explosive detection machines in-line, with the conveyor belt, which allowed TSA to use 4 screeners per shift, rather than the 30 that would have been required using explosive trace detection equipment in the lobby. Not only that, people move through quicker.

There are even bigger savings in larger airports. San Francisco predicts that by having a complete in-line explosive detection system, it will require 100 less screeners, saving about $5 million in salaries and compensation each year.

Deleting this cap would be very premature. Instead of forcing TSA to continue to restructure its workforce to handle high-traffic levels at some airports, and to procure new equipment that could greatly reduce our reliance on screeners, this amendment would permit TSA to request an exemption from this cap and return to the days of ``thousands standing around.''

If we delete this cap, Mr. Chairman, 5 years from now I am convinced we will have 70,000-plus screeners and no new technology in place, and we are back to where we were.

The gentleman makes a very good point. The TSA is still operating under the system where they hire nationally. So that when there is a vacancy in San Francisco or New Jersey or where have you, that has to work its way up to the national headquarters, and it is a very inefficient way for TSA to replace people who have quit their job. We are trying to force the Department to at least regionalize the hiring process, and I would like to see it even localized so that we can replace people quickly, but the gentleman makes a good point.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I appreciate the gentleman bringing this issue forward, and it is an important issue. But the Science and Tech Directorate of Homeland Security has assured us and the Coast Guard that all elements of the Coast Guard's R&D program will remain under the direct management of the Coast Guard.

I recognize the gentleman's concerns. We will work with him on this subject if the authorization bill retains R&D funding within the Coast Guard for fiscal year 2005.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against the amendment because it proposes to change existing law and constitutes legislation in an appropriations bill and therefore violates clause 2 of rule XXI which states in pertinent part, ``an amendment to a general appropriations bill shall not be in order if changing existing law by imposing additional duties.''

I ask for a ruling from the Chair.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, in this bill we attempted to be fair to everyone. We do not have all the money in the world. If we did, we could do perhaps what New York wants; but we do not, and we have got a whole country to deal with. There are two basic funds of money that we are talking about. One is the so-called formula funding grant program, and the other is specifically for the high-density, high-threat urban area fund. Two funds. The first one the formula grant program, 40 percent of that money goes to all the States; and everyone gets .75 percent, less than 1 percent of a fund that this year is $760 million total.

But 60 percent of even the formula grant program goes to States that are most populated, and I did some research. The money that went in that fund, in this year's bill, is $1.15 billion. Of the money that goes to New York State, in 2004 New York City got over half of the State money, in addition to the urban grant fund.

Now, fair is fair; and I want to be fair about this. New York City is a target. Everyone admits that. Other large urban areas are targets. Everyone admits that, and we want to help prepare. We want to do all that we can to be sure that New York City and the other large cities have all the monies that we can afford to pay for the Federal portion of what the local fire departments and the police departments and the EMT units and all do routinely. A portion of what they do is the counterterrorism effort that we are paying them for. Most of what they do, of course, are city and local and State duties.

But there is a limit to what we can do. Now, what this amendment does, Mr. Chairman, is take monies out of the formula grants that goes to Kansas, Kentucky and Florida and the other States and puts $450 million out of that account into the urban area's account. We already did a lot of that in the bill. We have already reduced the formula grants, already $450 million below last year's level. And the urban area grants in the bill are $280 million above last year's level. We have already robbed Peter to pay Paul, and now Paul wants more at the expense of Peter.

We have got to be sure that the rest of the country is protected as well. Just because you are not a large urban area does not mean that you are not at risk from terrorist attack. Hundreds of U.S. agricultural documents have been found in the al Qaeda caves in Afghanistan and other places. It has been reported that a significant part of al Qaeda's training manual is devoted to agricultural terrorism, a frightening fact when you recall the reported terrorist interest in crop dusters.

No community is immune from terrorism. We were reminded of that on 9/ 11 when Maine played a major part in the staging of the attack on New York City, little unpopulated Maine. We do not want to ignore Maine again.

In 1984, followers of Bhagwan Shree poisoned salad bars in 10 restaurants in The Dalles in Oregon, population 12,000, the largest germ warfare attack in history.

The terrorists that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 trained in rural Pennsylvania, 30 miles from Three Mile Island in the months prior to that attack. Timothy McVeigh, who destroyed the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City, planned his attack and purchased the materials in Herrington, Kansas, population 2,500. In January 2000, Yousef Karoun was arrested in Blaine, Washington, population 3,600, after authorities determined he was on the FBI's lookout list and found evidence of nitroglycerin on his vehicle. United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into Shanksville, Pennsylvania, population 245, after being hijacked. Local fire departments quickly responded. In the fall of 2001, two people linked to an international terrorist group were arrested in Beecher Falls, Vermont, population 238, after attempting to cross the border.

In September 2002 a suspected terrorist cell was broken up in Lackawanna, New

York, a city south of Buffalo, population 20,000. Five convictions. And on and on and on.

Mr. Chairman, we have treated the urban areas in this bill better than we did in the current year, and we cut the formula funding for the rest of the country by a huge amount in this bill. We think we have already treated the urban areas fairly. If we had more money, we could treat them even better; but with what we have, we think we have treated them fairly. I would urge Members to reject this amendment.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's statement very much, and he is exactly correct. We love New York City. I cannot wait to go there for the convention in a few weeks.

But let me just say this: In the High Density Urban Area Grant Program out of which New York will receive a good sum of money, we are almost at the President's recommended level. We are at $1.175 billion, which is almost twice what it is now. We have almost doubled the money in that account.

In addition to that, the State of New York--and New York City will get roughly half of the money that goes to New York State. That kitty is $750 million. It only leaves $500 million for everybody else. Give me a break.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I thank the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) and his staff for their hard work in producing the legislation we have today. President Bush's 2005 homeland security budget request fell far short; and while this bill is an improvement, and that it is, I am concerned that it does not go far enough to close troubling homeland security gaps.

The committee followed a logical plan in distributing the $32 billion allocation. However, this measure does not provide the resources needed to significantly improve our ability to detect terrorist activities or to respond to an attack. The committee was forced to make trade-offs among programs to improve disaster preparedness and response, immigration services, and programs to stop terrorists. As a result, we have some worrisome gaps.

The first responder funding cuts, this funding cut for local fire, police, and emergency personnel, is one of my biggest concerns. With cuts in fire grants and deep cuts in formula funds to most States, overall the bill provides $327 million less for first responders than was enacted in 2004. While funding to certain high-threat urban areas is increased, the fact is that this increase comes at the expense of the rest of the country. If these cuts hold, next year most States and localities will end up with less homeland security funding than they have today.

This bill comes just weeks after the American people saw live television coverage of the Attorney General and the FBI Director giving us alarming warnings of imminent terrorist attacks. At their press conference, Mr. Ashcroft said that our own intelligence and al Qaeda public statements indicated that it is almost ready to attack the United States and that they intend to hit us hard. This week an alleged al Qaeda operative was indicted for plotting to blow up a shopping mall in Ohio.

If terrorists attack us again, our local police, firefighters, and emergency workers will be the first on the scene. It frustrates me that there is little sense of urgency to ensure that these first responders have the tools that they need to do their jobs. This legislation also fails to address other critical homeland security issues.

Two of my chief concerns are the inadequate inspection of cargo carried on passenger planes and the lax Federal oversight of chemical plant security practices. Unlike passenger baggage, the cargo on passenger aircraft is not rigorously inspected, even though it is carried in the same hold. Furthermore, cargo carried on all cargo aircraft is not inspected at all. I am also troubled that the administration continues to have inadequate chemical plant security policies. For the most part, vulnerability assessments and security plans are left to the plant owners' consciences.

Last, I would like to point out a bill provision concerning the CAPPS2 air passenger prescreening system that TSA is developing and may be testing later this year. This provision updates last year's bill by requiring the Secretary to certify, and the General Accounting Office to review, the certification that all eight security and privacy criteria are met before the passenger profiling system can be deployed. In its first review in February, the GAO found that TSA had met only one of the eight criteria.

The new language also specifically mandates that GAO review the CAPPS2 methodology that is intended to predict whether a passenger could be a terrorist. This element is the most sensitive aspect of CAPPS2 with broad implications for Americans' privacy and civil liberties.

In closing, I am concerned that this bill continues, does not do more to close the troubling homeland security gaps. The American people demand our best efforts to protect the country from those who would do us harm, and the Congress should be more aggressive in challenging the administration where it falls short.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the ranking member of the full committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), a distinguished member of our committee, and friend.

(Mr. Price of North Carolina asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to my friend the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me say to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp), I think I know a little bit about budgets, having spent some time doing that, at a time when we passed budgets that reduced the deficit and we had some tough requirements on spending, and raised revenues to make the deficits go down.

The reality is that the most important decision in a budget resolution is the total amount set for discretionary spending. That then governs the decisions we have to make on this bill and the other 12 bills that we have before the Congress. If that budget resolution has an unrealistic number for the total discretionary spending, it limits every option we have.

I think I and others have been clear that this bill represents an improvement over what the President asked for, that it has reasonable choices within the dollar allotment that this committee has given. I think the chairman has done an excellent job. I would not share his enthusiasm for how good the Department is going, but he is also tough on them at many times.

But there is also one other thing that we do, and that is we say there are certain expenditures that are emergencies and go above and beyond the normal budget process. Since 9/11, we have appropriated billions of dollars as emergency expenditures for our friends in New York, for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, I think with unanimity on the expenditures in Afghanistan, division over our operation in Iraq, but then again significant support for our troops whether we agreed or disagreed with that policy.

Just the other day in appropriations, we appropriated $25 billion more of emergency spending beyond the normal defense appropriation for next year for operations in the Middle East, and we know that number is going to increase. What some of us are saying is that there are significant security gaps that we should deal with in this country and we should have a modest amount as emergency spending.

The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) asked for $3 billion for rational things to do, disciplined things to do, in comparison to the billions and billions we are spending outside this country. That is legitimate debate. It is legitimate options that we could do, and some are choosing not to do that. If we declared it emergency and appropriated that $3 billion, it could not be spent unless the President decided to spend it.

So what we are talking about here is not irrelevant, it is important and there are distinct differences; and those differences do not diminish our respect for the quality of work done by the chairman and the subcommittee.

I would just suggest do not belittle the opinions of lots of people in this place that there are significant security gaps in domestic security, echoed by all kinds of experts outside this institution that we are not dealing with.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver), a member of the full committee.

(Mr. OLVER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) who has done an outstanding job as the ranking member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), a member of the authorizing committee for a significant part of this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn).

(Mr. WYNN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

Mr. Chairman, unrelated to the gentleman from Pennsylvania's amendment, I think the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) had an amendment right prior to that, and I think he was standing right here.

I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) be allowed to offer his amendment after the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon).

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment, and I am ready to vote.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I congratulate the gentleman on a very good amendment. It is a much needed study.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I suppose if it were an ideal world, I would prefer not to have staffing caps and would like to think I could trust an agency to manage the staffing.

There is nothing about TSA that gives me that confidence. I have dealt with endless agencies over the years. I have never dealt with one more frustrating to deal with in all my years of public service than

Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

I just want to make sure where we are in the bill. Let me describe the problem. I think the last number read was the number on the bottom of page 22. The gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) had an amendment that would have come after that but before the top of page 23; but I think, in fact, the current amendment is amending the number on the top of page 23.

After this amendment?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I join everyone else in congratulating the New York/New Jersey delegation on their enthusiasm and their vigor. This Congress has responded. It has promised New York in a rather dramatic fashion post-9/11. But let us be clear about what we are doing today. We are very substantially reducing the funding for local responders, fire, police, emergency personnel all over the country. We are doing that before this amendment and dramatically more if this amendment is adopted. The basic formula grant in 2004 was $1.690 billion. Under this bill it is $1.250 billion, a drop of $440 million. This amendment would reduce it by another $446 million. The Urban Area Security Initiative, $721 million last year, $1 billion, under this bill, already an increase of

$279 million plus another $446 million under this amendment for more than a doubling of this program, while the other program would be virtually cut in half, that deals with the balance of the country, most of the rural and moderate size communities in this country and many fairly large size communities.

Another thing that sort of strikes me in all this discussion, I hear about the initial grants in proportion of grantees that happened later on and that some terrible thing happened because the numbers increased. I recall that first grant by the agency. I asked them a question: What were the criteria they used to distribute these funds? I waited and waited and waited for an answer. I talked to a high up official, and they said, We will see you in a week, and I would wait another month or two. I am still waiting. We finally did have a briefing before the second round of grants were awarded, at which point we had some criteria. But this is no great science. I wish we had this total understanding where threats were in this country. Clearly large urban areas like New York, like the District of Columbia, are threats. But so are many other parts of this country. And in many parts of the country, the need for technical assistance, for training, for specialized equipment, it is probably more substantial than it is even in some of our larger urbanized areas. And these formula funds do not flow out willy-nilly sort of around the country. We have to develop a State plan and a regional plan to get these funds.

So it is not a dab here and a dab there. But States have to work at it; local communities have to work at it. They have to have regional approaches. They have to use these funds where they make sense to deal and respond to real projected threats.

So, Mr. Chairman, I wish we had all the money we needed. The fact is the base bill in total has some reduction in funding for local responders. The basic formula grant would be further reduced in a significant fashion by this amendment, while the urban security initiative, which is already receiving an increase, would have a substantial increase.

I do not think that is fair. I think we need to be fair to the totality of our country. In my judgment, the base bill, if anything, is skewed too much in changing money away from the basic formula grant. So I would urge defeat of this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, much is being said about how tight fiscal restraints are this year. We know that is so, but it is not an excuse for our current budget constraints. Just a few years ago, the Federal Government had a budget surplus of $3 trillion. Today, the government is facing historic deficits upward of $7 trillion. Bad fiscal policy has hamstrung the Federal Government's abilities to invest the sums necessary to protect the Nation from terrorism. The tight budget numbers are the result of tax giveaways to people who least need it, the people that the ``Oracle of Omaha,'' Warren Buffett, has said owe the most to the country and pay far too little.

It is good for the Nation that overall funding for the Department of Homeland Security has increased. However, the increase is not enough. The cost of securing the Nation is high, but throwing dollars at the threat is not the solution. We must spend homeland security funds wisely, and all homeland security activities must be coordinated within the department itself and with State and local governments.

But well into its second year, the department is still underachieving. Several years into our own war on terrorism, the department has not developed a comprehensive threat vulnerability assessment. How can we protect the people of this country when we act blindly without this basic information necessary to develop and implement a comprehensive homeland security plan?

Recent reports have shown that airports are not any safer despite the creation of Transportation Security Administration. There is no coordination of homeland security functions along the southern or along the northern border.

I represent the second busiest gateway between the United States and Canada, and the need to increase the resources along the over 4,000- mile border between the U.S. and Canada is great. For years, little attention was paid to our northern border. But if we are to maintain the $1 billion a day trade between the United States and

Canada while maintaining U.S. safety and security, we have to provide the resources to do it. We must create a northern border coordinator to ensure our dollars are invested prudently and that Federal, State and local authorities are working together.

I am extremely troubled by the $300 million cut to funding for our first-responders, the people on the ground valiantly protecting our communities with too few resources and lots of overtime. How can we justify cutting funding for police officers, firefighters and EMTs, who are the first people on the scene to respond to a terrorist attack? Money has been awarded to States and localities, but the process is so cumbersome and lengthy that local governments have difficulty actually spending the first-responder grant money.

It is also imperative that we take threat, vulnerability, and strategic importance into account when we allocate the first-responder dollars. High threat areas with high population densities certainly deserve attention and dollars. Areas of strategic importance need and deserve Federal assistance. And, as I mentioned, the border crossings at Buffalo and Niagara Falls are the second busiest portals between the United States and Canada. This entry port is tactically important to the security of the United States. Terrorists could use this entrance to gain access to the country or use the bridges as a means to slip weapons into the country. Western New York's strategic position and role are vital to national safety. Such areas need the resources to secure the northern border without disrupting the important commerce between the United States and Canada.

Mr. Speaker, another issue that greatly bothers me, and is an insult to every taxpayer in this country, are the corporate expatriates, American companies that incorporate abroad in order to skip out on their tax obligations to this country. These corporations earn millions of dollars from the Federal Government. According to the General Accounting Office, corporate expatriates cost this country an estimated $5 billion in lost tax dollars, and yet they continue to receive $2.7 billion in government contracts. That is a disgrace.

Accenture, the scion of Arthur Andersen of infamous Enron fame, recently received a $10 billion contract to build a foreign traveler tracking system known as US-VISIT. During committee consideration of the homeland security appropriations, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) and the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) offered an amendment to ensure that companies incorporated outside the United States for tax purposes could not enter into contracts with the Department of Homeland Security. It makes sense. The DeLauro-Berry amendment would void the Accenture contract by barring any contracts with corporate expatriates before, on or after the date of enactment.

H. Res. 675 protects the first part of the DeLauro-Berry amendment, which will probably disappear in conference, but it specifically refuses to protect the second provision in the amendment that would invalidate the $10 billion contract with Accenture.

Bloomberg News reported that Accenture posted increases in American earnings from $247.3 billion in 2002 to $566.9 billion in 2003, doubled in one year, while the company reduced its tax liability to $143 million from $382 million. During that same time period, Federal procurement records show that in 2002 Accenture benefited from Federal contracts worth $450 million, of which $250 million were related to military or homeland security functions, another disgrace.

At this time, when unemployment levels have remained consistent since December 2003, it is important that we as public servants and as agents of the Federal Government do everything we can to keep jobs in this country. We should not reward companies that incorporate outside the United States in order to avoid Federal taxes.

Think of the advantage it gives them in bidding against American companies. Expatriate corporations like Accenture have a huge structural advantage over companies that stay in America, employ Americans and pay their fair share of taxes. It is our duty to support the American companies. Giving the largest contract yet awarded by the Department of Homeland Security to an expatriate company contradicts the principles and ideals that I was sent here to uphold.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations.

(Mr. OBEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks, and include extraneous material.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner).

Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman have any further speakers?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to close.

Mr. Speaker, when the previous question is called I will ask for a no vote. It seems that hardly a day goes by that we do not turn on television and hear some new report on a terrorist plot around the world. Some of the most recent reports have indicated terrorists may be planning attacks in the United States this summer. Just the other day authorities arrested a man in Ohio allegedly planning to blow up a shopping mall.

With news like this it is little wonder that the security of our Nation weighs heavily on the minds of our constituents. Unfortunately, the bill before us today does not provide an adequate level of funding to give our communities the resources that they need to keep America and its people safe. Excluding Project BioShield, the Homeland Security appropriations bill barely keeps up with inflation, and it even cuts funding for programs to help our police, firefighters and emergency personnel 7 percent.

How do we expect to keep our Nation secure when we are cutting funding for the very people tasked with keeping our constituents safe.

It does not have to be this way, Mr. Speaker. Last night at the Committee on Rules, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) brought forth a very important and responsible amendment that would have provided an additional $3 billion to the Department of Homeland Security in a contingent emergency reserve. As the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) pointed out in his testimony, this money could be used to increase the number of air marshals on planes or to address the problems in our current aviation security screening system.

It could provide for more radiation and surveillance monitors at our borders and ports and allow for increased inspection of shipping containers coming into the country. It could be used to increase surveillance in our transit systems and to improve communications between police, firefighters and other first responders.

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, we will not get a chance to vote on more money for security at our borders or on our transit systems or for our first responders because the amendment by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) was defeated on a straight party line vote.

So today, Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to vote no on the previous question. If the previous question is defeated, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will make in order the amendment of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey). This fund represents a tiny fraction of the money that has gone towards rebuilding Iraq. I do not think it is asking too much to make sure that our own Nation is fully protected and that emergency monies are available should they be needed.

In the 2 years since the creation of the Homeland Security Department, we have found a number of areas that need more resources. The monies contained in the contingency fund could provide a much- needed shot in the arm for these programs and services that may have vulnerabilities. Mr. Speaker, this should not be a partisan issue. The safety of our Nation and its citizens is of utmost importance to all of us in this House.

Today this Congress can put aside partisanship and act to protect America's homeland by giving the Department of Homeland Security the additional resources provided in the Obey amendment to meet our most urgent security concerns.

I am confident that all Americans and all Members of this House support that sentiment. So I urge Members on both sides of the aisle to vote no on the previous question.

Let me emphasize that a no vote will not stop the House from taking up the Homeland Security appropriations bill. It will not prevent other amendments from being offered under this rule. However, a yes vote will prevent the House from considering this badly-needed amendment to create an emergency contingency fund for homeland security and preserve that department's ability to more fully protect Americans against terrorism.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to vote no on the previous question and yield the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the ranking member for yielding me this time, and I appreciate the work that the chairman and the ranking member have done on this bill.

Mr. Chairman, all of us in this Chamber know that we have to work together in a bipartisan way to make the homeland as safe as it needs to be from the threat of terrorism. We also know that we are a country at war against al Qaeda and related groups. It is a war that demands we fight the terrorists wherever they exist. It is a war that demands we commit ourselves through our actions abroad to prevent the rise of future terrorists. And it is a war that requires us to ensure that our homeland is fully protected.

This cannot be business as usual. We must act with the same sense of urgency that we all had after September 11. As we look at these appropriations for the next year, our actions will demonstrate to the American people whether we are moving with the degree of speed that we need and the sense of purpose that we must have to protect our country.

The proposed increase for the Department of about $1 billion above the President's request is important and necessary, but we must put that $1 billion in perspective. We spend $1 billion a week in Iraq. We have committed our troops to winning that war. But we must also win the war against terrorism here at home. The cost of failure here at home would far exceed the investments we should be making to ensure that America is as secure as it needs to be.

Annual spending on homeland security still amounts to less than one- half of 1 percent of the gross domestic product. Since 9/11, we have increased the level of annual spending on the agencies that now make up the Department of Homeland Security by about $15 billion. During that same period, the annual increase in our defense budget has been about $100 billion. We must devote the resources we need to win the war on terror abroad, but we must also invest in the homeland security needs we have here at home.

The truth is, Mr. Chairman, the President's request, and this appropriations bill, will not close critical security gaps that we continue to face. For example:

This bill fails to provide the additional $200 million needed to ensure that nuclear materials and dirty bombs can be detected at all of our seaports and border crossings by next year;

It fails to provide sufficient funding--at least $1 billion--to improve the security of our rail and public transit systems;

It fails to provide over $400 million that the Coast Guard says it needs to protect our Nation's ports.

It does not provide sufficient funds for airports across the country to upgrade or install explosive detection systems;

It does not provide the $100 million needed to increase the number of personnel who guard our Nation's northern and southern borders; and

It fails to provide the needed communications, equipment and training for our Nation's first responders.

Later today, we will consider an amendment by Mr. Obey of the Appropriations Committee that seeks to add $3 billion in additional resources to correct these and other shortfalls. I strongly urge all of my colleagues to support this amendment.

In the war against al Qaeda, we must provide ALL the resources required to protect the homeland. We cannot fail on any front. However, the total amount proposed for the Department of Homeland Security for next fiscal year will not meet our constitutional responsibility to provide for the common defense.

Mr. Chairman, the limitations imposed on our homeland security efforts is a direct function of choices that we make. If we want to take faster and stronger action to close the security gaps we face, we could do so. The American people are watching the choices we make and if the terrorists strike again and we are not ready we will be held accountable.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment which I bring before the committee is one that has been supported by many Members, particularly the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes), the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), the distinguished ranking subcommittee member, the gentleman from (Mr. Sabo); and I want to especially thank the chairman, the gentleman from Kentucky (Chairman Rogers), for working with us on this amendment to craft it in a fashion that was acceptable.

We all know that securing our borders while maintaining the flow of people and commerce is one of the central challenges of our new Department of Homeland Security. We are clearly investing in technology to achieve our goals, but we all know that technology alone can never do the job. It takes people.

We know that people inspect packages and cargo coming into our country; people run the new programs, like the U.S. Visit Program, which has recently been awarded by the Department; people patrol the thousands of miles of our southern and northern borders; people detain and apprehend drug dealers and terrorists and criminal aliens.

Since 9/11, the demands upon these border personnel have increased substantially. We know that the new Department of Homeland Security continues to fail to meet the demands of controlling our borders, as evidenced by the 7 to 12 million people that are estimated to be undocumented immigrants in our country and by the continuing reports of our porous southern and northern borders. The amendment we offer today would help address these significant security gaps.

When inspectors from our former Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the agents from the Border Patrol were all merged into the new Department of Homeland Security, each former agency was operating under a pre-9/11 staffing model that reflected the missions of those agencies at that time. Since then, our frontline officers are working longer hours, dealing with new security threats and helping to implement new border security programs. The men and women on our frontlines are working hard to meet this new challenge, and we have an obligation to help them.

This amendment supports our frontline officers by commissioning an independent study to try to answer the central question, how many people do we need on our front lines to secure our Nation's borders while moving people and cargo across our borders in a reasonable amount of time? This study would take into consideration a variety of factors: threat and vulnerability information, the impact of the implementation of new technology, and the wait times that we know exist.

Mr. Chairman, we need to know how many people we need to have on the frontline. The cost of not doing this study would far outweigh the $450,000 set aside in this amendment, transferred from the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection from the Department's Headquarters Management Account.

This amendment has the support of a diverse group, including the National Border Patrol Council, the 18,000 frontline inspectors who make up the National Immigration and Naturalization Service Council, the American Federation of Government Employees, as well as the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

We must do all we can, Mr. Chairman, in this time of war against al Qaeda, to ensure that our borders are as secure as they need to be.

I want to thank the gentleman from Kentucky (Chairman Rogers) for working with this and supporting us on this amendment, and I appreciate also the language to be included as report language in support of this amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

I want to thank the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for his leadership on this very critical issue, and I am glad to see that we have good people on all sides of this issue tonight.

I joined with the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) in offering this amendment. I do agree with the ranking member that when this screening cap was put in place more than a year ago, we were looking at a TSA that was a bureaucracy out of control. It had hired more than 60,000 screeners, and it was still growing. There was no clear strategy or budget plan. It was unknown how much technology would help in moving people and baggage through screening checkpoints. So at that time, the cap made a lot of sense, and it certainly sent a very strong message to the Department.

Today, however, we have a very different situation. TSA has met, to a large extent, demanding congressional requirements and has its leadership and budget team in place. As a testament to the public's trust in air safety, air traffic has increased dramatically. Yet we have the same screener cap in place, and it is impeding the ability of the Department to manage a growing passenger load.

Many Americans are all too familiar with the long security lines at airports. Many of us travel and see those long lines. I see them regularly at Reagan airport. Many see it at Dulles. I also see them at the Houston airport.

What is less obvious than the long lines is the damage that screener understaffing is doing to aviation security. I have had a chance to talk to some of the airline screeners in Houston who are afraid to openly acknowledge the way their operations are run. When the lines get too long, they simply push people through. That kind of conduct does not build confidence in airport security and certainly is demoralizing to those who work so diligently to protect the public at our airports.

The General Accounting Office has reported that staffing shortfalls have prevented the TSA from checking or sending checked baggage through electronic screening, and we have heard from screeners over and over again that passenger lines get longer, and the pressure that I mentioned is on them to move the passengers through faster. According to many media accounts, even though TSA regulations require four screeners per checkpoint, staffing shortfalls have, in some cases, reduced that to two.

In legislation that I joined the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) in introducing recently, we would require TSA to conduct a comprehensive study of its staffing needs so that Congress could provide the appropriate resources. Determining the right mix of full- time and part-time screeners and developing a model to measure the staffing needs at every airport is long overdue.

I understand TSA will have such a study completed shortly. If this study reveals the need for more screeners, we

should not tie the Department's hands with an arbitrary cap; and keep in mind, if we do not lift this cap, it is likely to remain in place for at least the next 15 months.

By eliminating the cap now, we are one step closer to making sure that the changes that need to be made in our airports can happen quickly when they are needed.

I urge my colleagues to join with us in supporting this amendment.