Congressional Record, Volume 147 Issue 142 (Tuesday, October 23, 2001)

[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 142 (Tuesday, October 23, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H7210-H7216]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

MUNICIPAL PREPARATIONS STRATEGIC RESPONSE ACT

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the House
on the Municipal Preparations Strategic Response Act of 2001, H.R.
3161.
Mr. Speaker, I think it has become clear to a number of Members that
September 11 has clearly changed the lives of all American citizens.
And, as we reflect on the events of September 11, I do not think it is
lost on the Members here about the tremendous heroic effort that was
put forward on behalf of the victims of the World Trade Center, of the
Pentagon, and those valiant people of Flight 93. But also not lost on
the Members of this body and the other body was that it was not the FBI
or the CIA or the FAA or the Armed Services that was first to respond
to these tragic events of September 11.

{time} 2100

They are local firefighters, police, emergency medical teams, allied
health professionals, hospitals. They are, in fact, our first line of
defense.
Mr. Speaker, I commend the President for his appointment of Tom Ridge
and the emphasis on homeland defense. What the Municipal Preparations
Strategic Response Act of 2001 recognizes is that homeland defense
begins at home, and it begins with those who are in the front lines,
those that respond first.
The genesis for this bill comes from a series of meetings that a
number of Members on both sides of the aisle have been conducting back
in their home districts. In the process, what we have heard is that
when it comes to the Federal budget with respect to dealing with
terrorism, that of approximately $8.9 billion that is appropriated,
only a scant $300 million makes it back out to our municipalities. The
rest remains here in the beltway with Federal agencies.
The concern, of course, is that in our ability to deal with terrorist
attacks, we must make sure that all of our frontline responders are
well equipped, are well trained, and are well prepared. As important,
as many municipalities and many States, as has the great State of
California, have prepared for many natural disasters, there is much
that we can learn from our local county and State government, and that
should all be part of the bottom-up strategic planning that goes
forward as Mr. Ridge takes over his most important office of Homeland
Defense. But without appropriate funding, without making sure that the
first-line responders have the kind of financial aid that they are
going to need, this simply will not take place.
Mr. Speaker, I am joined this evening by several of my colleagues who
have both conducted hearings and are coauthors of this legislation. Let
me prevail first upon the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr.
George Miller), the ranking member of the Committee on Education and
the Workforce, who most recently this past week had one of these such
meetings.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman
from Connecticut for yielding, and I thank him very much for being the
prime mover in this effort to make sure that our local community first-
responders are fully engaged as this Nation prepares to deal with the
threat of terrorism at the local level, and for coming up with
legislation that recognizes the difficulty of doing this, but also
provides the resources so that it can be done properly; so that, in
fact, assessments can be made at the local level of exactly what those
kinds of threats might be to our communities; so that there can be
regional cooperation; so that the HAZMAT teams can work together, they
can learn to share their resources and their knowledge and their
training of their personnel and of their response plans; so that there
can be a working together, both up and down the infrastructure of our
local communities between police and fire, HAZMAT, public health,
private health hospitals, people who are going to be called upon to
respond to possibly decontaminate a significant number of citizens, or
to help a local agency next to them respond with an attack that could
take place there. This is not about getting overly dramatic, but it is
recognizing that this is something the local communities have done for
many years.
In California we have earthquake plans; we have flood plans; we have
fire

[[Page H7211]]

plans in some of our rural communities, trying to determine what the
threat would be to these communities, how we can respond and whether or
not the resources and the training and the personnel will be there.
When we now overlay the threat of terrorism on many of these plans, we
recognize that we have to go back to the drawing board.
I represent an area that has many, many petrochemical facilities in
my congressional district, and we have many plans to deal with the
communities for the releases or the explosions or the accidents that
take place at these facilities from time to time to try and warn a
community, to have a shelter in place, or to go to the hospitals or to
have a warning system so that they can get immediate information. As
many times as we have been through it, it does not always work the way
it should.
In my meeting yesterday with the county sheriff, with the members of
the board of supervisors, with the chiefs of police from the city of
Richmond, the city of Martinez, from the Consolidated Fire District,
from the HAZMAT personnel, from the people from Kaiser Permanente, the
largest health care deliverer in my area, what became very clear was
that they need additional resources to do the planning so that the
resources will be in place if our communities need these kinds of
responses.

So the gentleman has put together legislation to provide this money
to the local community. I was startled when a number of weeks ago the
gentleman told me the percentage of the money, if the gentleman would
repeat it.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, of $8.9 billion appropriated,
only $300 million.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, we appropriated in the
Congress $8.9 billion.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Only $300 million makes it outside of the
beltway.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, $300 million goes
outside the beltway, and yet these are the people who are going to
respond. As somebody pointed out earlier, the reason that we have to
provide these resources is that these are events that are not of the
local community's making. These are events that are going to occur for
a whole host of reasons, none of which can justify them happening; but
this Nation has come under attack and, in all likelihood, from the
information we receive from our intelligence agencies, will very likely
come under attack again. That response is not, that event is not of the
local community's making; but the community will be called upon to do
that. We need to make sure that our citizens have the assurance that
there will be a plan in place that will try to minimize the harm and
the casualties that could occur in the community.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, in the
gentleman's discussion with the county and local governments out in
California, or in the gentleman's congressional district, do they feel
that they are amply prepared to deal with biochemical threats, and what
did the gentleman learn from that? Is there something instructive that
we can take or that the rest of the Nation can take from California?
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, a number of our
colleagues, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo) had a meeting
in her local community; the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey)
had a meeting in her local community; the gentlewoman from California
(Ms. Lee) had a meeting last week in her community, and some of those
meetings were attended by Special Agent John Lightfoot from the FBI.
And he also was making assessments of some of the plans around
bioterrorism, about the HAZMAT, hazardous materials resources available
in the community to deal with these.
The fact of the matter is that it is a very checkered situation. Some
communities like my own, because of the nature of the industry, we have
a very sophisticated HAZMAT program with highly trained chemists and
people on board to deal with toxic materials, and yet next door they
might not have anything. So immediately, the conversation was, how
would we respond? And in many cases they said, when we have a refinery
explosion, we know people are going to be coming to the hospital,
because there has been an explosion, there has been a release of
perhaps harmful material; and in this case people will just start
walking into the hospital and that is when we will first discover that
an event has taken place. The people from the hospital said, we can
decontaminate a couple of people; the HAZMAT people said we can
decontaminate a few dozen people, but if we have hundreds or thousands
of people coming in, we have no plan to deal with that, and we would
have to call on the resources of the entire San Francisco Bay region,
but those resources are not completely coordinated yet. There are many
communities that have absolutely no ability.
So the gentleman raises a good point.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, that is a point that is
consistent with the issues that have been raised, both on the Task
Force on Terrorism that has been conducted by the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Menendez) and others in the caucus, but the concept of
commonality of communication and interoperability seem to be two of the
most paramount things that we have to accomplish by providing these
frontline responders with adequate planning money so that they can, in
fact, strategically respond, even though, in many instances, as the
gentleman points out is the case in his district and in California,
where they are already well prepared in specific areas, but perhaps not
to deal with a threat of this nature.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, we have dealt, and
again, we do not know the nature of a terrorist attack, how it is
carried out on a target, but we have dealt with an individual refinery
explosion or release of toxic materials, we just had one this last week
in my hometown. But if multiple refineries were the subject of the
attack, there was talk in Texas of where the concentration of
petrochemical industries there, in California and in my area and
elsewhere, that would immediately outstrip the current resources.
Because the current resources are designed for an isolated, although
maybe harmful event, or lethal event, but yet isolated compared to
perhaps what we might experience.

So I just want to commend the gentleman, if I might, for bringing
this legislation to the Congress and securing the coauthors that he
has, and also making this a point of discussion in our Homeland
Security Task Force in the caucus where I know he and others have
raised this. I have been on the other task force, but on this one,
Members have told me.
Also, I think the gentleman ought to be very proud of the fact that
when we go home and we talk to the people on the front lines, they look
at this and they say, this is what we need to do our job if we are, in
fact, going to be called upon to provide the kind of protection that we
think the citizens that we represent will want. So the legislation is
clearly in tune with the needs of the first responders; and clearly it
is in tune with their understanding of the kind of threat and the match
of resources that would be necessary in a terrorist environment.
So I want to commend the gentleman very much for devising this
legislation; and hopefully, the House will get an opportunity in short
order to deal with this legislation.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from
California for also coauthoring this very important piece of
legislation and for his leadership. As the gentleman points out, there
are more than 70 Members on a bipartisan basis that have signed on to
the bill that really, from a pragmatic standpoint, just makes all the
sense in the world. I think intuitively when our first responders, our
local officials, our county and State officials hear about the
legislation, this is the kind of thing that they are looking for from
us.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will
yield, my last point, we have had a lot of debates, and I am in the
middle of one now that has gone on for several years on the education
bill. The desire on both sides of the aisle has been to drive the
dollars to the classroom, recognizing that very often education dollars
get siphoned off and they do not quite carry out the intent, which is
to

[[Page H7212]]

provide an education to America's children. They are used
bureaucratically, a lot of other ways on the State and Federal level.
I think in this, it is the same idea with the gentleman's
legislation, that we have to drive these dollars down to the people who
in fact are going to be put into the position of responding on behalf
of our communities. Driving those dollars for planning, driving those
dollars for coordination, for cooperation among various departments and
agencies within a region is really about the frontline and the first
line of defense for American citizens. So I think this is also very
consistent with what we have talked about in this Congress on a number
of other subjects about giving local communities that flexibility, but
giving them the resources so that they can respond in a first-class
fashion. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his
insight.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to turn to the gentleman from Texas, but
before I do, I just wanted to review a little bit more about this bill
which will provide a total of $1.5 billion in funding, $1 billion of
funding to cities, counties, towns, boroughs, tribes, and other
municipal authorities for strategic planning needed to ensure that
local emergency responders, including municipal, private, volunteer
fire departments, police departments, sheriffs' offices, emergency
medical technicians, paramedics and other health professionals, as well
as our area hospitals, are fully prepared, equipped, and trained for
emergency and security issues that arise from terrorist attacks.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Texas, because of his unbelievable
and outstanding and exemplary work with missing children, certainly
knows this issue probably better than most. I yield to the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Lampson) at this time.
Mr. LAMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I am thrilled to be able to join the
gentleman and so many other cosponsors as an original cosponsor on this
bill, the Municipal Preparations Strategic Response Act of 2001. It is
a critical piece of legislation, obviously; and the reason is that we
all know that our cities and our local governments are the ones that
are indeed on the front line of homeland security.
I have been conducting meetings at the local level with airport
officials, port officials, petrochemical people that run refineries and
other facilities in southeast Texas; and each of these groups is
committed to doing everything that they can possibly do to ensure the
safety of their facilities and the people that work in them and live
around them.

{time} 2115

We all want that. After all of those meetings, it is abundantly clear
to me that we must take a bottom-up approach.
I was listening to what the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller)
was saying in talking about the many different facilities. We can make
it even simpler than talking about significant facilities like the
petrochemical industry. We can look at our airports. Everybody sees
those at home.
We have police departments, sheriffs' departments, local people that
local funds, local tax dollars are paying for being absolutely strapped
in an effort to try to provide an adequate number of personnel to
protect those airports. Those are mandates that come from us. We have
to have people there keeping those facilities secure.
Congress is saying, do it, the people want it done, yet they are
having to pay for it. This is an opportunity for us to share that
burden with all of those local governments, to the people that the
gentleman just mentioned a minute ago, the cities, counties, towns,
boroughs, tribes, the other municipalities and municipality
authorities, for the strategic planning that is necessary to put these
critical things into place.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that should
be pointed out as well about this legislation is something that they
heard in California and we have heard in Connecticut, and I am sure the
gentleman has heard in Texas, as well; that is that because the
municipalities and counties are strapped already, what they are saying
is that these monies have to come to us ununencumbered.
That means that traditionally through a number of programs, we would
require a matching grant on the part of the municipality, State, or the
county. In this case, because it is now part of homeland defense, and
in some instances money is already being expended and appropriated
which many of us feel should be included in the $20 billion we have
already appropriated for these events; but having said that, clearly,
as our legislation does, what we wanted to make sure is that there
would be no matching grant required.
We heard that loud and clear in Connecticut. I do not know if that is
what the gentleman is hearing down in Texas, as well.
Mr. LAMPSON. If the gentleman will yield further, they have a
significant need. We know security and preparedness comes at a cost.
Those suits these people have to wear to go in and check a hazardous
material that has been leaked into the atmosphere costs about $800 or
more a copy. That means a lot of fire departments or emergency
management facilities or organizations do not have the ability to have
access to this equipment, so we are expecting these people to go into
situations that are dangerous to their own health; and we are not
working with them.
I have discussed this situation with my mayor, the mayor of Beaumont,
Texas, my hometown. He happens to be in Washington, D.C. tonight. Mayor
Moore is the co-chair of the Task Force on Emergency Preparedness for
the United States Conference of Mayors. I want to be able to continue
working with Mayor Moore and other elected officials in my district to
ensure that our local emergency responders are fully prepared,
equipped, and trained to respond to any future needs.
That is why this legislation is so very important. The Municipal
Preparation and Strategic Response Act of 2001 will provide a total of
$1 billion in straight-out funding, and another half a billion or so,
$250 million, to the very successful COPS program, and another $250
million or so to the firefighter programs within our communities.
These are straight-out grants to the local governments to be able to
take care of the needs of our citizens at home from the bottom up, not
from Washington, D.C. down.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, that is something that
obviously, with the appointment of Tom Ridge, and again, I commend the
President for that appointment. We sent a letter off to Mr. Ridge,
knowing that he is obviously getting his arms around this very
important task that he has, so it is understandable it may take him
some time to reply to us.
But the offer is one of assistance and help, and one that, at its
very heart in essence says, look, what we are hearing from our
constituents is not to foist on us from the top down a Federal mandated
solution to this problem, but to work with us from the bottom up so
that, both from the standpoint of the knowledge and expertise that we
have in dealing with these issues. And then also the plugging the gaps
where we are doing things well, but there is a gap in being able to
address those specific issues.
Mr. LAMPSON. If the gentleman would yield to me again, he said
earlier it is $8.9 billion that we have appropriated to help with
homeland security.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Correct.
Mr. LAMPSON. Of all of that money, only $300 million makes it out to
local communities.
Mr. LARSON. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak), who heads the
COPS program at one of our local press conferences, laid that idea and
concept out very clear. Instead of the $8.9 billion that is
appropriated to deal with terrorism, only $300 million makes it outside
of the Beltway. That is a very telling statistic.
As local officials are quick to point out to us, this is very
problematic to them, because what they are concerned most with is that
the Federal Government will create a mandate upon them that is
unfunded.
Now, we are all dealing with, and we all know, and I know that the
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) has been in the forefront of
promoting educational concepts like the full funding of the IDEA
program, where once

[[Page H7213]]

again there is a lack of a fulfillment of a mandate.
But certainly when we are calling upon our front-line defenders to go
out there and risk their very lives, we have to make sure that these
are not unfunded mandates.
Mr. LAMPSON. Let me just make one final point before we go to the
gentleman from New Jersey.
Just to commend the gentleman, I would tell him how proud I am to be
able to join him as a cosponsor of the legislation. I would ask every
one of our colleagues to join on as cosponsors of this legislation and
let us move it forward. It is critical. It can make a difference in
people's lives, and that is what we have to do. That is what we are
about here. I thank the gentleman for his good work.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I
thank him again for being a coauthor of this bill. I thank him for the
input that he has provided for what I think is a very strong and
bipartisan bill.
I have to point out that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Weldon), who has been a tremendous help to me since I have been a
Member of Congress, is an early signer onto this bill. He has also been
very active with the Congressional Fire Services Caucus as well, and I
think intuitively he understood how important this is.
I think once the Members get to see, and we already have more than 70
Members who have signed on, but I believe that people will sign onto
H.R. 3161 because of its commonsense approach. That is what we are
seeking to do here is to not only engage our local officials, but also
recognize that they are on the front line, and not just pay them lip
service but actually provide them with the funding to carry out the
strategic planning, as well as providing them with the equipment and
the expertise they will need if we are going to send them into battle.
Mr. LAMPSON. When we work together, we make good things happen.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. We sure do. I thank the gentleman from
Texas; and I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), who is
also a coauthor of this piece of legislation and has conducted and held
meetings in his district in New Jersey.
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from
Connecticut, for yielding to me; but I thank him even more for putting
together this good piece of legislation.
Mr. Speaker, clearly the gentleman is influenced by the work of the
Congressional Fire Services Caucus and the Congressional Law
Enforcement Caucus, two caucuses in which I am pleased to join the
gentleman.
He has drawn on the ideas in the fire bill, the ideas in the COPS
program, two very successful pieces of legislation that, as the
gentleman says, get the program, get the dollars down to the people on
the ground. That is one of the wonderful features of the Community-
Oriented Policing Program. Yes, it is a national program because so
many communities share in the need, but it is really a local program.
This is not run with the heavy hand of the Federal Government. The COPS
program actually gets money to police on the street, on the beats, in
the neighborhoods.
When we are dealing with emergencies, with terrorist attacks such as
we saw in New York City, or as we are seeing right now using less
visible attacking instruments, biological weapons, it hits locally. It
hits at home. The gentleman's bill gets the action locally and at home.
So I am really very pleased to be able to join the gentleman, not only
as an original cosponsor but as someone who is actively trying to build
the list of cosponsors and move along.
I have just come from a meeting of the Homeland Security Task Force,
where we are working to include this legislation in our proposal of
overall efforts to deal with bioterrorism.
If I may for a moment, I would just like to point out a few of the
features that I find so attractive in this bill. I have met a number of
times with first responders in my district, most recently just last
week. My district in central New Jersey has felt the blow of terrorism
really quite directly, not only in the number of lives that were lost
in the attack on the World Trade Center and in the plane crashes, but
in the response of our emergency personnel on September 11, in the
subsequent days in our urban search and rescue teams, and now with the
bioterrorism that has touched Ewing and West Trenton in my district.
These local responders that I have met with, although they have
really taken a blow, they are really strong in their determination.
They have worked closely together, towns with other towns, towns with
counties, towns with the State, individual rescue and emergency squads.
They like the idea of the gentleman's bill that provides an
opportunity for a strategic response that is regional; for liaison
between units of local government. They also like the idea of
communication that the gentleman has built into this, communication
with authorities in the event of an emergency and communication from
authorities to the population at large.
They understand how critical communication is, clear, accurate
communication, in a situation such as we have now in Ewing, where the
post office has been part of or has been touched by this bioterrorism.
So the gentleman's bill, if I may say our bill, deals with these in a
way that I find our local emergency responders like.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman
appropriately says ``our bill'' because it has been the input of so
many Members, and the input they have derived by going back out to
their respective congressional districts and meeting both locally,
regionally, or county-wide with so many first responders.
Ultimately, that is what this is all about. It is standing together
as we face down terrorism, both in terms of homeland defense and in
terms of our resolve as a people to stay together and address this
issue.
It is oftentimes, I think, missed on the general public when we are
down here talking about lofty idealism and bills, and they are really
anxious to help themselves; to go back to the gentleman's district, as
he has done, and to seek the input of people who in many respects are
more knowledgeable or have more pragmatic solutions in talking to a
number of the people in my district.
I know in our case that what we found is that the concern exists for
the overlap, or perhaps the gaps; the term ``commonality of
communication'' in terms of responding, and chains of command, whether
they be bottom-up or top-down. The interoperability and mobility
between local, State, county, and Federal agencies is something that is
going to require more planning on our part; and also the identifying of
those gaps. This cannot be a decision that is foisted upon local
officials from the top down or by some think tank, however productive
and good some of those ideas may be.

{time} 2130

Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. If they are not joint with the frontline
responders and if they are not part of this process of giving input,
then I do not think we have the best in homeland security.
Mr. HOLT. If the gentleman would yield?
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. HOLT. It is easy to say we can have good clear communication if
we have a centralized authority. But, in fact, when terrorism has taken
place, it is necessarily a group of individuals from neighboring towns
that respond. And so the communication has to be set up in such a way
that it flows in from many people, and it flows out to the whole
population. And that depends on coordination, and in many cases that
exists only in a really sketchy undeveloped form. This legislation
would help develop that.
The other point that I wanted to make that is so very important, when
we talk about the threat assessments, we talk about what might be the
targets of terrorism.
Well, it is easy for somebody here in Washington in some agency to
imagine what are vulnerable sites to attack around the country. But, in
fact, it is the people who live in the town; it is the local police who
know the town block by block, alley by alley, who are better, who are
best able to determine what the vulnerabilities are out there. The
gentleman's bill, again, if I may say, our bill gets at that and uses
this

[[Page H7214]]

local talent in identifying the targets of terrorism using the
guidelines that are developed nationally.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Our bill does do just that.
Again, several Members, and I especially want to commend the
gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), who has done an outstanding
job in his district both conducting and holding meetings and someone
himself who is often times entering other countries, going undercover,
wearing disguises, et cetera, all in the pursuit of gaining
information.
Also, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) mentioned
earlier, and as a member of the Committee on Education and the
Workforce perhaps he could provide insight here as well. He said one of
the things that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) found that
in conducting her meetings back home in her district is there is grave
concern around the whole issue of schools, and what do we do, and how
are we prepared with respect to schools.
I know this is a longstanding interest of the gentleman; and as
someone who is in the forefront of education issues, is this something
the gentleman is picking up in New Jersey?
Mr. HOLT. Absolutely. Schools in America are local. We talk about the
education bills that come out of Congress and all of that, and there
are certainly some important things we have done in setting the tone of
fairness and accomplishment and accountability; but ultimately the
schools are funded locally. They are staffed locally. They are designed
and built locally. And if we are going to prepare the schools to deal
with terrorist threats and other emergencies, that has to be done
locally. The vulnerabilities have to be recognized locally and the
responses have to be developed locally. Again, that is what this bill
does.
It has a very local focus to a problem that is shared in every town,
at every town and county around America. Remember, a lot of what we are
talking about is preparing all of America for a dangerous time. It
would be nice to think that it is only the urban centers that are going
to have problems. Well, a week or 2 or 3 ago people would not have
thought of Boca Raton, Florida, Palm Beach County as an area that would
be touched by terrorism or West Trenton or Hamilton, New Jersey, as
areas that would be touched by terrorism.
The point is if we are going to have presentation nationally, it has
to reach every town and every county, just as a public health system
only works if the doctors and the county health authorities and so
forth are part of a network that is national.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. And to the gentleman's points, one of the
things we want to point out with regard to H.R. 3161, The Municipal
Presentation and Strategic Response Act of 2001, is that it coordinates
a response and procedures with similar emergency response units so that
we are not reinventing the wheel here, in neighborhood units and in
neighboring units of local government as well as with State and Federal
agencies.
One of the things that I find instructive in meeting with people, and
again I would say that the work of the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr.
Taylor) bore this out, that when one prepares an issue report to units
of local governments, State legislatures, and Congress that include
recommendations for a specific elective action, this is something that
we really need to have come from the bottom up; that as we conduct
public forums, as we start to look at the contents of strategic
response plan, as people learn how to communicate with authorities in
the event of emergency, something that perhaps in some States and in
some regions we have done better than others because whether it be
California having to deal with earthquakes or Florida having to deal
with hurricanes. Programs the rest of the Nation can learn from. Also,
where to go to find safer public assembly and other emergency shelters
and any other appropriated information that needs to be gathered.
The silver lining in this: if there can be a lesson from the tragic
events of September 11, is, in fact, that we are a Nation that is
committed and involved more so than ever before. There has been an
outpouring of patriotism. There has been an incredible desire on the
part of the public to want to know what they can do to help and also
what they have to do to be prepared.
Many of them have very solid and sound suggestions to make, and we
ought to make sure in Congress that we are providing our local
authorities, meaning our State, county, regional, and municipal
governments, with the kind of resources that they are going to need to
carry off this bottom-up strategic planning that is needed.
As my colleague knows, the bill itself provides $250 million. It goes
directly into the COPS program, as the gentleman was stating earlier in
his remarks, as well as another 250 million that goes to firefighters.
Again, I would point out that those come with no strings attached, no
matching grants because they need the money now.
There is no time for these municipalities to save. Most of their
budgets have long since gone to bed, and we have to make sure that we
are providing our frontline defenders with the equipment and the
training that they are going to need as we send them into harm's way,
and ultimately that is the goal.
It was not lost on me that with the awful situation that took place
in Senator Daschle's office the other day that it was two of our
Capitol Police officers that responded and went in there and now are
diagnosed. These are the kinds of things. It will not be Federal
agencies that are going to be responding first. It will be the local
entity that will be out there, and shame on us if we do not provide
them both the equipment and the training and then the strategic
planning tools that they are going to need in order to address these
issues.
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
Mr. HOLT. The benefits of this will be there even in those towns that
are not touched by terrorism. The benefit of strategic response,
improved communication, local threat assessment, all of that will lead
to better policing, better firefighting, better community protection,
and better community spirit, if as we hope is the case, we do not have
more terrorism strikes in these towns.
Although this is motivated by our national emergency, right now it is
of general long-lasting benefit to our communities, and it is this
sense of community that has grown out of our national emergency of the
past 6 weeks.
A realization, recognition, even a celebration of the fact that we
are dependent on each other, that is the great lesson of the past 6
weeks, how dependent we are on each other; and that is why the
emergency responders, police, fire, medical, are held in such high
regard now, because people are reminded that we are dependent on them
and we should do everything we can to make sure that they are equipped,
that they have the resources to do the job that we ask them to do.
I know that they are committed in their determination to public
service, and it is not asking too much for us as a Congress to give
them what they need to do their jobs.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Reclaiming my time, I spend a lot of time
going out to a number of my public schools in the district, and
parochial schools for that matter, and talking about September 11; and
as the gentleman points out, clearly firefighters or police officers,
emergency medical teams are viewed far differently than they were prior
to September 11. And I find it incredibly heartening as well that the
youth of our Nation also now are able to distinguish between celebrity
and real heroes and perhaps look at their parents like all the parents
on September 11 that either got on an airplane or went to work at the
World Trade Center or at the Pentagon, and found themselves, ordinary
citizens, involved in a heroic effort.
All too often in our culture we make icons out of sports and
Hollywood and music celebrities; and while it is true that we should
celebrate their accomplishments, there is a major distinction between
celebrity and heroes that is being picked up by the youth of our
Nation.
This bill that we have put forward today seeks to recognize those who
lost their lives by understanding, as so

[[Page H7215]]

many people have said more eloquently than I, about those racing up the
stairs in the World Trade Center while they were coming down and to
memorialize them is to recognize their sacrifice, to put them in the
pantheon of heroes that came about that day, but also recognize the
need to further train and provide the appropriate equipment and provide
for the kind of strategic planning that we are going to need to
continue to root out terrorists and to make sure that at home we are
safe and secure.
That is what homeland defense is all about; and I commend the
President and Tom Ridge in their efforts, and it is my sincere hope
that our efforts here in coordinating local, State and municipal
officials, together along with Tom Ridge's new assignment, that we are
going to be able to not build a fortress around America. I do not think
anyone believes that that can happen, but to have energized,
enlightened, involved, and committed communities to understand that we
in Congress recognize their valor, their frontline defense and also all
of our collective responsibility no longer to look the other way or to
defer responsibility to someone else but actually to be participants in
our community, not as necessarily elected officials, but as active,
involved, committed citizens who, when they see things that are wrong,
no longer turn their head and look the other way but step forward and
address that and call upon the local authorities to make sure that we
are looking out for one another and for our neighbors and not painting
with the broad brush of prejudice the many when we know it is the
fanatical few that have caused and perpetrated this unbelievable horror
and nightmare on America.

{time} 2145

Mr. HOLT. I commend my friend from Connecticut for taking the time
tonight. I thank him for sharing some of that time with me. I commend
him for his eloquence. But mostly, now, I commend him for the work he
has done to prepare this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I hope that all of our colleagues will join in this
because there is not a town in America that would not benefit from this
legislation. I commend the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson) for
the hard work he has put into preparing this and his energy in finding
cosponsors and moving the legislation along.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey and
once again recognize the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. LAMPSON. All of what the gentleman has been saying is right on
the mark in trying to look out for the local jurisdictions who are
having a difficult time responding to many different needs that they
are facing right now during such an unusual time in the history of our
country.
Primarily, this bill will establish $1 billion in grant programs for
cities, counties, towns, boroughs, tribes, and other municipalities and
regional authorities to develop local emergency response plans that
would do a large number of different things, such as to develop
strategic response plans that provide for a clearly defined and unified
response to terrorist attacks or other catastrophes; to coordinate the
activities and procedures of various emergency response units; to
define the relationship, roles, responsibilities, jurisdictions, and
command structures and communication protocols of emergency response
units; to coordinate response procedures with similar emergency
response units and neighboring units of local government as well as
with State and Federal agencies. That is a critical point right there.
One of our agencies got shut down in my congressional district just
last week because of a lack of cooperation, a lack of questions about
whose jurisdiction or whose real ground is this that we need to be
responding to. That is unfortunate, and we need to find ways to make
sure that all levels of our government are sharing information and are
working to solve problems in unusual and very extenuating
circumstances, to find situations where one organization or a person
feels like they have the right or responsibility to do one thing and
should not be checked by another agency, yet it is another agency's
responsibility to be looking out after the security of a particular
area. Those are arguments we should not be having right now.
This bill would provide the means for local governments, whether it
is cities, counties or whatever level it might be, as well as Federal
agencies to develop plans to work together.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Exactly.
Mr. LAMPSON. That is the kind of cooperation that is critical if we
are going to solve the problems that are facing our communities and
truly have the kind of safety that we all need and want to have.
This incident that occurred in my congressional district in Texas
happened at a port. Ports are critical facilities for us, particularly
when they are serving the petrochemical industry, which is a facility
that develops the fuel that runs all our automobiles and brings
products to all of us all over the United States of America. So is it a
critical area we need to address? Unquestionably, it is. And this is a
reasonable tool with which we can do something for the grass-roots
level of people who are strapped for cash, who are trying their best to
put good programs into place to stretch their means as far as they
possibly can to make sure that there are an adequate number of
policemen and firemen and other kinds of law enforcement and emergency
management folks to do the jobs that have to be done. It is tough.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. I had the opportunity to meet with the
gentleman's mayor actually in Mystic, Connecticut, where they were
gathering at a regional conference and they were talking about the need
for regional coordination. One of the things that he pointed out, and I
thought it a very important point that he made, is, look, we would very
much like to get involved in this not just because of the impact on the
local municipality but the need for regional-wide planning and looking
at entities where the money can flow to so that it gets dispersed in a
manner that addresses the gaps that are occurring within some of the
very important policy issues as they relate to responding to potential
terrorist attacks.
As the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) was pointing out
earlier, depending upon the community one lives in and what kind of
civil preparedness there is there to deal with natural disasters or
what kind of HAZMAT training has taken place because of the location
of, we will say a nuclear generating power facility or a petrochemical
port, whatever the case may be, we find that there are different
levels, some very sophisticated, some nonexistent. Yet, homeland
defense has got to make sure that we are incorporating all of our
communities, boroughs, municipalities, and make them part of this
effort.

Mayor Moore's point was we can best do that through regional
councils, through regional organizations where they already are meeting
on several infrastructure issues, where they are already dealing with
these things and often feel that they are the neglected stepchild of
the Federal Government or that we bypass them and go directly to the
State, and then they do not feel that they get money from us that goes
to administration fees and other areas.
Mr. LAMPSON. What is unfortunate is that in some of those instances
there are even people going out and raising money privately to
accomplish some of these tasks. That is not appropriate. Many of these
functions are of national scope and of national interest, and to have
people in a local area having to go out and privately raise money on
their own in order to achieve some of these specific tasks does not
seem fair or right to me. That is why we have a government. That is why
we choose to live in communities where we can all chip in and our few
pennies mounted together turn into billions of dollars that can make a
difference for all of the people of this country.
That is what makes this a good bill, I think, and a very excellent
direction in which we should be going to solve these problems.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman from Texas again for
his strong input; and through the gentleman, I thank Mayor Moore as
well for his input.
Mr. LAMPSON. David Moore of Beaumont, Texas.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. I think that that is what makes good
legislation, especially when we have the bottom-up response that we
have had.

[[Page H7216]]

Mr. LAMPSON. We hope our colleagues will join us all in cosponsoring
this legislation and in seeing to it that it gets brought to the floor
of the House of Representatives for a vote quickly.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, before I yield back the
balance of my time, I again would remind our colleagues that it is H.R.
3161, the Municipal Preparation and Strategic Response Act of 2001.
Again, I am proud the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), and I
cannot thank him enough for his input and help, is also a cosponsor of
this legislation. The value that the Congressional Fire Services Caucus
and the Congressional Law Enforcement Caucus have provided us, the
insight that we have received from health care professionals,
hospitals, the endorsement of municipal leaders of this legislation has
all been terrific.
But before I leave the podium tonight, I cannot help but mention that
I am deeply troubled by the stimulus package that is coming before this
body tomorrow, primarily because I have been concerned for some time
now about our inability to pay for a lot of the initiatives that we
would like to see.
Homeland defense in this bill is $1.5 billion. That is not an awful
lot of money, but I have a sickening feeling going home to my home
district and talking as I have to many groups, most notably to seniors.
Tom Brokaw did this Nation a great service in his book ``The Greatest
Generation''; and in that book he heralded a unique generation that now
has witnessed a second day of infamy. They lived through the
Depression; they certainly lived through December 7, 1941; they fought
and won and rebuilt the Nation and educated a whole generation of baby
boomers. They have now lived through September 11.
As we project out, they are the first ones to rise up and say we must
root out terrorism, we have to all stand together as a Nation, but it
just confounds me that we will tap into Medicare and vanquish the
Social Security Trust Fund in an effort to pay for all of this, so they
will have sacrificed twice. At no other point in our history when we
have gone to war, and make no mistake this is a war, have we asked one
generation to sacrifice as much as we are asking them.
Mr. Brokaw, if you are listening, I hope you prevail upon the
American public and upon the Congress to recognize that this cannot
happen. These people deserve to live out their final days in the
dignity that Social Security, Medicare and, frankly, prescription drugs
should provide them.
Mr. Speaker, I just could not leave the podium this evening without
addressing that concern. It is heartfelt. I hope that other Members
share the same feeling and same concern about how we are going to pay
for all of this. We ought to think long and hard about tax cuts; and
truthfully, we ought to think about rolling back some of our provisions
or at least letting the top 1 percent of this Nation bear some of the
sacrifice that we have already asked the greatest generation ever to
do.

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