[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 120 (Wednesday, September 29, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H7740]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      AMERICA NOT BEING MADE SAFER

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the administration says time and time 
again, as if that would make it so, that Americans are safer today. 
After all, they are spending $10 billion to deploy a defective Star 
Wars system that has not been tested and could not hit missiles that 
will not be launched against us, and that makes us safer.
  Yet our ports are wide open. Three percent of the containers coming 
into America will be inspected this year. That is the most likely route 
of a weapon of mass destruction to the United States, and we are only 
inspecting 3 percent of them, and 2 percent of the trucks coming across 
the Mexican border?
  No one is going to shoot a missile at us, but they darn well might 
smuggle it in a truck or container and bring it in and detonate it in a 
city in the United States. And they are doing nothing about it.
  They are doing nothing about plastic explosives being carried on to 
airplanes, even after the incidents in Russia. We have been warning 
them for 2 years that they are likely to take planes down. They are 
still doing nothing to detect plastic explosives at passenger 
checkpoints or keep people who clean the planes from secreting bombs on 
to the plane.
  America is safer today? Maybe it is safer in an undisclosed location 
where Dick Cheney is hiding out, but if is not safer for average 
Americans.

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