[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 8, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H758]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              JUST SAY NO TO FOREIGN CONTROL OF OUR PORTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about foreign 
ownership of critical United States infrastructure assets. A number of 
people have followed the controversy regarding the UAE control over a 
number of critical American ports.
  Now, there is certainly some room for concern there, as many of us 
have spoken previously. The UAE was very closely tied to the 
perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. They were one of three governments in 
the world that recognized the Taliban.
  They have recently been useful and helpful to the United States of 
America, but the history is not great, and people may have been 
embedded years ago in their government who would control it, it is not 
a private entity, who would be not friendly towards the interests of 
the United States. So there is concern there.
  And the concern is even compounded by the fact that we do not know 
who owns the ships. The U.S. has bound itself through international 
agreements that allow secret ownership of ships under flags of 
convenience, countries that barely exist or do not exist, Liberia, 
Malta, who is very happy to make money on this, but turns a blind eye. 
Osama bin Laden could own a fleet of ships. We are not allowed to know. 
But they can dock here in United States.
  We have done nothing about that. We do not know who crews the ships. 
They can buy papers in the Philippines and in International Maritime 
Organization School that the U.S. has been forced to recognize by being 
part of this agreement. And, again, we do not know who these people 
are.
  So we do not know who crews the ships, we do not know who owns the 
ships, we do not know what is on the ships. They have to send us a 
manifest and tell us what might be on the ship. It is an electronic 
transmission or a piece of paper. That does not mean that is what is 
really on the ship.
  We do not track the ships from port to port, so they could have 
stopped somewhere. Even if they do not have a nuclear bomb on board 
when they left Singapore, they could have picked one up on the way. And 
then we do not have the equipment that we need on this side of the 
ocean.
  So that is a tremendous concern. If you add on the concern of the 
ownership of Dubai, it reaches even higher proportions.
  But I also rise to talk about something else the Bush administration 
is trying to do. For them commerce is everything. National security is 
second or tertiary in terms of their concerns. They are trying to 
reinterpret the meaning of the word ``control.''
  They said, when Congress said foreigners cannot control United States 
airlines, Congress did not mean control. In fact, in their world they 
are saying, well, foreigners could control U.S. airlines, they could 
only just control them commercially, but they could not safety and 
security.
  If you have foreign management, foreign ownership, how do you wall 
off safety and security? So they are proposing, by administrative rule, 
sometime later this month or early next month, to defy the dictionary 
and legal interpretations of control and say Congress did not mean what 
it said.

                              {time}  1930

  Now, if you think there is an outcry about the ports, wait until we 
are sending U.S. troops overseas on what is called part of the Civilian 
Reserve Air Fleet. The large planes that our airlines fly are actually 
part of our Reserves, and we fly our troops with these planes over to 
the Mideast and other trouble spots around the world. Wait until we are 
asking U.S. troops to get onboard a plane being flown by a pilot from 
Dubai or from Indonesia or somewhere else around the world. This would 
be an extraordinary national security problem, in addition to losing 
domestic air service. Because what is happening here is airlines like 
United, who have been managed into the ground by overpaid CEOs, and 
others are looking to sell themselves out to foreign airlines. Their 
first choice is Lufthansa, but they may well go with the UAE, and then 
to cut off most of their domestic service, shed the wide-body planes 
and bring in foreign pilots to do the overseas routes and provide 
minimal domestic service.
  So not only are we putting at threat our national security and the 
Civilian Reserve Air Fleet, we are also putting at risk the American 
public and we are certainly degrading the capability of providing the 
service we need to have a system of universal air transport which 
serves our economy and the businesses in the United States of America.
  This is a colossally bad idea with the Bush administration trying to 
do it in back rooms by pretending that when Congress said foreigners 
cannot control our airlines that we did not really mean it.
  If the Bush administration persists in this, 6 months or a year from 
today, we will be here on the floor of the House if this Congress does 
not preempt this, which they have thus far refused to do. If they do 
not preempt this, we will be back here arguing about the UAE or 
Indonesia or some other country taking over a major U.S. airline and 
the assets of our Civilian Reserve Air Fleet. We should preclude that.
  Next week when we bring up prohibition of ownership of critical 
infrastructure assets, airlines should be part of that bill. There is 
big resistance from the administration and some of the leadership. The 
membership has to overcome that and do what is right for the American 
people and national and economic security.

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