[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 98 (Monday, July 24, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H5669-H5676]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
VETERANS AFFAIRS AND HOMELAND SECURITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Poe). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms.
Schwartz) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the
opportunity this evening to speak on two
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different areas. I hope we get to both in this hour. This is a Special
Order that has been organized for some of the Democratic freshmen, the
new Members of Congress, and I rise first to say that I am very pleased
to participate in this and to have helped organize it.
This is the third of our Special Orders, and we have done this
because we do believe as new Members we come from a very diverse group.
Many of us served at the local and State level. We come from very
different backgrounds. Some of us are lawyers, some in academics, and
some are ranchers. We are really very active members in our community,
but we bring with us this experience at the local and State level, yet
a fresh perspective on some of the major debates of the day.
We certainly bring with us a commitment to making sure that our
homeland is as safe and secure as each and every American expects it to
be, and that is certainly our first and foremost commitment. I and my
colleagues really wanted to speak this evening both about the security
of our homeland and also about our commitment to those men and women
who have served this Nation in the armed services. Particularly as a
Nation at war, we have tremendous respect for those who are actively
serving, but want to remember as well that as they come home and that
others who came before them also have a right to expect we will meet
our commitments and our promises to them.
So what we are going to do first, we are going to try to split this
hour, if we can, between the two different topics. So I will ask my
colleague, John Salazar, a freshman, a veteran from the great State of
Colorado, to speak. He has really been an outspoken leader amongst the
freshmen on the issue of veterans.
So I will just close by saying that I am the daughter of a veteran.
My father served in the Korean War. And I can tell you that my very
first memory as a child was my father returning home when I was 5 years
old. He came to school, I was in kindergarten, and he came to the
public school to pick me up, and my brother, who was a year ahead of me
in school, to greet us after not having seen him for 2 years. This man
in uniform arrived at school, and I can tell you honestly that I did
not recognize him.
So I also speak as a family member of a veteran. And I hope that we
do have the opportunity this evening to talk about the sacrifice not
only of our men and women in service but of their families as well.
Because certainly the families are also committing themselves and
sacrificing as well. And we do know, and I know we will talk about
this, that the process of healing and of reinvigorating both the family
and the veteran when they are back home is something that we all want
to be committed to.
So I would like to now turn over the conversation, and I hope we can
have a bit of dialogue, because I am joined my two of my colleagues,
John Salazar, as I said, who is going to talk about a number of issues;
and then Russ Carnahan from Missouri is also going to join us. We may
be joined by others as we go through the evening, but the three of us,
I hope, will able to have this conversation about our commitment and
our belief in our promise to veterans of this country.
Mr. Salazar.
Mr. SALAZAR. I thank the gentlewoman and thank you for your
commitment to our veterans in this great country.
Mr. Speaker, this country owes no greater debt of gratitude than it
does to its veterans and military service personnel. Throughout the
history of this great Nation, men and women have heard the call to
service and have done so to defend freedom and democracy. I would like
to take this time to personally express my gratitude to our veterans
and our military men and women serving right now in places near and far
around the globe.
When these brave men and women sign up for service in the military,
our government makes certain promises to them, promises that are all
too often forgotten or neglected later on. They are promised lifelong
health care within the VA system, they are promised educational
benefits, and they are promised that their spouses will be taken care
of if they are killed in action or die from a service-connected cause.
Mr. Speaker, I do not think that we are holding up our end of the
bargain.
Let me just address a few of the failures that we have seen this
year. Let me talk shortly about the budget shortfall.
This Congress, over the past year and a half, has been witness to
monumental failures at the VA. First, we watched the VA come up short
in its 2005 budget. We were told that the administration had not
anticipated the number of claims from returning soldiers. A $1.5
billion budget shortfall is simply unacceptable.
I was happy when we passed emergency supplemental funding for our
veterans which was not impaired. We cannot forget that part of the
continuing cost of the war on terrorism is providing for our veterans.
With that in mind, I offered an amendment to the Iraq war supplemental
we passed earlier this year. In this bill, setting out billions of
dollars for the ongoing cost of the war on terrorism, I asked for a
mere $630 million to ensure that the VA did not fall short on its
budget again this year. This amendment was ruled out of order during
debate on the bill.
What is out of order, Mr. Speaker, is the short-sighted nature of the
decision made by the majority and the administration. That $630 million
seems like a small price to pay for mental health services, prosthetic
research, and administrative support for those men and women who are
serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially when the VA is still seeing
more returning servicemembers than they anticipated.
Let me talk briefly about the second failure, that of theft. On May
3, a lap-top containing the personal information of 26.5 million
veterans and 2.2 million active duty service personnel was stolen from
the home of a VA employee. This sheds light on a severe problem within
the VA. It took 19 days from the date of the theft for VA to notify
Congress and the public.
I introduced H.R. 5588. This would allow for fraud alerts, credit
freezes, credit monitoring, new notification requirements for VA, and
it would require the VA to establish a new IT security protocol. The
House Veterans' Affairs Committee marked up, just this last week, H.R.
5835, the Veterans Identity and Credit Security Act of 2006. It helps
protect veterans by offering an assortment of credit protection tools,
credit freezes, fraud alerts, monitoring, and it centralizes the VA IT
security with a new Under Secretary position and new notification
requirements.
Mr. Speaker, I would yield to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania to
talk a little bit about the budget shortfalls within the VA system.
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Well, I thank you, Mr. Salazar, for
laying out some of the issues before us. As you know, I serve on the
Budget Committee, and so we have had this debate about the Veterans
Administration, veterans health care in particular.
And it is so easy for people to stand up for veterans. We all do
this. On Veterans Day we go and visit with our veterans. I know for you
it is probably true, for me as well, I will be stopped sometimes on the
street by a veteran who will tell me about his service and who will
feel strongly and deeply committed.
One little aside, if I may. I actually brought three veterans
together who had not ever received their medals. One actually was
receiving the medal for a deceased brother who had never gotten it. It
was a really wonderful moment. They brought their families. One brought
three generations with them.
What was interesting is they all started talking to each other, and I
asked if they knew each other, and they said, no. Two of them had
actually served in World War II and one had served in Vietnam. So they
didn't even know each other, yet there was a comradery and an
understanding and a commitment and a caring they had for each other
that was so clearly expressed. It was a wonderful moment to acknowledge
their service to this country.
{time} 2200
But those are the good moments, I think, when you interact with
veterans. But there are the other ones where they say, What is going on
with the veterans health care I get? I am
[[Page H5671]]
standing in line for my prescription medicine. I have to pay more. Are
there shortages? Why does the Veterans Administration not have the
resources that it should when we have the President standing up both
with active servicemen and with veterans and they voice respect. We
have got to turn that respect and commitment into the hard dollars that
say we are going to meet these problems for the Veterans
Administration.
We have a Veterans Administration hospital in Philadelphia that does
a fine, fine job. But I can tell you, and I give some credit to
Congress on this, that we did already increase the level of funding for
the Veterans Administration from what the President had proposed. So
already we said that is not adequate. We will not accept that budget.
And we spoke up for veterans. But nonetheless, there are not cuts this
year, but there are cuts in later years for the Veterans
Administration. So that is certainly not meeting the commitment that
even if we do not cut it this year, we are cutting it in future years.
That means that the Veterans Administration, veterans hospitals, will
not be able to know that they are going to be able to be there for
veterans when we have now veterans coming back, of course, who are now
serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So we are going to see some real shortfalls, and you may speak to
this as well, but we are seeing a proposal by the President again this
year to add fees for veterans when they come for health care, that they
should have to pay. We have had to fight this enrollment fee once a
year. They have to pay that. They have to pay additional fees when they
see a see a physician. And we know that many of our veterans have come
back with serious injuries, with certainly mental health problems,
which I know you will want to talk about a little bit later as well.
But in serving on the Budget Committee, we have been able to make some
of these changes. We have to give some of the hard dollars, but I think
really the issue here is that they are such big numbers but if we are
talking about a number here of $8.6 billion below the funding that we
saw previously, those are real dollars in the care and attention that
our veterans deserve. And they will see the effects unless we fight
back and demand that we are going to meet this commitment to veterans.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman.
If the gentlewoman will continue to yield, today I would also like to
address the issue of backlogs, and I would like to mention another
troubling fact that we are facing with the VA backlogs. We have
patients that are seeking medical attention and they are on waiting
lists, and these waiting lists can take as long as 180 days to get
through. Can't we do better than 180 days?
Mr. Speaker, I will tell you a story about a friend of mine,
classmate of mine in high school, who served in the military at the
same time as I did. He called me when I was a State representative
Colorado and mentioned that he couldn't get in to see a VA doctor and
that he was having massive chest pains. And it was shortly after that
that we were finally able to get him into the VA hospital in
Albuquerque, New Mexico. And we were lucky because what the doctors
told him was that if he had not gotten the immediate medical attention,
he would have died within 5 days. They performed heart bypass surgery,
five bypasses, the next day.
So it scares me that nearly 25 percent of the cases that are waiting
have been pending over 180 days. I think this means that almost 100,000
veterans in this country have been waiting to find out how they can
access the system. And I do not think that that even begins to account
for the hundreds of thousands of vets waiting just to get in to see a
doctor. Mr. Speaker, I think this is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, not to interrupt, but if I
may reclaim my time, I want to talk about the number of veterans. My
staff did a little bit of work here to just say that there are six
States that have over 1 million veterans in their State alone. And in
Pennsylvania, we have the fourth highest number of veterans in our
State. We have over 1 million veterans in Pennsylvania alone. And I can
look up Colorado. I am sure the gentleman will be interested. There are
427,000 veterans in Colorado.
I should check Missouri too because we have Mr. Carnahan with us. And
we were talking about over 500,000 veterans.
So these are actual people living in our States asking for asking for
health care, as you say, on waiting lists, going to the pharmacy, being
asked to pay for more prescription drugs, being asked to pay an
enrollment fee to get their health care, and not assured that they are
going to get the kind of health care that you are saying is really
lifesaving.
Mr. SALAZAR. I thank the gentlewoman, and that is correct. In my
district alone, I have 75,000 veterans that we service.
When the VA actually made the original budget, they had figured that
they would treat one out of every five veterans coming back from Iraq
and Afghanistan for mental disabilities. It now turns out that they are
treating one out of every three.
So with that I would like the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania to talk a
little bit about the mental health and the posttraumatic stress
disorder that veterans have when they come back from such terrible
wars.
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, this is one area where I
think we, in the broader sense, certainly the military itself, the
different branches, have recognized better than they have ever before
that there is actually very serious stress-related illnesses and
recognize that and try to make some services available. I think that in
the years past, we basically said you come back from war and just go
home and get a job and go back to your family and you will be fine.
And, in fact, our young men and women, and they are young and women, we
are talking about 19, 20-year-olds, 21-year-olds, some who have had
some life experiences before but they are being put in a very difficult
position, being asked to make very tough choices. They perform
admirably. They perform wonderfully. We are proud of each and every one
of them.
But many of them use such strength to do that while they are in
harm's way and then come back and say now, how do I think about what I
have done for the last 18 months, the last couple of years, how do I
integrate that with the life I have now? So they are coming back in
larger numbers. Some of the statistics of mental health experts
indicate that between 17 and 26 percent of our troops returning from
combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan may experience symptoms of
post traumatic stress syndrome, and what that means is that they
deserve and need counseling; that counseling should be made available
through the Veterans Administration. And when we see cutbacks, it is
just unacceptable to think that we might actually leave a veteran with
that kind of serious disorder really on their own.
And that is really what we are experiencing. And I know that we, as
Democrats, have brought up amendments to try to address that to make
sure that there are counseling services available, more active services
available, mental health services. These are, as we know, illnesses
that we really need to make sure, particularly in a post-deployment
situation, that they receive screening and diagnosis and that no one
goes without the care that they actively deserve.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. Speaker, I would also like to talk a little bit
about our GI Bill of Rights for the 21st century.
The promise that was made to our servicemen and women with respect to
education, I think, should be kept. As it stands now, Reserve and
National Guard soldiers are not eligible for the same educational
benefits as active-duty personnel. This disparity of access is simply
unacceptable. Currently, close to 50 percent of our troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan are National Guardsmen and Reservists.
House Democrats are introducing the new GI Bill of Rights for the
20th Century to honor the bravery of our troops and the tremendous
sacrifices that their families have made. The National Guard and
Reserves have made extraordinary contributions, making up about 50
percent of the troops in Iraq.
The new GI Bill of Rights honors that contribution with provisions
that protect their income, to help more than 40 percent of those call
up who have suffered pay cuts to serve our country. We
[[Page H5672]]
have had stories of families that are struggling because they are not
making the same amount of money since the spouse left and he is off
fighting a war and taking a pay cut. Stories of soldiers losing their
homes and families out on the street. I think this is totally
unacceptable.
It also expands military health care to provide full access to
TRICARE, the military health care program, to all members of the Guard
and Reserve and their families for a low fee.
Finally, the package improves recruitment and retention incentives
and bonuses for the reserves so that they are more equitable relative
to those of the active-duty components.
{time} 2210
Not only is this just and fair, I think it is necessary, given the
recruiting and retention problems facing the Reserve and National Guard
these days.
While I am proud to say that House Democrats have taken the lead on
this issue, we will not be able to realize this reform without the
support of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I look
forward to working with all Members of this House, as well as our
Nation's military and service organizations.
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to
the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan) to talk a little bit about
the VA employees.
Mr. CARNAHAN. It is good to join you tonight, my fellow Members from
the freshman class of 2004.
This obviously is something that when I go back home to Missouri,
whether I am at a Veterans' Day function or a 4th of July function and
I talk to our veterans that have served so well and so ably, this
touches their hearts. They are so proud of their service and what they
have done to make our country what it is today.
But there is a certain element of surprise when they talk about the
disappointment that the government is not doing everything it should to
take care of our current veterans, but also to take care of this new
generation of veterans that we are producing in Iraq and Afghanistan
today.
We have a VA hospital back home in St. Louis. Like many of our
colleagues, we hear continued concerns about the access and the
service. I have seen a statistic that more than 60,000 veterans today
are waiting more than 6 months for an appointment at a VA hospital.
Part of what we have proposed as Democrats in this House is to
increase funding by $1 billion to the VA to help address those issues,
the resource issues and the priority issues, and also to require the VA
to pay veterans $500 a month when their disability claims have been
left pending for over 6 months. They should not have to suffer because
the government does not have the resources or has not made it a
priority to take care of them.
Our employees at the VA work in this environment of decreasing
budgets, crippling administration policies and overall neglect. The
administration has, frankly, misplaced priorities, and we see that on
the ground when we talk to folks back home every day. I am sure you
have seen that, the gentleman from Colorado and the gentlelady from
Pennsylvania, when you talk to your veterans and veterans organizations
back home.
I believe it is our job as Members of this body, and it is not just
the Democrats' job, it is the job of everybody in this House that
represents people back home. This should be, if anything, a unifying
issue and a unifying cause in this Congress, taking care of those who
have served our country and made it what it is today.
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. I think the gentleman makes a really
both good point too, that in fact one of our responsibilities, and I
just heard the debate earlier on how to be civil in our disagreements,
and there is strong disagreement between the two members who were
speaking, but they were certainly civil.
But this is one where I think again the rhetoric about our support
for veterans is fairly universal, and I think that is a good thing. But
we have to build on that to find a way to meet this commitment and to
be realistic about what this commitment means. The commitment means
that we not only make a commitment for this year, but we do a budget
for 5 years and we make a commitment for 5 years, and we say to the
veterans hospitals that you are going to have the resources. We say to
veterans that you won't have to wait 6 months and you won't have to pay
a 40 percent increase in your fees that you are paying.
It gets complicated. We have all probably had calls in our offices
about different levels of disability and what you get paid or what you
don't and how you get your care through the Veterans Administration. It
is complicated, and maybe that is appropriate.
But certainly from our point of view, I think you are right, this has
to be a commitment that we make as Democrats and Republicans, because
certainly when our men and women go to war, they are not going as
Republicans or Democrats, they are going as Americans, and our
commitment has to be to veterans, all of whom are Americans, all of
whom deserve not just our respect, but the hard core services that we
have told them they will get and they should be able to get.
I very much agree with you that we have to find those dollars and we
have to find them in a responsible way. All of us up here are for a
balanced budget, but this is not about spending money we don't have. It
is about our priorities and making sure we put those dollars in
priorities as we articulated them.
Mr. CARNAHAN. There is a new set of challenges out there, not just
taking care of our current veterans, but this new generation of
veterans that are coming back with unique challenges.
You mentioned posttraumatic stress issues that we have seen really
cropping up from many who have served. But the other thing we witnessed
firsthand in a delegation that traveled to Iraq last year, the doctors
there in the military hospitals told us many more soldiers are being
saved from battle injuries, dramatically more are being saved. Although
we are having fewer lost lives, we are having more lost limbs, and
although technology has improved in terms of prosthetic devices, there
will be a whole new generation of these veterans coming out of service
that will need those kind of specialized services, and we cannot let
them down.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. Speaker, I would like to just tell you a little
story of someone who was my hero, and that was my father. He was a
World War II staff sergeant who served during the bombing of Pearl
Harbor.
When he was 82 years old, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
As the disease progressed, he slowly started to forget things. But
about the age of 84, one morning we were sitting around my mother's
kitchen table there and we heard my father fumbling back in his
bedroom, and he came out shortly after that and in his hand he had his
World War II staff sergeant uniform. He told us, ``I want to be buried
in this uniform.''
We are taught not to argue with Alzheimer's patients, so we said,
``Sure dad, no problem.'' But as the disease progressed even more and
more, he started forgetting more things. But every now and then he
would bring up the fact, ``Please, I want to be buried in my uniform.''
Anyway, at the age of 86 he suffered a massive heart attack. My
mother called me and I rushed over to the house, and I remember that
when I picked him up from the floor to put him on the gurney to take
him to the hospital, with the very last ounce of strength that he had
in his body he reached up around my neck and he told me that he loved
me, and the very last word that my father ever said to me was
``uniform.''
We buried my father in his uniform. But to many veterans, the only
thing that they have to hold on to is this great country, because they
served with such pride and passion. So it is our duty as Members of
Congress now to keep our promise to those veterans.
Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I commend my colleagues for their work
and dedication to preserving the benefits of our Nation's veterans. We
must never forget the sacrifice that they have made in the defense of
freedom.
On a personal note, I would like to express my most heartfelt
gratitude to Congressman Lane Evans, our distinguished ranking member
on the Veterans Committee. Lane is a Marine who fought hard for
veterans, and he has been a true inspiration and mentor to me in my
first term here in Congress. I know that I will miss him, as many of us
will, and I wish him the best of luck in retirement.
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Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and
you are more than welcome to stay with us if you are willing to as we
switch gears.
Let me first of all let me thank you for sharing your personal story.
I think that it is important for us to think about what compels us to
do what we do. Sometimes sharing a personal story, we don't always
remember to do it. So I thank you for your willingness to do that. I
hope that all of us are fortunate enough to have parents that inspire
us. You were fortunate certainly in that.
We did want to take the discussion about that and talk about another
area that we are deeply concerned about, and certainly has been very
much a topic of concern for all of us here in Congress and I think for
all Americans, and again certainly as I go around my district, I am
well aware of the fact that we are in changed world.
Since 9/11/2001 and the terrorist attacks on our Nation, we
recognize, if we didn't before, but certainly for most Americans we
recognize that we are under a threat from terrorism in this world and
that we have a responsibility, and here we speak again about
responsibility, but we have a responsibility not just to talk about the
fear maybe or the reality of that fear, but to actually talk about what
can we do about it. How can we do more to make sure that our homeland
is safe and what do we mean by that.
It is taking the very real challenges and the tragedy of 9/11, and I
will say also the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, and whether in fact we
were as prepared as we needed to be. Did we respond as comprehensively
as we should have. I think most of us believe we did not, that there
was more that should have been done.
{time} 2220
But we need to take these tragedies and we need to say, to examine
very, very clearly, and make a clear cut assessment about whether, in
fact, we are doing all that we can to make sure that we are more
secure.
That means being sensible. I think that is what I would really like
to talk about this evening, is not just spending the dollars, because
we have spent quite a bit of Federal taxpayer dollars on homeland
security initiatives.
We have to make sure that as a Federal Government we can work with
the local, and State officials to make sure that we are secure where we
are vulnerable. That means making the right kind of assessments,
sharing what works across jurisdictional lines, and demanding that kind
of assessment and a plan for readiness. I come from an area, I
representative southeastern Pennsylvania, part of the City of
Philadelphia, part of the suburbs, so my region is home to a major
seaport, a major airport, a major rail station. We are multi county and
tri-state. We are talking about literally not just a million and a half
people who live in Philadelphia, but the millions of people who come in
and out of the city to work every day, roads and highways.
We are talking about volunteer fire companies in some of the suburban
part of my district, and a major urban city fire company. We are
talking about police that work in a rail station, we are talking about
police who work in the city, we are talking about suburban police
officers, we have State police.
These are numerous jurisdictions, all of who have had to try and
figure out what is the best way for them to be prepared in the case of
some kind of tragedy, such as a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.
And I want to be, I guess I want to say positively, is that we have
taken this seriously and we have done much more than we might have.
But where the failure is is the lack of leadership from the Federal
Government to help make sure that we have the right kind of assessments
done in each of our vulnerable areas. I mentioned our ports, I
mentioned our rail stations, I mention our airports, and that we are
providing the guidance and instructions and the assistant at the local
levels, and the dollars and resource that they need to make sure that
they are prepared, so we are not duplicating where we do not have to,
we are being smart where we have to.
I will give one example, then I would just ask my colleagues to take
an area that they might be interested in. I would like to have a little
bit more of a conversation. But one of the areas that I have been
particularly concerned about is one called interoperability. It is one
of those terms I am not sure I even knew about a few years ago.
But the fact is, that it is one that we use much more. This is how we
get, how we communicate, how our emergency personnel will be able to
communicate in a disaster.
And the fact is that in the analysis after 9/11, one of the things
that we knew is that we did not have a way for all of our emergency
personnel to talk to each other, to communicate. We do not, in fact,
know how many firefighters or police officers might have been saved if
we could have actually communicated in the Towers, the World Trade
Center.
We know that even here in Washington, we heard stories afterward,
that the Capitol Police could not talk to the city police, because they
do not have a way to communicate. So I have been working locally with
the regional subway system, because the fact is, that our city police
cannot talk to the rail police underground.
Now, that is very upsetting to hear about. If we had to call SEPTA
police, that is our Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority police,
as capable as they may be, if they need to call in for back-up, this is
not a scenario that we cannot imagine, because unfortunately we have
seen it happen in London, we have seen it happen in Madrid, we have
seen most recently a rail tragedy in Bombay, India.
So we know this can happen. But we do not have an ability right now
for them to be able to talk to each other. And I think that is
unacceptable. I think that the Federal Government should have said,
here are the best ways to do it. We have looked at it. We have examined
it. This is the way it has been done elsewhere. Those are options that
you have. This is a spectrum we will dedicate to emergency responders
and be able to have them talk to each other, and here are the dollars
to make it happen.
In fact, their application was denied. You know, I do not understand
that. I do not understand how the Federal Government can say it is not
a priority, that our fifth largest city's transit system does not meet
this requirement. It is not acceptable.
And we can give example after example of these situations. We had big
issues with the port security and whether we actually inspect all of
cargo. We do not. Are we doing the assessment on foreign ports? We can
use the example of ports. We can use the example of even in the
airports where we spend serious dollars, not all of our cargo is
inspected.
And yet, we still go round and round whether enough is being done,
where are the regulations, where are the help we need from the Federal
level. We have issues around identity cards. The Port of Wilmington,
not far from me, did a demonstration project. And we still just, after
Congress was pushing the administration, finally got them to decide
what that national security card would look like for people, for
workers going into our ports.
So I am, I mean, I can probably take up the next 20 minutes all by
myself. But I will not do that. But as a new Member, we can bring our
commitment to securing this country. But we also bring maybe a little
bit of impatience and outrage because we are new at this. I come in and
I say, wait a minute, it is 5 years since 9/11. We just got a report
from the 9/11 Commission. There were far too much Cs, Ds and Fs on that
report of what has not yet been done.
So we can be critical. This is less about being critical than
figuring out a way to make it happen and to get it done. Because my
constituents, your constituents are counting on us to demand that
accountability from our administration, to demand that effectiveness
from these dollars, and to make sure that we can say back to them, this
is the plan we have for assessing our risk, this is the plan that we
have for meeting the demands to meet that and reduce that risk, and
here is what we are going to do to make sure that we have the
resources, the trained personnel and the equipment and the know how to
make sure that we are as safe as we possibly can be in this country.
[[Page H5674]]
It is just not acceptable to do any less than that. So with that bit
of introduction, if I may, if my colleagues want to join me. There may
be some local issues that you have as well. But I think each and every
one of us can point to ways in which our own communities need to be
more secure, how we can learn from each other and how we have to
recognize the shared risk that we have for some of the greatest
vulnerabilities that we have in this country.
Mr. CARNAHAN. Mr. Speaker, I would really just echo some of the
comments that you made about interoperability. When I have met with our
police and firefighters, our emergency personnel, our front line
responders back home, I mean they tell me that loud and clear. I mean,
they are not only being given greater responsibility and greater
burdens and greater costs to do all of those things we are asking them
to do, but they are getting insufficient help to do it.
If there is anybody that I have ever seen as committed to their jobs,
with passion and belief in what they are doing, it is those public
servants. They are some of the best. But so they tell us that loud and
clear.
The 9/11 Commission identified interoperability of communications as
critical, critical to effectively respond to a natural disaster or a
terrorist attack. And yet in response to what we hear locally, what the
9/11 Commission has done, the administration did not request any funds
or grants to enhance interoperability.
Again, I think a very big disconnect from what the vital need is on
the ground in our communities. And certainly, if you look at, I want to
mention port security, as the Port of St. Louis is the second largest
inland port in our country. I have followed that closely.
But there has been underfunding in the port security program. It has
been eliminated. And it has just been put in with a pool of other
security measures, along with rail, mass transit and other
infrastructure. So it is competing with other separate programs instead
of having its own stand-alone designated funding.
{time} 2230
And cargo security did not receive any increase, and the entity that
is charged with performing security checks did so in only 13 percent of
the 10,000 companies that it is charged with checking. And, again, with
regard to our ports, the President's budget has delayed by 25 years the
overall development of the Coast Guard cutters and aircraft that we are
using to patrol our ports and coastlines. So, again, I think there is a
very big disconnect between the clear needs we see on the ground, the
discussion we hear in Washington among Members from both sides of the
need to take care of our homeland security, and the budget priorities
that we have seen the administration present.
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. If the gentleman would yield, I think
you have raised a really good point here. I am on the Budget Committee,
and when I saw that in fact we saw port security cut and this was just
after the scandal about whether in fact we would allow our ports to be
managed by a foreign company, which I think raised some benefit of that
discussion in that it raised real awareness I think for many Americans
where we think about our airports of course because of 9/11, and there
is work still to be done there. But we found that, and in fact we do
know better how we can do port security, but I also have some of the
numbers that show that in fact only 6 percent of containers entering
U.S. ports are screened.
Now, you have some debate about whether to do 100 percent or not, and
there are many of us who think we have to do some kind of screening of
every bit of cargo. But 6 percent, what is that about?
Well, when I visited the port in Philadelphia, one of the things that
people said to me, and it is interesting that the more we have
assurance that the port of origin does the kind of screening that they
need to do, that we have a relationship with that port and that nation,
the better off we are, that we can be secure before cargo leaves the
port of origin before it even comes here. First of all, it will speed
things up because I hear from my business people that the longer cargo
sits in the port, every day they lose money. They pay for that cargo
the minute it leaves the foreign port, that costs them money.
So we have to be more efficient about this, but we have to get it
right as well. And, again, here is where some technology can help, here
is where, as I understand it, that we have only 20 people in the Coast
Guard who are assessing security at 135 foreign ports. Well, that can't
be adequate. That can't do what we know we need, which is to make sure
that the screening as the cargo gets loaded in foreign ports before it
even gets here is making us more secure.
So, again, we have learned certain things in the last 5 years. That
is the good thing. But we have to put that knowledge to work to make
sure that we can move commerce through our ports and also be secure. We
have to be anticipating the real risks. We can't just be looking
backwards.
Mr. SALAZAR. In the transportation committee, we have asked for an
$18 million supplemental to construct an above-ground tunnel for the
Transportation Technology Center in Pueblo, Colorado. These are the
folks that actually do the first responder training in many instances.
You have seen the bombings of the subways in Europe, and you look at
how vulnerable we are here in this country. And being able to construct
that tunnel, we can train our first responders in such a way that we
don't have to interrupt our subway services.
But I would like to talk a little bit also about something that is
very near and dear to my heart when it comes to national security. I
think that one of the most critical issues in national security is to
make sure that this country never becomes dependent on another country
to produce our food, as we have become dependent on other countries to
produce our oil. So it really bothers me when, for example, in the ag
committee we who are there to represent agriculture begin cutting
programs that actually keep farmers and ranchers on the land, and
farmers and ranchers who produce the greatest food supply in the world.
And so I think that is critical. We must make sure that farmers and
ranchers stay on the land and we have an adequate food supply.
You saw what happened when, during the first Gulf War when Saddam
Hussein's troops had to give up because they didn't have enough food to
eat. Let that never happen to our troops.
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. I appreciate the comments, and it is a
perspective that wasn't on my list of things mentioned. So I appreciate
that. I think that is an important aspect, that we are self-sufficient,
that we are able to take care of ourselves, certainly in an emergency
that we are prepared.
And I think that you also raise a really good point about the
training that we need for our first responders. Mr. Carnahan I think
mentioned that we all go and visit our fire companies and police. And I
will say here again, the good news is that they recognize the need for
more training and equipment. They have said to us, and they sometimes
proudly say this is the additional training. I have a group in part of
my district that has joined together to talk to each other, to do
emergency management training, because they realize particularly in the
suburban part of my district, probably have it more so in some of the
rural parts of our country where you really aren't going to be able to
manage it all alone, so you need to be able to work with other fire
companies, with the counties even to be able to call them in, to be
able to know what to do in that.
And we just had some very serious flooding in this country and
certainly in my area just outside of my district, but I went to visit
anyway. And one of the things they said to me was they were very proud
of the fact that, because of the planning they had done, they were
better prepared than they had ever been before. And that was a really
important thing. They said they had never before set aside a command
center, that they knew exactly who was supposed to staff that command
center. They knew who to call, who would bring the food. They had the
volunteer services that could be helpful. But they also knew who and
what kind of equipment in adjoining areas that could really help them
get right on top of things right away. And they know
[[Page H5675]]
that that eased the urgency of the situation for many of the people who
lived in that area.
And yet, again, we need to make sure that the Federal Government,
this is what the Department of Homeland Security was set up to do, was
to make sure that we don't have everyone just reinventing the wheel.
That just shouldn't be the way it is. It is not the most efficient use
of money. We should be making sure that there are countywide plans,
that there are statewide plans, that there is a sense that maybe not
everyone needs to have every piece of equipment. How do you actually
join together? Do you do that across regional lines? Who do you call
and how do you make that work?
But we have seen in fact a cut in some of these security grants. And
how can that be, when in fact we can all say that we are not finished
with this task of making sure that we are as secure as we need to be in
this country.
So I open it up to some of the comments you may have in some of your
own experiences in your own districts.
Mr. CARNAHAN. I would like to follow up on the issue of the screening
of containers. You know, as we said, there is just a small fraction of
this gigantic volume of containers coming into our ports. And they are
not only coming into our ports, but then they are being loaded on
trucks or barges and then they are scattering throughout our country.
So it is critical we get on top of that.
We had an opportunity in this House to vote on an amendment that
would have required 100 percent of the containers coming in this
country to be scanned before they came into our country and were
distributed. And shockingly, to me, we were not able to pass that. You
know, the Democrats in the minority here, we are in favor of that; it
was defeated by the majority here.
But the granddaddy of being out of touch with our port security was
when the President proposed turning certain of our port operations over
to a foreign entity. Again, just a whopper of being out of touch,
particularly given where we are in this country today. And I think we
saw the public rise up, we saw this Congress eventually rise up to say,
you know, no. You know, that is not good for us right now. We can't do
that and we shouldn't.
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. And just on the port, I was very much a
part of the argument in that regard, too. And I think again it brought
some greater attention to the fact of port security and both what has
been done positively and what more we need to do. But to think that
after 5 years we have still only appropriated 16 percent of what the
Coast Guard has told us they need to enhance port security over the
next 10 years. I mean, this is something they are telling us, their
expertise, this is what we need to do. And the President actually
proposed eliminating $173 million in port security grants.
I argued that and presented an amendment to the Budget Committee to
restore some of those grants. One of the things that happens, I was
going to call it a trick, I suppose that may not be the nicest thing to
call it, is if you put all these grant programs together and cut it,
you can say I didn't really cut that particular program; I just put
these three or four grant programs together and reduced the overall
amount and someone else can decide later what we are going to cut. That
is still a cut.
{time} 2240
We have to understand that there are very serious issues before us.
Again, I think we are talking about being fiscally responsible here--we
have a priority and what we actually want the dollars to do, the right
things that we really need to do.
I do want to mention the earlier remarks because there was something
I also learned from the visits in my district, and that is, that this
is an identity card. We have talked a lot about that in different
circumstances, but one in which we all agree on, Republicans and
Democrats, is that we will have a worker ID card. We actually
understand we were not sure what should go into that, the information
that should go into it, who should produce it, how it can work. We have
literally then tens of hundreds of thousands of workers coming in and
out of our ports every day across this country, and yet, the idea that
we are going to scan all this cargo but then anyone can just come in
and out of the ports, driving a truck, is something I think certainly
not something any of us find acceptable.
So, in fact, it has taken 4 years and Congress has had to push this
administration really, really hard. There has been pressure from
Congress to get the administration finally just really recently to
approve and decide what that card would look like.
Now, I think that should have been years ago. I am grateful it just
was done, but I think it speaks to our responsibility as Members of
Congress to keep asking the tough questions, demanding that
accountability, demanding that high performance and demanding that high
level of government provide the leadership to our local communities, to
our ports, to our airports, to our rail, and not just to walk away and
take too long.
One of the things we do not want to have happen is for us to say let
us keep waiting, let us keep waiting, and then have some tragedy happen
we were not prepared for, fully knowing that we could have been
prepared if we had taken quicker action.
Mr. SALAZAR. Can I ask a question here. This identity card that you
are talking about, is this a biometric type of ID system, and will
every American have to carry that?
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. No. These are just for workers. These
are for people who are employed by the ports or employed by a company
that is actually coming in and out of the ports. These are for the
workers.
The problem is they do not go through the screening as much then.
These ID cards get very sophisticated. They have a lot of information
on them, but the idea here is that anyone who is working in a port, and
as I understand, there are workers who actually go from port to port or
go from different destinations, so some of this is also, again, to keep
the commerce flowing. The idea here is not to make things more
difficult, to be able to actually move things more efficiently, more
quickly, but to do so with a sense of security because we have the
technology to do that.
So this is basically a little more information, but it is like
showing any kind of driver's license, or it is a special ID that says,
yes, you have been screened, you have gone through the background
checks to allow you to work in a sensitive area. This is something that
is important to our ports and our airports as well, and that the
workers who work there every day actually have an ID card that can be
scanned quickly and that they can actually be able to flow back and
forth very easily but that we can be secure it is someone who we know
will not engage in any kind of criminal behavior, let alone terrorist
behavior.
Mr. CARNAHAN. I wanted to say also, I think it is so critical that we
listen to our first responders. I think the administration and some in
this Congress have really, I think, turned a deaf ear to many of these
concerns. If they listened to those first responders, I think we would
see very different actions coming out of the White House and coming out
of this Congress.
Also, listen to the bipartisan experts. Some of the best experts in
our country came together in a bipartisan way to make these
recommendations on the 9/11 Commission that have yet to be fully
implemented. It is really unconscionable to me.
So Democrats have committed, from our leadership all the way down,
when the new Congress comes in January, to make that one of our top
priorities in January, in our new Congress, to fully implement those
recommendations in the 9/11 Commission report. I think it is just
critical to our country and to really get these sound recommendations
through this Congress, supporting those front-line responders that have
told us what they need and what works in their communities.
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Maybe that is a good way to sort of
wind up the conversation we are having, but first let me say, I think
we are all saying thanks just out of tremendous respect for the great
work that has been done by our police and our firefighters and our
emergency personnel, and they are on the front lines, and they are
getting additional training. They are working very hard to make this
happen.
[[Page H5676]]
As I said, I have been impressed locally at some of the work that has
been done in their planning, but the 9/11 Commission just simply, I
think, as Democrats, we have said our first priorities would be to
address some of the shortcomings, and that includes interoperability
for all of our first responders, fire and police personnel.
Second, it would be to coordinate local, State and Federal emergency
response planning, that we would make sure that the administration
provide local and State governments with the tools and the guidance to
better secure our communities and make sure communities are secure and
that we ensure that the administration makes strategic and risk-based
decisions about how our homeland security dollars are spent so that we
are smart, we use common sense and that we use these dollars in the
most effective, wisest way possible.
In that way, we can stand up here and I hope we can months from now,
a year from now, be able to say, you know, we got these things done
because it was not just a broad rhetorical commitment, it was putting
our dollars, putting our expertise to work for the American people to
make sure that our homeland is as secure as we all deserve.
With that, I want to thank the gentlemen who joined me this evening
for your willingness to do the freshman Special Order, and I look
forward to being able to do it again, possibly in September, but thank
you and thank you for your commitment to both the veterans of this
country and also to the homeland security needs of this Nation.
____________________