[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 44 (Wednesday, March 14, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3118-S3120]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMPROVING AMERICA'S SECURITY ACT
Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, over 5 years ago, on September 11,
terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 people in the single deadliest attack
on American soil in our history.
What all Americans witnessed and what too many families experienced
personally and tragically was the dawn of a new era. We knew it then.
National Guard patrolled Federal buildings and airports. The military
patrolled the skies over New York and Washington, DC. The United States
had been attacked by a new kind of enemy in a new and more dangerous
world. We faced tough questions as a nation: How do we defeat this
enemy? How do we fight terror abroad and protect America at home?
What was clear that day and remains so today is that the threat posed
to us by terrorism requires a great mobilization of American might,
muscle, resources, and ingenuity.
Armed with this mandate, many of us fought alongside those who lost
loved ones on September 11 to compel an unwilling Bush administration
to create the 9/11 Commission. The determination and steadfastness
demonstrated by the families hardest hit by the September 11 tragedy
made the 9/11 Commission a reality. We applauded when the bipartisan
Commission concluded its investigation and released its thorough report
detailing recommendations to protect this Nation from another attack,
confident that the Congress and the administration would in short order
implement their recommendations.
Shamefully, for some in our Federal Government, the sense of urgency
and resolve faded in the months and years that followed. Some of the
Commission's most commonsense recommendations went ignored. Even in the
face of dangerous incompetence in our emergency preparedness and
response to Hurricane Katrina, we received tough rhetoric instead of
much needed reform. Five years after the 9/11
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attacks and 2\1/2\ years after the 9/11 Commission released its initial
report, much of the work of properly securing our homeland has gone
undone. That is why this legislation to implement many of the remaining
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission is long overdue.
I have long supported the Commission's recommendation that ``homeland
security assistance should be based strictly on an assessment of risks
and vulnerabilities.'' With our homeland security resources limited, we
need to be smart about how we distribute funding to guard against
terrorism. Sadly, all too often, funding decisions have been made based
on politics in Washington instead of the reality in our cities and
neighborhoods. It is why I introduced the Homeland Security Block Grant
Act as well as the Domestic Defense Fund Act, both of which would
provide direct and threat-based homeland security funding to our
communities and first responders to help them improve our homeland
defense. But even funds supposedly distributed based on risk have been
administered incompetently.
Last spring, the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, announced its
2006 homeland security grants. Cities and States across the country
facing high terrorist threats suffered considerable funding cuts, a
decision which can be largely attributed to a series of highly
questionable risk assessments. New York City and Washington, DC, both
already the targets of attacks, were slated for drastic reductions.
Funding under the Urban Area Security Initiative, UASI, alone was
slashed in New York City by more than 40 percent and in Washington, DC
by 43 percent.
We clearly need to get smarter about how we assess risk. It would
surprise most people to learn that until now, the process of assessing
risk has been done on an ad hoc basis within DHS, with several
different offices tasked with contributing to the analysis. This
seemingly haphazard process has led to constantly changing grant
guidance and formulas, wide fluctuations in yearly grant awards, and a
failure to develop a long-term strategy for risk assessment. What we
need is a full-time staff of methodologists whose sole responsibility
it is to assess risk. That is why I offered an amendment to bill that
would create a Risk Assessment Center within DHS.
While the funding proposal contained within Improving America's
Security Act moves us closer toward a threat-based funding model, it
still falls shorts of what the 9/11 Commission recommended.
Specifically, the State minimum funding requirements contained within
the bill are still too high and there is still too much reliance on
population-based formulas that bear little relation to risk. My hope is
that during conference committee negotiations to reconcile the House
and Senate bills, efforts will be made to ensure that our limited
homeland security funds are directed toward mitigating our most
significant vulnerabilities and that political formulas are abandoned.
As we discuss the importance of homeland security and how critical it
is to provide adequate funding for our first responders, we cannot
leave the 43,000 transportation security officers, TSOs, in this
country out of the conversation. Every day, TSOs are on the national
security frontlines, keeping our airports safe and protecting countless
citizens as they travel. Despite the significant training, experience,
and patience required to execute these duties, TSOs have lacked the
basic workers rights and protections for over 5 years, including
whistleblower protections and the right to collectively bargain. As a
result, the officers we task with protecting our airplanes from another
terrorist attack now have the highest injury rate of any Federal
agency, a high attrition rate of almost 30 percent, and, according to a
recent report, the lowest morale of any agency in the Federal
Government.
It is why I supported Senator McCaskill's amendment that would
guarantee to TSOs collective bargaining and other basic labor rights
that other Federal law enforcement officers already enjoy. This
amendment would promote our Nation's security by providing a stable
workplace structure for the resolution of disputes and the reduction of
turnover, as well as allow TSOs to expose threats to aviation security
without fear of retaliation. The amendment also includes provisions
that make explicit that TSOs would not enjoy the right to strike, the
right to bargain for higher pay, or the right to reveal classified
information, and that the TSOs must follow all orders during an
emergency. This was a smart and carefully tailored amendment that
correctly recognizes that we will not be able to effectively safeguard
our Nation's security if we do not stand with and support its security
workers.
It is also past time to secure our ports and transportation systems.
Unscanned cargo containers that pass through our ports pose a
substantial risk to our homeland security, threatening not only the
gateways to our national economy but also the larger American public.
We learned the painful lesson on September 11 that those intent on
destroying our American way of life are keenly focused on exposing our
vulnerabilities. Because our ports serve as the gateway to our country
and its economy, they remain attractive targets susceptible to
terrorist attack.
In 2005, more than 84 million tons of cargo with a value greater than
$132 billion passed through the Port of New York and New Jersey alone.
The sheer scope of commerce at our ports means the threat carries grave
consequences--and will take a great deal of hard work and our smartest
strategies to meet. And while we took important steps toward addressing
these concerns last year with the passage of the SAFE Ports Act, we
still need to act with more urgency. It is why I supported efforts to
expedite the implementation of new scanning requirements during
consideration of the Improving America's Security Act.
I am encouraged that the bill does take steps to secure our rail and
mass transit systems. Given the lessons of London, Madrid, and Mumbai,
it is unbelievable that not more has been done to secure our mass
transit. Passenger rail systems--primarily subway systems--here in the
United States carry about 5 times as many passengers each day as do
airlines. Instead of forcing an impossible decision, between protecting
one form of transportation over another, we should invest in the
resources and tools necessary to secure our entire transportation
infrastructure--before terrorists strike our rail systems here at home.
Importantly, the bill provides grants through TSA to Amtrak, freight
railraods, and others to upgrade security across the entire freight and
intercity passenger railroad system. Additionally, the bill provides
funding through the Department of Transportation, DOT, to upgrade and
to fortify Amtrak railroad tunnels in New York, Washington, and
Baltimore.
Furthermore, the legislation requires the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration, FMCSA, to provide recommendations to both motor
carriers and States on how to coordinate hazardous materials routing.
The bill also requires DHS to develop a program to encourage equipping
trucks that carry hazardous materials with communications and tracking
technology. These steps are in addition to those in the bill that
bolster aviation security standards. Importantly, the bill requires the
Transportation Security Administration, TSA, to develop and implement a
system, within 3 years of the date of enactment, to provide for the
screening of all cargo being carried on passenger aircraft, a security
measure that is long overdue.
The bill also takes several important steps to address our emergency
communications systems before we face another crisis. Chaotic, real-
world disasters, whether manmade or natural, do not obey borders. They
require close coordination of Federal, State and local agencies,
firefighters, police officers and EMTs, and others. Yet often these
different entities use different communications devices, frequencies,
even languages. On September 11, police officers could not effectively
talk to firefighters at Ground Zero; at the Pentagon, first responders
from Virginia and Washington, DC faced the same problem. After Katrina,
we had responders exchanging business cards at the site of the disaster
along the gulf.
That is why the 9/11 Commission recognized our crucial need to have
interoperable communications, so that all
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of our first responders can communicate with each other at the scene of
an emergency. It is why I introduced legislation last year that would
give our first responders an interoperable emergency communications
system coordinated under Federal leadership. I am pleased that the bill
provides funds to improve interoperable emergency communications and
gives the National Telecommunications and Information Administration,
NTIA, greater direction regarding how to distribute these funds.
This bill also contains a provision offered by Senator Stevens and me
which will provide immediate and critical funding to help upgrade and
improve our Nation's 9-1-1 call centers. This funding will help ensure
that 9-1-1 call centers can be an effective part of an emergency
response plan and will make certain they have the technological
upgrades to handle and process all the emergency calls that come into
them so that our first responders know where to go and what situation
they are walking into.
Nearly 5 years ago, America suffered a brutal terrorist attack that
stole nearly 3,000 lives and changed America forever. What was required
here in Washington was leadership. Leadership to inspire Americans to
meet the threat head on. Leadership to mobilize our resources and
respond effectively. Leadership to keep our country safe in a new and
more dangerous world.
Sadly, the Bush administration failed to match the urgency and
resolve of the American people in this great struggle to secure our
homeland. Today, with passage of this important legislation, we will
demonstrate the leadership that we have been sorely missing for too
long in the fight to safeguard our Nation and its citizens.
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