[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 195 (Saturday, December 17, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8763-S8766]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HOMELAND SECURITY BUDGET

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about the 
Homeland Security appropriations bill--one of the nine we approved this 
morning. I was proud to work with my ranking member, the Senator from 
Indiana, Mr. Dan Coats. I am very proud to work with the Senator from 
New Jersey, Frank Lautenberg, who serves as honorary vice chair of the 
committee because of his seniority and expertise in this area. I wanted 
to put into the Record some facts about the bill.
  This bill has been openly and publicly debated for almost 1 year. 
There are some very important components of the bill that I think are 
of great interest to the people we serve. First, the bill totals, for 
2012, $39.858 billion, slightly below $40 billion. It is not one of the 
largest in our government, but it is neither the smallest. It is sort 
of in the midrange of departments, but it is a very important 
department--one just created, as you know, in the aftermath and the 
heartbreak of 9/11. It is a department that has had tremendous success 
in the 10 years but with a lot of growing pains. They had a lot of 
difficulty getting their feet underneath them and bringing in agencies 
from around the government to provide the frontline of defense against 
attacks to our homeland.
  I commend Secretary Napolitano for the great work she has done in the 
last 2 years to strengthen this department, to make very tough 
decisions, which all our Administrators are having to make, about how 
to allocate resources and set priorities because we are reducing 
budgets. We are in the process of eliminating, trimming, and 
rescinding. That is very difficult because, frankly, almost everything 
we do on the Federal level is important to somebody, to some entity, to 
some State, to some business cluster or to some activity of the 
government. Despite the common refrain that there is a lot of waste, 
fraud, and abuse, the fact is, we have been shaving that, eliminating 
that substantially, over the last several years. Now we are down to the 
bone and muscle.
  When you are defending a country, you need to have a lot of muscle. 
When you are defending a country, you have

[[Page S8764]]

to have a lot of brain power. Then you have to have a lot of backbone. 
That is what this bill represents, a lot of muscle and a lot of 
strength to defend our country. There is no guarantee we will not have 
another attack, but this is the bill that makes that less likely.
  That is why I will fight, as chair of this committee, to strengthen 
it and to have reliable partners at the State and local levels because 
we cannot do this alone. We need our local police and our State 
governments' eyes on the ground, in neighborhoods--both in urban areas, 
as the Chair basically represents in Delaware--but we also need them 
out in rural areas, where we have very sophisticated and serious 
potential targets for terrorists in terms of power structure, power 
generation, electrical structure, energy structure, our ports, which 
are mostly in urban areas, but sometimes we will find a certain niche 
port somewhere out there sort of off the beaten path. We need to 
protect it all. So we have to be very careful, and the members of the 
committee worked very hard to allocate the $40 billion that was given 
to us--$39 billion--which was less than we got last year, in an 
appropriate way. It was less than we got last year, but the needs are 
greater.
  Drug trafficking is increasing in Mexico, not decreasing. The 
pressures on our southern border are increasing, not decreasing. The 
need to expedite our travelers faster through the screening, both for 
commercial and vacation travel, is increasing, not decreasing. People 
think there is some kind of way we can come to Washington and wave a 
magic wand and make all these needs go down. Actually, as the needs are 
going up, we are flattening and cutting budgets, which makes it very 
difficult. My job--and I wish to get this point in--as an appropriator 
is made even harder, because despite the good work my ranking member 
has done on helping us to build this bill, as you know, the Republican 
caucus has been absolutely unmovable on putting any new money on the 
table--from any source.
  We have tried, and the President has tried, to raise revenues from 
people making over $1 million a year. Actually, you have to make over 
$1 million to pay this surcharge. We have been unable to convince 
anyone on the other side--or very few--we have had one or two 
Republicans who have stood, and I am very proud of them--to say we have 
to put some more money on the table as we continue to cut programs to 
close the deficit gap and make sure we have the basics covered.
  I think Senators McCain and Kyl think the basics are the border. They 
may be right, and I have supported them. We have added 1,000 new Border 
Patrol agents in the last year, but it costs money. We have had to find 
that money in this bill. So other things had to be reduced. I 
understand that. Businesses do that all the time. But businesses also 
need to sell more products and bring in more money. Businesses also can 
increase the prices of products sometimes to bring in more revenue. We 
are having a hard time getting the other side of this body to 
understand that sometimes you have to bring in more revenue, as well as 
cutting, to make this work.
  I am presenting a bill I am proud of, which is $39 billion. It is 
going to be very difficult to go much further down and to continue to 
do that which I am going to outline that we do in this bill.
  First of all, we spent a lot of time this year--because we had to--
talking about disasters. This was the worst year on record for 
disasters in the United States--from fires in the West, to floods in 
the Mississippi, to hurricanes raking the Northeast, to tornadoes. We 
have just had our fill. The weather service, just last week, came out 
and said that this year, for the first time since they recorded this, 
we had over 12 disasters of over $1 billion each. So this year, 2011, 
was a very tough year. Our members and I spent a lot of time talking 
about disasters, so I will not do that at this moment. We have done 
enough talk. We funded FEMA. It was a great victory for people who were 
looking for our help.
  I wish to talk about what else the Homeland Security bill does 
because it is not just responding to disasters, which I am proud we 
took care of this morning. We also do a lot of other important work and 
fund a lot of other important entities in this bill, including securing 
our borders--the whole border--the northern border, the southern border 
and ports of entry. I think we have over 125. People don't realize 
this. They don't see it as they do if they live in Missouri or in 
Kansas or maybe even in Arkansas. They are not familiar with the 
borders along Texas or how big they are, and Arizona. But it is a lot 
of land that has to be covered, and it is the Federal Government's 
responsibility. It takes a tremendous amount of money to secure this 
border, but our country wants us to do that. So we have invested in 
more border agents, in better technology, and I am even trying to come 
up with some very cost effective ways to improve the physical 
infrastructure of the borders because not only do they serve to protect 
our Nation from people who should not come in, but we also have to get 
a lot of things across our border, such as all the commerce and traffic 
and vegetables and agricultural products and manufactured products that 
our businesses depend on to have good trade with Canada and Mexico.

  With NAFTA, which is a very important trade foundation for our 
continent, we just can't close our borders and shut them down. We have 
to keep them open. America, unlike every other country in the world, is 
one of the only countries that both has to fight hard for our security 
but also remain open as a nation. This is a very hard thing to do. We 
have to have more research and technology, not less. We have to have 
smarter border crossings, not the old-fashioned, out-of-date type. That 
is what our bill supports--or, I should say, we try to. We are having a 
very difficult time because no one will put a dime on the table. So we 
have to keep finding ways to do this.
  We have to enforce our immigration laws. Everybody at home tells us 
they want the laws enforced. But it costs money to enforce those laws, 
and that is in this bill. As I said, we have to facilitate trade and 
protect our currency.
  We also secure cyberspace, which is a whole growing enterprise in 
space that we are learning a great deal about. We will not be fighting 
wars the way we have in the past. Our enemies will be attacking us in 
very different and innovative ways--not army to army, navy to navy, or 
men and women on the battlefield, as we have become accustomed. They 
may be attacking our utility sector, trying to shut down our financial 
systems. We are so reliant and interrelated on all the digital 
networking. It is very frightening to think what could happen, and we 
have all been in classified briefings to understand what could happen. 
This bill helps protect all of our Federal agencies and businesses 
except for Defense. Defense protects themselves. Our bill has to 
protect the homeland and the private sector, and we have a long way to 
go--and not just big companies but small companies have to be 
protected, and we have to work in partnership with them.
  Let me mention our TSA in aviation; we fund that. I also want to 
mention this for Louisiana: Our fishermen have had a terrible time. 
Maybe in Delaware and other places along the east coast and the west 
coast my colleagues will understand this. In the gulf, our fishermen 
are trying to make a living in the middle of hurricanes and oilspills 
and, in addition, we get crawfish and shrimp dumped from places such as 
China and Vietnam. So we need money in this bill to enforce those trade 
laws, and I stepped up and significantly enhanced that effort in this 
bill. I was proud to do it for the shrimping and fish industries in our 
country, and particularly along the gulf coast. So that is in this bill 
as well.
  I might mention the Secret Service, which we have to support, in 
addition to the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection. There is a 
lot in our $40 billion bill.
  Let me just make one other point. We have eliminated $204 million of 
rescissions in, as I said, low-priority programs. These were eliminated 
to spend money on high-priority programs. We have reduced 
administrative funding by over $800 million, and we have reduced the 
headquarters account by almost $100 million.
  I am one to shave some of this money off of administration, but I 
can't go much further, and I will tell you why. This department is a 
hard department to manage, and it can't manage itself. Secretary 
Napolitano must have the resources at the administrative level to

[[Page S8765]]

manage a department that is only 10 years old, and that brings 
disparate agencies together to have them function.
  We have seen what happens when we don't invest in management. We have 
seen what happens when we gut administration. We had a weak shell of 
FEMA show up after Katrina and just about ruined our efforts for 
recovery. We are never going to see that again. So I am committed to 
funding the FEMA administration and to funding the Department. We can 
cut, and we have made some cuts, but I am telling the other side we 
just can't keep cutting the administration and then turn around and 
expect the same agencies to ferret out fraud, waste, and abuse. We need 
good managers to do that and so we must continue to fund them.
  I am proud I was able to include $358 million for six Coast Guard 
Fast Response Cutters. Those happened to be built in Louisiana--I am 
proud of that--but the decision was made well before I got to be chair 
of this committee for that construction. I am proud to have funded that 
effort and to give the Coast Guard the upgrade of equipment they need 
to do the work we are asking them to do. Their work just continues to 
go up. They are a very popular part of our Federal Government. I think 
everyone loves the Coast Guard. We are very fond of them in Louisiana 
because we depend on them for so many things, and I think their fleet 
needs to be upgraded.
  Some of these ships are built in other States--some of their 
infrastructure is in other States--and I am proud to support the 
Offshore Patrol Cutter. We included $110 million for 40 response boats; 
another $129 million for maritime patrol aircraft, mission pallets, and 
spares; and we have $18 million to replace a helicopter that crashed. I 
could recite some other things, but we have tried to do our best by the 
Coast Guard, to upgrade the equipment they need to help us during this 
time.
  We have also put in this bill--and I am very proud of this, and I 
hope the public will see some immediate improvements--250 machines for 
additional advanced imaging technology. We put in funding to pay for 
this so that people can get through those security lines faster. We are 
losing a lot of money as a nation with people stuck in lines, and it is 
just slowing down our productivity, which is important because our 
businesses need people to travel.
  Of course, being from a State that depends on hospitality--our 
Presiding Officer just recently visited Louisiana, and we are grateful 
to him and his family for coming to spend some time with us. We would 
like everyone to come and spend some time in Louisiana--Lafayette, 
Baton Rouge. I know the Presiding Officer had a great time and spent 
some time in hotels and restaurants.
  New York depends a lot on tourism, as does Nevada and California, and 
many other States. When people get hassled too much while traveling, 
they just stop going. Now, we can't drive our cars everywhere we want 
to go. So making flying a little easier once again for the public, yet 
still safe, is something I most certainly want to work on.

  Just a couple more comments and then I will close.
  I want to commend the group in Louisiana at our Cyber Innovation 
Center. They received--not out of this bill but out of the Department--
a very small grant to help with the improvement on training the 
workforce to be the cyber warriors we need them to be. We need to do 
that in Delaware, we need to do that in Louisiana, we need to do that 
in Texas, and we need to do it everywhere.
  We are not educating and producing the graduates we need to be the 
cyber warriors of the future. We don't want to have our warrior force--
as much as we are proud to have legal immigrants in our country--
outsourced to India or China or Japan, to have their Ph.D.s or masters 
or degreed individuals come to do this work. We want to raise our own 
to do this work, and we can do that. I am proud to support some of 
those efforts in this bill.
  Unfortunately, the tight spending limits necessitated deep cuts in 
first responder grant programs. While we were able to provide $354 
million above the House level for such grant programs, the final 
agreement cuts funding by 30 percent. I believe the Federal government 
has a responsibility to work with and assist State and local first 
responders in developing their capabilities to mitigate, prevent, and 
respond to all disasters whether they are natural disasters or 
terrorist attacks.
  There are also significant cuts in science and technology activities. 
While we were successful in mitigating the excessive cuts contained in 
the House bill by restoring $129 million, the agreement reduces 
spending by $160 million below fiscal year 2011 levels. I believe that 
the Department of Homeland Security, like any successful business, must 
invest in science and technology to address evolving threats and I 
intend to make this program a priority going forward.
  To minimize these reductions, the agreement includes $204 million of 
rescissions of low priority programs, reduces funding in administrative 
accounts by over $800 million and reduces Departmental headquarters 
accounts by $9 million. The agreement also provides for the orderly 
termination of the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement and the 
Office of Risk Management and Analysis, programs that are either 
redundant or poorly executed.
  During our negotiations with the House, we were able to eliminate a 
number of objectionable language riders, including three immigration 
provisions that would have limited the Department's authority to 
enforce our immigration laws, a provision that would have prohibited 
Transportation Security Administration employees from collective 
bargaining, and a provision that would have required TSA to reduce 
thousands of screeners and transition toward a private sector work 
force.
  I am pleased that we were able to include in the agreement provisions 
that will: facilitate maintaining or hiring firefighters by local fire 
departments; allow FEMA to waive recoupment requirements for disaster 
survivors who, through no fault of their own, received overpayments as 
much as 6 years ago; extend the National Flood Insurance Program 
through May 31, 2012; and extend the authorities of the Chemical 
Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program for 1 year. The agreement 
also includes a provision that gives States the flexibility to use FEMA 
hazard mitigation grant funding to reimburse homeowners for storm 
mitigation work originally completed with a Small Business 
Administration loan. This provision provides equity of benefits among 
disaster survivors.
  The agreement includes funding for a number of critical investments 
that will enhance the department's capacity to respond to an evolving 
threat:

       Coast Guard funding includes: $358 million for six Fast 
     Response Cutters; $77 million for long lead time material for 
     the sixth National Security Cutter; $25 million for 
     development and design of the Offshore Patrol Cutter; $110 
     million for 40 Response Boat Mediums; $129.5 million for two 
     Maritime Patrol Aircraft, mission pallets, and spares; $18.3 
     million to replace a helicopter that crashed in 2010; $15.2 
     in response to the gulf coast oil spill, to enhance oil spill 
     response capabilities, including 87 new positions; $200.7 
     million for shore facility projects, infrastructure to 
     support new assets, and military housing; and $63.5 million 
     for a new C-130J aircraft, by transfer from the Department of 
     Defense.

  Funding is included for the Transportation Security Administration 
for: 250 additional Advanced Imaging Technology machines with the 
capacity to protect people's privacy; 145 new behavior detection 
officers; 12 additional multi-modal Visible Intermodal Prevention and 
Response, VIPR, teams; 20 additional explosives detection canine teams; 
and 53 new positions to strengthen international air cargo security.
  The agreement provides resources to Customs and Border Protection to 
support: 21,370 Border Patrol agents, sustaining the increased levels 
approved in the Fiscal Year 2010 Supplemental; 21,186 CBP officers 
working at the ports of entry, including 312 new officers and 
additional canine teams; $5 million for officer and agent integrity 
programs, including polygraph testing; $5 million to CBP to work within 
existing laws to increase collection of antidumping and countervailing 
duties and implement aggressive options to level the trade playing 
field for U.S. companies.
  The agreement provides $443 million for cybersecurity efforts, an 
increase of $80 million above Fiscal Year 2011, of

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which $22.8 million is for cybersecurity education and awareness. The 
increase will continue efforts to combat the cyber threat by reducing 
points of access to Federal computer networks, enhancing intrusion 
detection through Einstein, and building a cybersecurity workforce 
through education and training.
  So it remains the responsibility of each generation to make the 
necessary investments to secure our homeland. I take this 
responsibility seriously, and my members take it seriously as part of 
our Homeland Security Committee. We worked very hard to produce a good 
bill for the country. We are proud of this bill. It is about $40 
billion of their money. I hope they believe we are allocating it and 
spending it accordingly.
  Mr. President, I look forward to the hearings we are going to have 
next year on some important topics, and I will close by wishing you and 
the staff and everyone here a merry Christmas and a happy and blessed 
holiday.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Pryor). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. RUBIO. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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