[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 15, 2012)]
[House]
[Page H735]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Madam Speaker, I rise to talk for a few 
minutes about security. I know that almost no Member is willing to vote 
against something that has the word ``security'' attached to it, but I 
wish that most Members would consider these words from Ian Lustick. 
Professor Lustick is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and 
he wrote several years after 9/11 about the war on terror money feeding 
frenzy. He wrote this:

       After September 11, 2001, what accounts for the vast 
     discrepancy between the terrorist threat facing America and 
     the scale of our response? Why, absent any evidence of a 
     serious domestic terror threat, is the war on terror so 
     enormous, so all encompassing, and still expanding? The 
     fundamental answer is that al Qaeda's most important 
     accomplishment was not to hijack our planes, but to hijack 
     our political system. For a multitude of politicians, 
     interest groups, professional associations, corporations, 
     media organizations, universities, local and State 
     governments, and Federal agency officials, the war on terror 
     is now a major profit center, a funding bonanza, and a set of 
     slogans and sound bites to be inserted into budget, project, 
     grant, and contract proposals. For the country as a whole, 
     however, it has been a maelstrom of waste.

  He pointed out an example that even Dunkin' Donuts franchises had 
received $22 million in Federal counterterrorism loans.
  Madam Speaker, in addition to that, shortly after 9/11, when every 
government, department, and agency was requesting more money for 
security, The Wall Street Journal carried an editorial that said:

       Any bill with the word ``security'' in it should get double 
     the public scrutiny and maybe four times the normal wait, 
     lest all kinds of bad legislation become law under the phony 
     guise of fighting terrorism.

  Unfortunately, we haven't followed the guidance of Professor Lustick 
or The Wall Street Journal. I thought of these writings by Mr. Lustick 
and The Wall Street Journal when I read two recent articles. On 
December 20, 2 months ago, Vanity Fair magazine carried an article on 
its Web site which said:

       As you stand in endless lines this holiday season, here's a 
     comforting thought: all those security measures accomplish 
     nothing at enormous costs.

  The magazine said since 9/11, the government has spent more than $1.1 
trillion on homeland security. Then the article added this:

       To a large number of security analysts, this expenditure 
     makes no sense. The vast cost is not worth the infinitesimal 
     benefit. Not only has the actual threat been exaggerated, 
     they say, but the great bulk of the post-9/11 measures to 
     contain it are little more than security theater; actions 
     that accomplish nothing but are designed to make the 
     government look like it is on the job. In fact, the 
     continuing expenditure on security may actually have made the 
     United States less safe.

  And then a second article by ABC News. Probably, Madam Speaker, the 
most needless, useless agency in the entire Federal Government is the 
Air Marshal Service. USA Today once reported that more air marshals had 
been arrested than were arrests by air marshals. Talk about a soft, 
easy job. All these people do is ride back and forth on airplanes, back 
and forth, back and forth, mostly in first class.
  A few days ago, ABC News reported that air marshals took taxpayer-
paid trips to visit families and to go to vacation spots. One 
supervisor was even photographed asleep on a flight while carrying a 
loaded pistol. ABC reported that managers at the Air Marshal Service 
acted like ``a bunch of school yard punks,'' and that they ``repeatedly 
made fun of blacks, Latinos, and gays,'' according to agency insiders. 
I guess they had too much time on their hands and too little to do.
  I know, as I said earlier, that it's almost impossible to get 
Congress to vote against anything that claimed to be for security. But 
this almost $1 billion that we give to air marshals each year is a 
total complete waste. When we go ridiculously overboard, Madam Speaker, 
on security, we are taking money away from individuals and families who 
really need it, and taking money away from other good things on which 
this money could be spent.

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