[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13398]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                LET DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE DEFEND AMERICA

  (Mr. DUNCAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, this morning's Wall Street Journal has an 
editorial which says this about the proposed Homeland Security 
Department: ``It seemed like a good idea at the time. But the more we 
look at the hash Washington is making of President Bush's proposal for 
a new Department of Homeland Security, the more we think we would be 
wiser to call the whole thing off.''
  Steven Moore, in a column in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, said the 
new Department would probably cost $4 billion just in reorganization 
costs. Then he said, ``There are, however, a number of problems with 
the proposal. First, and most important, we already have a Department 
of Homeland Security and it is called the Department of Defense. If 
Defense, which spends about $350 billion a year, more than almost all 
of the other nations combined, if Defense isn't spending money on 
protecting the homeland, what is it spending these funds on? The very 
reason we had a 9/11 attack was that our government wasn't doing the 
one thing it is supposed to do: Keep us safe from foreign harm.''
  This new department will simply make the Federal Government bigger, 
more bureaucratic and much more expensive, and it will not make it any 
safer. We should not have to create a Cabinet level department just to 
get government agencies to cooperate with each other. If we do, the 
Federal Government is much worse than even I thought it was.

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