[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12578]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY THREATENS HOMELAND SECURITY

  (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the House is now throwing themselves as 
fast as they can at developing a homeland security plan. Somehow, 
however, we have forgotten half the problem. The problem of the 
external dangers we all know about, but Pogo, the cartoon character, 
once said, ``We have discovered the enemy, and he is us.''
  We forget what the internal threats in this country really are. What 
we have watched on Wall Street is threatening the homeland security of 
all of us, our pensions, our health care, the economy, and whether we 
can retire. All those issues are in danger because of, as some of my 
colleagues say, a few bad apples.
  In Washington State, where the apple is really the symbol of the 
State, we know if you have a bad apple in the barrel, it can ruin the 
whole barrel. The American people recognize that the barrel has bad 
apples in it, like the leadership of Halliburton and the leadership of 
Enron and the leadership of Harken and the leadership of all these 
companies.
  Maybe we should throw some of those apples out of the barrel.

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