[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 24026]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      PROTECT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I have taken the floor previously to talk 
about the shortcomings of the administration's efforts in the area of 
homeland security.
  As an expert in aviation security, I have criticized the fact that 
the Republican majority and the White House have seen fit to 
arbitrarily cut the number of screeners, which not only causes obvious 
inconvenience for passengers, but it creates the potential for security 
threats as the smaller number of screeners are under tremendous 
pressure to process a large number of people in a short period of time. 
And they are being asked to do it with 1980s equipment.
  Now, you can do it one of two ways. You can have a lot of people with 
crummy equipment or a few people with state-of-the-art equipment. This 
administration is trying to do it on the cheap without enough people 
and with obsolete equipment that cannot detect plastic explosives at 
passenger checkpoints and often in carry-on bags or checked baggage or 
cargo.
  Our ports, I have talked about that, a tremendous vulnerability, not 
doing radiological detection. Nobody is going to shoot a missile at us, 
the failed Stars Wars system notwithstanding, but they may well try and 
smuggle in a nuclear device in a container. Our ports and our borders 
are wide open to such smuggling with just a very few deployed 
radiological devices.
  But Katrina brought home another lesson, which is we need to be ready 
both for unnatural disasters, terrorist attacks and natural disasters. 
And there is a looming natural disaster that this administration has 
ignored, and that is the potential of H5N1 flu, the bird flu, so-
called, should it become easily transmissible between bird species and 
humans, and then human-to-human contact could perhaps spread the 
disease widely.
  The numbers are absolutely shocking regarding the potential for loss 
of life because of this. The administration, the President apparently 
read a book, that is great, and the book was about the great pandemic, 
and suddenly he got excited about it. Except experts in his 
administration and worldwide have known since before he became 
President that there was a potential for species crossover with this 
flu, and a tremendous loss of life is potential from this.
  This administration last year in preparation for this looming 
disaster, and it already infected and killed a number of humans at a 
rate of better than 50 percent in Asia last year, so last year in 
preparation for this they took some steps. They put more money in the 
budget for vaccines, antiviral drugs and basic research. Woo, yea for 
them.
  But guess what? The total spending was $110 million, approximately 
half of what they spent on chastity education in America. That is how 
high this ideological administration put on the idea of protecting 
America against an influenza outbreak. They could spend almost as much 
money as they put together for abstinence-only education.
  Now, that seems to be kind of a misplaced priority. Belatedly now 
they are talking about billions and accelerated research and 
stockpiling antiviral drugs. I gave a floor speech last summer calling 
upon the administration to begin to stockpile the drugs. Unfortunately, 
virtually every other country in the world is in line ahead of the 
United States of America, and the drugs are not manufactured here to 
buy those drugs, because those other countries have chosen to stockpile 
them to protect their people. Even though they do not work very well, 
they are the only thing we have now.
  Now the administration is talking belatedly about a crash program to 
try to develop vaccines 2 or 3 or 4 years down the road in the hope 
that this crossover will not take place before then. This is yet 
another example of poor planning by this administration; the fact that 
they created this huge new bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland 
Security, that failed so miserably when Katrina occurred.
  And, oh, by the way, Brownie, you did a heck of a job. That hack who 
failed so miserably is still on the Federal payroll. Can you believe 
that? The guy is pulling down over $100,000 a year sitting over there 
having failed so miserably. The President cannot even get rid of him, 
let alone other political cronies in this administration.
  And they are failing us in other areas of security that I referenced 
earlier, and they are failing the American people in this critical 
health care component.
  Much more robust steps must be taken quickly. The clock is ticking. 
It is already perhaps very, very late. We can only hope that this virus 
does not evolve too quickly through nature, and I know this 
administration does not believe in evolution, but that is how viruses 
happen. They do evolve. All it needs is a couple of small changes, and 
it will be transmissible. It will be a pandemic. We need to do more to 
protect the American people.

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