[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15573-15579]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 VETERANS AFFAIRS AND HOMELAND SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Poe). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. 
Schwartz) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the 
opportunity this evening to speak on two different areas. I hope we get 
to both in this hour. This is a Special Order that has been organized 
for some of the Democratic freshmen, the new Members of Congress, and I 
rise first to say that I am very pleased to participate in this and to 
have helped organize it.
  This is the third of our Special Orders, and we have done this 
because we do believe as new Members we come from a very diverse group. 
Many of us served at the local and State level. We come from very 
different backgrounds. Some of us are lawyers, some in academics, and 
some are ranchers. We are really very active members in our community, 
but we bring with us this experience at the local and State level, yet 
a fresh perspective on some of the major debates of the day.
  We certainly bring with us a commitment to making sure that our 
homeland is as safe and secure as each and every American expects it to 
be, and that is certainly our first and foremost commitment. I and my 
colleagues really wanted to speak this evening both about the security 
of our homeland and also about our commitment to those men and women 
who have served this Nation in the armed services. Particularly as a 
Nation at war, we have tremendous respect for those who are actively 
serving, but want to remember as well that as they come home and that 
others who came before them also have a right to expect we will meet 
our commitments and our promises to them.
  So what we are going to do first, we are going to try to split this 
hour, if we can, between the two different topics. So I will ask my 
colleague, John Salazar, a freshman, a veteran from the great State of 
Colorado, to speak. He has really been an outspoken leader amongst the 
freshmen on the issue of veterans.
  So I will just close by saying that I am the daughter of a veteran. 
My father served in the Korean War. And I can tell you that my very 
first memory as a child was my father returning home when I was 5 years 
old. He came to school, I was in kindergarten, and he came to the 
public school to pick me up, and my brother, who was a year ahead of me 
in school, to greet us after not having seen him for 2 years. This man 
in uniform arrived at school, and I can tell you honestly that I did 
not recognize him.
  So I also speak as a family member of a veteran. And I hope that we 
do have the opportunity this evening to talk about the sacrifice not 
only of our men and women in service but of their families as well. 
Because certainly the families are also committing themselves and 
sacrificing as well. And we do know, and I know we will talk about 
this, that the process of healing and of reinvigorating both the family 
and the veteran when they are back home is something that we all want 
to be committed to.
  So I would like to now turn over the conversation, and I hope we can 
have a bit of dialogue, because I am joined my two of my colleagues, 
John Salazar, as I said, who is going to talk about a number of issues; 
and then Russ Carnahan from Missouri is also going to join us. We may 
be joined by others as we go through the evening, but the three of us, 
I hope, will able to have this conversation about our commitment and 
our belief in our promise to veterans of this country.
  Mr. Salazar.
  Mr. SALAZAR. I thank the gentlewoman and thank you for your 
commitment to our veterans in this great country.
  Mr. Speaker, this country owes no greater debt of gratitude than it 
does to its veterans and military service personnel. Throughout the 
history of this great Nation, men and women have heard the call to 
service and have done so to defend freedom and democracy. I would like 
to take this time to personally express my gratitude to our veterans 
and our military men and women serving right now in places near and far 
around the globe.
  When these brave men and women sign up for service in the military, 
our government makes certain promises to them, promises that are all 
too often forgotten or neglected later on. They are promised lifelong 
health care within the VA system, they are promised educational 
benefits, and they are promised that their spouses will be taken care 
of if they are killed in action or die from a service-connected cause. 
Mr. Speaker, I do not think that we are holding up our end of the 
bargain.
  Let me just address a few of the failures that we have seen this 
year. Let me talk shortly about the budget shortfall.
  This Congress, over the past year and a half, has been witness to 
monumental failures at the VA. First, we watched the VA come up short 
in its 2005 budget. We were told that the administration had not 
anticipated the number of claims from returning soldiers. A $1.5 
billion budget shortfall is simply unacceptable.
  I was happy when we passed emergency supplemental funding for our 
veterans which was not impaired. We cannot forget that part of the 
continuing cost of the war on terrorism is providing for our veterans. 
With that in mind, I offered an amendment to the Iraq war supplemental 
we passed earlier this year. In this bill, setting out billions of 
dollars for the ongoing cost of the war on terrorism, I asked for a 
mere $630 million to ensure that the VA did not fall short on its 
budget again this year. This amendment was ruled out of order during 
debate on the bill.
  What is out of order, Mr. Speaker, is the short-sighted nature of the 
decision made by the majority and the administration. That $630 million 
seems like a small price to pay for mental health services, prosthetic 
research, and administrative support for those men and women who are 
serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially when the VA is still seeing 
more returning servicemembers than they anticipated.

[[Page 15574]]

  Let me talk briefly about the second failure, that of theft. On May 
3, a lap-top containing the personal information of 26.5 million 
veterans and 2.2 million active duty service personnel was stolen from 
the home of a VA employee. This sheds light on a severe problem within 
the VA. It took 19 days from the date of the theft for VA to notify 
Congress and the public.
  I introduced H.R. 5588. This would allow for fraud alerts, credit 
freezes, credit monitoring, new notification requirements for VA, and 
it would require the VA to establish a new IT security protocol. The 
House Veterans' Affairs Committee marked up, just this last week, H.R. 
5835, the Veterans Identity and Credit Security Act of 2006. It helps 
protect veterans by offering an assortment of credit protection tools, 
credit freezes, fraud alerts, monitoring, and it centralizes the VA IT 
security with a new Under Secretary position and new notification 
requirements.
  Mr. Speaker, I would yield to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania to 
talk a little bit about the budget shortfalls within the VA system.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Well, I thank you, Mr. Salazar, for 
laying out some of the issues before us. As you know, I serve on the 
Budget Committee, and so we have had this debate about the Veterans 
Administration, veterans health care in particular.
  And it is so easy for people to stand up for veterans. We all do 
this. On Veterans Day we go and visit with our veterans. I know for you 
it is probably true, for me as well, I will be stopped sometimes on the 
street by a veteran who will tell me about his service and who will 
feel strongly and deeply committed.
  One little aside, if I may. I actually brought three veterans 
together who had not ever received their medals. One actually was 
receiving the medal for a deceased brother who had never gotten it. It 
was a really wonderful moment. They brought their families. One brought 
three generations with them.
  What was interesting is they all started talking to each other, and I 
asked if they knew each other, and they said, no. Two of them had 
actually served in World War II and one had served in Vietnam. So they 
didn't even know each other, yet there was a comradery and an 
understanding and a commitment and a caring they had for each other 
that was so clearly expressed. It was a wonderful moment to acknowledge 
their service to this country.

                              {time}  2200

  But those are the good moments, I think, when you interact with 
veterans. But there are the other ones where they say, What is going on 
with the veterans health care I get? I am standing in line for my 
prescription medicine. I have to pay more. Are there shortages? Why 
does the Veterans Administration not have the resources that it should 
when we have the President standing up both with active servicemen and 
with veterans and they voice respect. We have got to turn that respect 
and commitment into the hard dollars that say we are going to meet 
these problems for the Veterans Administration.
  We have a Veterans Administration hospital in Philadelphia that does 
a fine, fine job. But I can tell you, and I give some credit to 
Congress on this, that we did already increase the level of funding for 
the Veterans Administration from what the President had proposed. So 
already we said that is not adequate. We will not accept that budget. 
And we spoke up for veterans. But nonetheless, there are not cuts this 
year, but there are cuts in later years for the Veterans 
Administration. So that is certainly not meeting the commitment that 
even if we do not cut it this year, we are cutting it in future years. 
That means that the Veterans Administration, veterans hospitals, will 
not be able to know that they are going to be able to be there for 
veterans when we have now veterans coming back, of course, who are now 
serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  So we are going to see some real shortfalls, and you may speak to 
this as well, but we are seeing a proposal by the President again this 
year to add fees for veterans when they come for health care, that they 
should have to pay. We have had to fight this enrollment fee once a 
year. They have to pay that. They have to pay additional fees when they 
see a see a physician. And we know that many of our veterans have come 
back with serious injuries, with certainly mental health problems, 
which I know you will want to talk about a little bit later as well. 
But in serving on the Budget Committee, we have been able to make some 
of these changes. We have to give some of the hard dollars, but I think 
really the issue here is that they are such big numbers but if we are 
talking about a number here of $8.6 billion below the funding that we 
saw previously, those are real dollars in the care and attention that 
our veterans deserve. And they will see the effects unless we fight 
back and demand that we are going to meet this commitment to veterans.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman.
  If the gentlewoman will continue to yield, today I would also like to 
address the issue of backlogs, and I would like to mention another 
troubling fact that we are facing with the VA backlogs. We have 
patients that are seeking medical attention and they are on waiting 
lists, and these waiting lists can take as long as 180 days to get 
through. Can't we do better than 180 days?
  Mr. Speaker, I will tell you a story about a friend of mine, 
classmate of mine in high school, who served in the military at the 
same time as I did. He called me when I was a State representative 
Colorado and mentioned that he couldn't get in to see a VA doctor and 
that he was having massive chest pains. And it was shortly after that 
that we were finally able to get him into the VA hospital in 
Albuquerque, New Mexico. And we were lucky because what the doctors 
told him was that if he had not gotten the immediate medical attention, 
he would have died within 5 days. They performed heart bypass surgery, 
five bypasses, the next day.
  So it scares me that nearly 25 percent of the cases that are waiting 
have been pending over 180 days. I think this means that almost 100,000 
veterans in this country have been waiting to find out how they can 
access the system. And I do not think that that even begins to account 
for the hundreds of thousands of vets waiting just to get in to see a 
doctor. Mr. Speaker, I think this is wrong, wrong, wrong.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, not to interrupt, but if I 
may reclaim my time, I want to talk about the number of veterans. My 
staff did a little bit of work here to just say that there are six 
States that have over 1 million veterans in their State alone. And in 
Pennsylvania, we have the fourth highest number of veterans in our 
State. We have over 1 million veterans in Pennsylvania alone. And I can 
look up Colorado. I am sure the gentleman will be interested. There are 
427,000 veterans in Colorado.
  I should check Missouri too because we have Mr. Carnahan with us. And 
we were talking about over 500,000 veterans.
  So these are actual people living in our States asking for asking for 
health care, as you say, on waiting lists, going to the pharmacy, being 
asked to pay for more prescription drugs, being asked to pay an 
enrollment fee to get their health care, and not assured that they are 
going to get the kind of health care that you are saying is really 
lifesaving.
  Mr. SALAZAR. I thank the gentlewoman, and that is correct. In my 
district alone, I have 75,000 veterans that we service.
  When the VA actually made the original budget, they had figured that 
they would treat one out of every five veterans coming back from Iraq 
and Afghanistan for mental disabilities. It now turns out that they are 
treating one out of every three.
  So with that I would like the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania to talk a 
little bit about the mental health and the posttraumatic stress 
disorder that veterans have when they come back from such terrible 
wars.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, this is one area where I 
think

[[Page 15575]]

we, in the broader sense, certainly the military itself, the different 
branches, have recognized better than they have ever before that there 
is actually very serious stress-related illnesses and recognize that 
and try to make some services available. I think that in the years 
past, we basically said you come back from war and just go home and get 
a job and go back to your family and you will be fine. And, in fact, 
our young men and women, and they are young and women, we are talking 
about 19, 20-year-olds, 21-year-olds, some who have had some life 
experiences before but they are being put in a very difficult position, 
being asked to make very tough choices. They perform admirably. They 
perform wonderfully. We are proud of each and every one of them.
  But many of them use such strength to do that while they are in 
harm's way and then come back and say now, how do I think about what I 
have done for the last 18 months, the last couple of years, how do I 
integrate that with the life I have now? So they are coming back in 
larger numbers. Some of the statistics of mental health experts 
indicate that between 17 and 26 percent of our troops returning from 
combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan may experience symptoms of 
post traumatic stress syndrome, and what that means is that they 
deserve and need counseling; that counseling should be made available 
through the Veterans Administration. And when we see cutbacks, it is 
just unacceptable to think that we might actually leave a veteran with 
that kind of serious disorder really on their own.
  And that is really what we are experiencing. And I know that we, as 
Democrats, have brought up amendments to try to address that to make 
sure that there are counseling services available, more active services 
available, mental health services. These are, as we know, illnesses 
that we really need to make sure, particularly in a post-deployment 
situation, that they receive screening and diagnosis and that no one 
goes without the care that they actively deserve.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. Speaker, I would also like to talk a little bit 
about our GI Bill of Rights for the 21st century.
  The promise that was made to our servicemen and women with respect to 
education, I think, should be kept. As it stands now, Reserve and 
National Guard soldiers are not eligible for the same educational 
benefits as active-duty personnel. This disparity of access is simply 
unacceptable. Currently, close to 50 percent of our troops in Iraq and 
Afghanistan are National Guardsmen and Reservists.
  House Democrats are introducing the new GI Bill of Rights for the 
20th Century to honor the bravery of our troops and the tremendous 
sacrifices that their families have made. The National Guard and 
Reserves have made extraordinary contributions, making up about 50 
percent of the troops in Iraq.
  The new GI Bill of Rights honors that contribution with provisions 
that protect their income, to help more than 40 percent of those call 
up who have suffered pay cuts to serve our country. We have had stories 
of families that are struggling because they are not making the same 
amount of money since the spouse left and he is off fighting a war and 
taking a pay cut. Stories of soldiers losing their homes and families 
out on the street. I think this is totally unacceptable.
  It also expands military health care to provide full access to 
TRICARE, the military health care program, to all members of the Guard 
and Reserve and their families for a low fee.
  Finally, the package improves recruitment and retention incentives 
and bonuses for the reserves so that they are more equitable relative 
to those of the active-duty components.

                              {time}  2210

  Not only is this just and fair, I think it is necessary, given the 
recruiting and retention problems facing the Reserve and National Guard 
these days.
  While I am proud to say that House Democrats have taken the lead on 
this issue, we will not be able to realize this reform without the 
support of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I look 
forward to working with all Members of this House, as well as our 
Nation's military and service organizations.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to 
the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan) to talk a little bit about 
the VA employees.
  Mr. CARNAHAN. It is good to join you tonight, my fellow Members from 
the freshman class of 2004.
  This obviously is something that when I go back home to Missouri, 
whether I am at a Veterans' Day function or a 4th of July function and 
I talk to our veterans that have served so well and so ably, this 
touches their hearts. They are so proud of their service and what they 
have done to make our country what it is today.
  But there is a certain element of surprise when they talk about the 
disappointment that the government is not doing everything it should to 
take care of our current veterans, but also to take care of this new 
generation of veterans that we are producing in Iraq and Afghanistan 
today.
  We have a VA hospital back home in St. Louis. Like many of our 
colleagues, we hear continued concerns about the access and the 
service. I have seen a statistic that more than 60,000 veterans today 
are waiting more than 6 months for an appointment at a VA hospital.
  Part of what we have proposed as Democrats in this House is to 
increase funding by $1 billion to the VA to help address those issues, 
the resource issues and the priority issues, and also to require the VA 
to pay veterans $500 a month when their disability claims have been 
left pending for over 6 months. They should not have to suffer because 
the government does not have the resources or has not made it a 
priority to take care of them.
  Our employees at the VA work in this environment of decreasing 
budgets, crippling administration policies and overall neglect. The 
administration has, frankly, misplaced priorities, and we see that on 
the ground when we talk to folks back home every day. I am sure you 
have seen that, the gentleman from Colorado and the gentlelady from 
Pennsylvania, when you talk to your veterans and veterans organizations 
back home.
  I believe it is our job as Members of this body, and it is not just 
the Democrats' job, it is the job of everybody in this House that 
represents people back home. This should be, if anything, a unifying 
issue and a unifying cause in this Congress, taking care of those who 
have served our country and made it what it is today.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. I think the gentleman makes a really 
both good point too, that in fact one of our responsibilities, and I 
just heard the debate earlier on how to be civil in our disagreements, 
and there is strong disagreement between the two members who were 
speaking, but they were certainly civil.
  But this is one where I think again the rhetoric about our support 
for veterans is fairly universal, and I think that is a good thing. But 
we have to build on that to find a way to meet this commitment and to 
be realistic about what this commitment means. The commitment means 
that we not only make a commitment for this year, but we do a budget 
for 5 years and we make a commitment for 5 years, and we say to the 
veterans hospitals that you are going to have the resources. We say to 
veterans that you won't have to wait 6 months and you won't have to pay 
a 40 percent increase in your fees that you are paying.
  It gets complicated. We have all probably had calls in our offices 
about different levels of disability and what you get paid or what you 
don't and how you get your care through the Veterans Administration. It 
is complicated, and maybe that is appropriate.
  But certainly from our point of view, I think you are right, this has 
to be a commitment that we make as Democrats and Republicans, because 
certainly when our men and women go to war, they are not going as 
Republicans or Democrats, they are going as Americans, and our 
commitment has to be to veterans, all of whom are Americans, all of 
whom deserve not just our respect, but the hard core services that

[[Page 15576]]

we have told them they will get and they should be able to get.
  I very much agree with you that we have to find those dollars and we 
have to find them in a responsible way. All of us up here are for a 
balanced budget, but this is not about spending money we don't have. It 
is about our priorities and making sure we put those dollars in 
priorities as we articulated them.
  Mr. CARNAHAN. There is a new set of challenges out there, not just 
taking care of our current veterans, but this new generation of 
veterans that are coming back with unique challenges.
  You mentioned posttraumatic stress issues that we have seen really 
cropping up from many who have served. But the other thing we witnessed 
firsthand in a delegation that traveled to Iraq last year, the doctors 
there in the military hospitals told us many more soldiers are being 
saved from battle injuries, dramatically more are being saved. Although 
we are having fewer lost lives, we are having more lost limbs, and 
although technology has improved in terms of prosthetic devices, there 
will be a whole new generation of these veterans coming out of service 
that will need those kind of specialized services, and we cannot let 
them down.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. Speaker, I would like to just tell you a little 
story of someone who was my hero, and that was my father. He was a 
World War II staff sergeant who served during the bombing of Pearl 
Harbor.
  When he was 82 years old, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. 
As the disease progressed, he slowly started to forget things. But 
about the age of 84, one morning we were sitting around my mother's 
kitchen table there and we heard my father fumbling back in his 
bedroom, and he came out shortly after that and in his hand he had his 
World War II staff sergeant uniform. He told us, ``I want to be buried 
in this uniform.''
  We are taught not to argue with Alzheimer's patients, so we said, 
``Sure dad, no problem.'' But as the disease progressed even more and 
more, he started forgetting more things. But every now and then he 
would bring up the fact, ``Please, I want to be buried in my uniform.''
  Anyway, at the age of 86 he suffered a massive heart attack. My 
mother called me and I rushed over to the house, and I remember that 
when I picked him up from the floor to put him on the gurney to take 
him to the hospital, with the very last ounce of strength that he had 
in his body he reached up around my neck and he told me that he loved 
me, and the very last word that my father ever said to me was 
``uniform.''
  We buried my father in his uniform. But to many veterans, the only 
thing that they have to hold on to is this great country, because they 
served with such pride and passion. So it is our duty as Members of 
Congress now to keep our promise to those veterans.
  Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I commend my colleagues for their work 
and dedication to preserving the benefits of our Nation's veterans. We 
must never forget the sacrifice that they have made in the defense of 
freedom.
  On a personal note, I would like to express my most heartfelt 
gratitude to Congressman Lane Evans, our distinguished ranking member 
on the Veterans Committee. Lane is a Marine who fought hard for 
veterans, and he has been a true inspiration and mentor to me in my 
first term here in Congress. I know that I will miss him, as many of us 
will, and I wish him the best of luck in retirement.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and 
you are more than welcome to stay with us if you are willing to as we 
switch gears.
  Let me first of all let me thank you for sharing your personal story. 
I think that it is important for us to think about what compels us to 
do what we do. Sometimes sharing a personal story, we don't always 
remember to do it. So I thank you for your willingness to do that. I 
hope that all of us are fortunate enough to have parents that inspire 
us. You were fortunate certainly in that.
  We did want to take the discussion about that and talk about another 
area that we are deeply concerned about, and certainly has been very 
much a topic of concern for all of us here in Congress and I think for 
all Americans, and again certainly as I go around my district, I am 
well aware of the fact that we are in changed world.
  Since 9/11/2001 and the terrorist attacks on our Nation, we 
recognize, if we didn't before, but certainly for most Americans we 
recognize that we are under a threat from terrorism in this world and 
that we have a responsibility, and here we speak again about 
responsibility, but we have a responsibility not just to talk about the 
fear maybe or the reality of that fear, but to actually talk about what 
can we do about it. How can we do more to make sure that our homeland 
is safe and what do we mean by that.
  It is taking the very real challenges and the tragedy of 9/11, and I 
will say also the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, and whether in fact we 
were as prepared as we needed to be. Did we respond as comprehensively 
as we should have. I think most of us believe we did not, that there 
was more that should have been done.

                              {time}  2220

  But we need to take these tragedies and we need to say, to examine 
very, very clearly, and make a clear cut assessment about whether, in 
fact, we are doing all that we can to make sure that we are more 
secure.
  That means being sensible. I think that is what I would really like 
to talk about this evening, is not just spending the dollars, because 
we have spent quite a bit of Federal taxpayer dollars on homeland 
security initiatives.
  We have to make sure that as a Federal Government we can work with 
the local, and State officials to make sure that we are secure where we 
are vulnerable. That means making the right kind of assessments, 
sharing what works across jurisdictional lines, and demanding that kind 
of assessment and a plan for readiness. I come from an area, I 
representative southeastern Pennsylvania, part of the City of 
Philadelphia, part of the suburbs, so my region is home to a major 
seaport, a major airport, a major rail station. We are multi county and 
tri-state. We are talking about literally not just a million and a half 
people who live in Philadelphia, but the millions of people who come in 
and out of the city to work every day, roads and highways.
  We are talking about volunteer fire companies in some of the suburban 
part of my district, and a major urban city fire company. We are 
talking about police that work in a rail station, we are talking about 
police who work in the city, we are talking about suburban police 
officers, we have State police.
  These are numerous jurisdictions, all of who have had to try and 
figure out what is the best way for them to be prepared in the case of 
some kind of tragedy, such as a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. 
And I want to be, I guess I want to say positively, is that we have 
taken this seriously and we have done much more than we might have.
  But where the failure is is the lack of leadership from the Federal 
Government to help make sure that we have the right kind of assessments 
done in each of our vulnerable areas. I mentioned our ports, I 
mentioned our rail stations, I mention our airports, and that we are 
providing the guidance and instructions and the assistant at the local 
levels, and the dollars and resource that they need to make sure that 
they are prepared, so we are not duplicating where we do not have to, 
we are being smart where we have to.
  I will give one example, then I would just ask my colleagues to take 
an area that they might be interested in. I would like to have a little 
bit more of a conversation. But one of the areas that I have been 
particularly concerned about is one called interoperability. It is one 
of those terms I am not sure I even knew about a few years ago.
  But the fact is, that it is one that we use much more. This is how we 
get, how we communicate, how our emergency personnel will be able to 
communicate in a disaster.
  And the fact is that in the analysis after 9/11, one of the things 
that we

[[Page 15577]]

knew is that we did not have a way for all of our emergency personnel 
to talk to each other, to communicate. We do not, in fact, know how 
many firefighters or police officers might have been saved if we could 
have actually communicated in the Towers, the World Trade Center.
  We know that even here in Washington, we heard stories afterward, 
that the Capitol Police could not talk to the city police, because they 
do not have a way to communicate. So I have been working locally with 
the regional subway system, because the fact is, that our city police 
cannot talk to the rail police underground.
  Now, that is very upsetting to hear about. If we had to call SEPTA 
police, that is our Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority police, 
as capable as they may be, if they need to call in for back-up, this is 
not a scenario that we cannot imagine, because unfortunately we have 
seen it happen in London, we have seen it happen in Madrid, we have 
seen most recently a rail tragedy in Bombay, India.
  So we know this can happen. But we do not have an ability right now 
for them to be able to talk to each other. And I think that is 
unacceptable. I think that the Federal Government should have said, 
here are the best ways to do it. We have looked at it. We have examined 
it. This is the way it has been done elsewhere. Those are options that 
you have. This is a spectrum we will dedicate to emergency responders 
and be able to have them talk to each other, and here are the dollars 
to make it happen.
  In fact, their application was denied. You know, I do not understand 
that. I do not understand how the Federal Government can say it is not 
a priority, that our fifth largest city's transit system does not meet 
this requirement. It is not acceptable.
  And we can give example after example of these situations. We had big 
issues with the port security and whether we actually inspect all of 
cargo. We do not. Are we doing the assessment on foreign ports? We can 
use the example of ports. We can use the example of even in the 
airports where we spend serious dollars, not all of our cargo is 
inspected.
  And yet, we still go round and round whether enough is being done, 
where are the regulations, where are the help we need from the Federal 
level. We have issues around identity cards. The Port of Wilmington, 
not far from me, did a demonstration project. And we still just, after 
Congress was pushing the administration, finally got them to decide 
what that national security card would look like for people, for 
workers going into our ports.
  So I am, I mean, I can probably take up the next 20 minutes all by 
myself. But I will not do that. But as a new Member, we can bring our 
commitment to securing this country. But we also bring maybe a little 
bit of impatience and outrage because we are new at this. I come in and 
I say, wait a minute, it is 5 years since 9/11. We just got a report 
from the 9/11 Commission. There were far too much Cs, Ds and Fs on that 
report of what has not yet been done.
  So we can be critical. This is less about being critical than 
figuring out a way to make it happen and to get it done. Because my 
constituents, your constituents are counting on us to demand that 
accountability from our administration, to demand that effectiveness 
from these dollars, and to make sure that we can say back to them, this 
is the plan we have for assessing our risk, this is the plan that we 
have for meeting the demands to meet that and reduce that risk, and 
here is what we are going to do to make sure that we have the 
resources, the trained personnel and the equipment and the know how to 
make sure that we are as safe as we possibly can be in this country.
  It is just not acceptable to do any less than that. So with that bit 
of introduction, if I may, if my colleagues want to join me. There may 
be some local issues that you have as well. But I think each and every 
one of us can point to ways in which our own communities need to be 
more secure, how we can learn from each other and how we have to 
recognize the shared risk that we have for some of the greatest 
vulnerabilities that we have in this country.
  Mr. CARNAHAN. Mr. Speaker, I would really just echo some of the 
comments that you made about interoperability. When I have met with our 
police and firefighters, our emergency personnel, our front line 
responders back home, I mean they tell me that loud and clear. I mean, 
they are not only being given greater responsibility and greater 
burdens and greater costs to do all of those things we are asking them 
to do, but they are getting insufficient help to do it.
  If there is anybody that I have ever seen as committed to their jobs, 
with passion and belief in what they are doing, it is those public 
servants. They are some of the best. But so they tell us that loud and 
clear.
  The 9/11 Commission identified interoperability of communications as 
critical, critical to effectively respond to a natural disaster or a 
terrorist attack. And yet in response to what we hear locally, what the 
9/11 Commission has done, the administration did not request any funds 
or grants to enhance interoperability.
  Again, I think a very big disconnect from what the vital need is on 
the ground in our communities. And certainly, if you look at, I want to 
mention port security, as the Port of St. Louis is the second largest 
inland port in our country. I have followed that closely.
  But there has been underfunding in the port security program. It has 
been eliminated. And it has just been put in with a pool of other 
security measures, along with rail, mass transit and other 
infrastructure. So it is competing with other separate programs instead 
of having its own stand-alone designated funding.

                              {time}  2230

  And cargo security did not receive any increase, and the entity that 
is charged with performing security checks did so in only 13 percent of 
the 10,000 companies that it is charged with checking. And, again, with 
regard to our ports, the President's budget has delayed by 25 years the 
overall development of the Coast Guard cutters and aircraft that we are 
using to patrol our ports and coastlines. So, again, I think there is a 
very big disconnect between the clear needs we see on the ground, the 
discussion we hear in Washington among Members from both sides of the 
need to take care of our homeland security, and the budget priorities 
that we have seen the administration present.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. If the gentleman would yield, I think 
you have raised a really good point here. I am on the Budget Committee, 
and when I saw that in fact we saw port security cut and this was just 
after the scandal about whether in fact we would allow our ports to be 
managed by a foreign company, which I think raised some benefit of that 
discussion in that it raised real awareness I think for many Americans 
where we think about our airports of course because of 9/11, and there 
is work still to be done there. But we found that, and in fact we do 
know better how we can do port security, but I also have some of the 
numbers that show that in fact only 6 percent of containers entering 
U.S. ports are screened.
  Now, you have some debate about whether to do 100 percent or not, and 
there are many of us who think we have to do some kind of screening of 
every bit of cargo. But 6 percent, what is that about?
  Well, when I visited the port in Philadelphia, one of the things that 
people said to me, and it is interesting that the more we have 
assurance that the port of origin does the kind of screening that they 
need to do, that we have a relationship with that port and that nation, 
the better off we are, that we can be secure before cargo leaves the 
port of origin before it even comes here. First of all, it will speed 
things up because I hear from my business people that the longer cargo 
sits in the port, every day they lose money. They pay for that cargo 
the minute it leaves the foreign port, that costs them money.

[[Page 15578]]

  So we have to be more efficient about this, but we have to get it 
right as well. And, again, here is where some technology can help, here 
is where, as I understand it, that we have only 20 people in the Coast 
Guard who are assessing security at 135 foreign ports. Well, that can't 
be adequate. That can't do what we know we need, which is to make sure 
that the screening as the cargo gets loaded in foreign ports before it 
even gets here is making us more secure.
  So, again, we have learned certain things in the last 5 years. That 
is the good thing. But we have to put that knowledge to work to make 
sure that we can move commerce through our ports and also be secure. We 
have to be anticipating the real risks. We can't just be looking 
backwards.
  Mr. SALAZAR. In the transportation committee, we have asked for an 
$18 million supplemental to construct an above-ground tunnel for the 
Transportation Technology Center in Pueblo, Colorado. These are the 
folks that actually do the first responder training in many instances. 
You have seen the bombings of the subways in Europe, and you look at 
how vulnerable we are here in this country. And being able to construct 
that tunnel, we can train our first responders in such a way that we 
don't have to interrupt our subway services.
  But I would like to talk a little bit also about something that is 
very near and dear to my heart when it comes to national security. I 
think that one of the most critical issues in national security is to 
make sure that this country never becomes dependent on another country 
to produce our food, as we have become dependent on other countries to 
produce our oil. So it really bothers me when, for example, in the ag 
committee we who are there to represent agriculture begin cutting 
programs that actually keep farmers and ranchers on the land, and 
farmers and ranchers who produce the greatest food supply in the world. 
And so I think that is critical. We must make sure that farmers and 
ranchers stay on the land and we have an adequate food supply.
  You saw what happened when, during the first Gulf War when Saddam 
Hussein's troops had to give up because they didn't have enough food to 
eat. Let that never happen to our troops.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. I appreciate the comments, and it is a 
perspective that wasn't on my list of things mentioned. So I appreciate 
that. I think that is an important aspect, that we are self-sufficient, 
that we are able to take care of ourselves, certainly in an emergency 
that we are prepared.
  And I think that you also raise a really good point about the 
training that we need for our first responders. Mr. Carnahan I think 
mentioned that we all go and visit our fire companies and police. And I 
will say here again, the good news is that they recognize the need for 
more training and equipment. They have said to us, and they sometimes 
proudly say this is the additional training. I have a group in part of 
my district that has joined together to talk to each other, to do 
emergency management training, because they realize particularly in the 
suburban part of my district, probably have it more so in some of the 
rural parts of our country where you really aren't going to be able to 
manage it all alone, so you need to be able to work with other fire 
companies, with the counties even to be able to call them in, to be 
able to know what to do in that.
  And we just had some very serious flooding in this country and 
certainly in my area just outside of my district, but I went to visit 
anyway. And one of the things they said to me was they were very proud 
of the fact that, because of the planning they had done, they were 
better prepared than they had ever been before. And that was a really 
important thing. They said they had never before set aside a command 
center, that they knew exactly who was supposed to staff that command 
center. They knew who to call, who would bring the food. They had the 
volunteer services that could be helpful. But they also knew who and 
what kind of equipment in adjoining areas that could really help them 
get right on top of things right away. And they know that that eased 
the urgency of the situation for many of the people who lived in that 
area.
  And yet, again, we need to make sure that the Federal Government, 
this is what the Department of Homeland Security was set up to do, was 
to make sure that we don't have everyone just reinventing the wheel. 
That just shouldn't be the way it is. It is not the most efficient use 
of money. We should be making sure that there are countywide plans, 
that there are statewide plans, that there is a sense that maybe not 
everyone needs to have every piece of equipment. How do you actually 
join together? Do you do that across regional lines? Who do you call 
and how do you make that work?
  But we have seen in fact a cut in some of these security grants. And 
how can that be, when in fact we can all say that we are not finished 
with this task of making sure that we are as secure as we need to be in 
this country.
  So I open it up to some of the comments you may have in some of your 
own experiences in your own districts.
  Mr. CARNAHAN. I would like to follow up on the issue of the screening 
of containers. You know, as we said, there is just a small fraction of 
this gigantic volume of containers coming into our ports. And they are 
not only coming into our ports, but then they are being loaded on 
trucks or barges and then they are scattering throughout our country. 
So it is critical we get on top of that.
  We had an opportunity in this House to vote on an amendment that 
would have required 100 percent of the containers coming in this 
country to be scanned before they came into our country and were 
distributed. And shockingly, to me, we were not able to pass that. You 
know, the Democrats in the minority here, we are in favor of that; it 
was defeated by the majority here.
  But the granddaddy of being out of touch with our port security was 
when the President proposed turning certain of our port operations over 
to a foreign entity. Again, just a whopper of being out of touch, 
particularly given where we are in this country today. And I think we 
saw the public rise up, we saw this Congress eventually rise up to say, 
you know, no. You know, that is not good for us right now. We can't do 
that and we shouldn't.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. And just on the port, I was very much a 
part of the argument in that regard, too. And I think again it brought 
some greater attention to the fact of port security and both what has 
been done positively and what more we need to do. But to think that 
after 5 years we have still only appropriated 16 percent of what the 
Coast Guard has told us they need to enhance port security over the 
next 10 years. I mean, this is something they are telling us, their 
expertise, this is what we need to do. And the President actually 
proposed eliminating $173 million in port security grants.
  I argued that and presented an amendment to the Budget Committee to 
restore some of those grants. One of the things that happens, I was 
going to call it a trick, I suppose that may not be the nicest thing to 
call it, is if you put all these grant programs together and cut it, 
you can say I didn't really cut that particular program; I just put 
these three or four grant programs together and reduced the overall 
amount and someone else can decide later what we are going to cut. That 
is still a cut.

                              {time}  2240

  We have to understand that there are very serious issues before us. 
Again, I think we are talking about being fiscally responsible here--we 
have a priority and what we actually want the dollars to do, the right 
things that we really need to do.
  I do want to mention the earlier remarks because there was something 
I also learned from the visits in my district, and that is, that this 
is an identity card. We have talked a lot about that in different 
circumstances, but one in which we all agree on, Republicans and 
Democrats, is that we will have a worker ID card. We actually 
understand we were not sure what should

[[Page 15579]]

go into that, the information that should go into it, who should 
produce it, how it can work. We have literally then tens of hundreds of 
thousands of workers coming in and out of our ports every day across 
this country, and yet, the idea that we are going to scan all this 
cargo but then anyone can just come in and out of the ports, driving a 
truck, is something I think certainly not something any of us find 
acceptable.
  So, in fact, it has taken 4 years and Congress has had to push this 
administration really, really hard. There has been pressure from 
Congress to get the administration finally just really recently to 
approve and decide what that card would look like.
  Now, I think that should have been years ago. I am grateful it just 
was done, but I think it speaks to our responsibility as Members of 
Congress to keep asking the tough questions, demanding that 
accountability, demanding that high performance and demanding that high 
level of government provide the leadership to our local communities, to 
our ports, to our airports, to our rail, and not just to walk away and 
take too long.
  One of the things we do not want to have happen is for us to say let 
us keep waiting, let us keep waiting, and then have some tragedy happen 
we were not prepared for, fully knowing that we could have been 
prepared if we had taken quicker action.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Can I ask a question here. This identity card that you 
are talking about, is this a biometric type of ID system, and will 
every American have to carry that?
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. No. These are just for workers. These 
are for people who are employed by the ports or employed by a company 
that is actually coming in and out of the ports. These are for the 
workers.
  The problem is they do not go through the screening as much then. 
These ID cards get very sophisticated. They have a lot of information 
on them, but the idea here is that anyone who is working in a port, and 
as I understand, there are workers who actually go from port to port or 
go from different destinations, so some of this is also, again, to keep 
the commerce flowing. The idea here is not to make things more 
difficult, to be able to actually move things more efficiently, more 
quickly, but to do so with a sense of security because we have the 
technology to do that.
  So this is basically a little more information, but it is like 
showing any kind of driver's license, or it is a special ID that says, 
yes, you have been screened, you have gone through the background 
checks to allow you to work in a sensitive area. This is something that 
is important to our ports and our airports as well, and that the 
workers who work there every day actually have an ID card that can be 
scanned quickly and that they can actually be able to flow back and 
forth very easily but that we can be secure it is someone who we know 
will not engage in any kind of criminal behavior, let alone terrorist 
behavior.
  Mr. CARNAHAN. I wanted to say also, I think it is so critical that we 
listen to our first responders. I think the administration and some in 
this Congress have really, I think, turned a deaf ear to many of these 
concerns. If they listened to those first responders, I think we would 
see very different actions coming out of the White House and coming out 
of this Congress.
  Also, listen to the bipartisan experts. Some of the best experts in 
our country came together in a bipartisan way to make these 
recommendations on the 9/11 Commission that have yet to be fully 
implemented. It is really unconscionable to me.
  So Democrats have committed, from our leadership all the way down, 
when the new Congress comes in January, to make that one of our top 
priorities in January, in our new Congress, to fully implement those 
recommendations in the 9/11 Commission report. I think it is just 
critical to our country and to really get these sound recommendations 
through this Congress, supporting those front-line responders that have 
told us what they need and what works in their communities.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Maybe that is a good way to sort of 
wind up the conversation we are having, but first let me say, I think 
we are all saying thanks just out of tremendous respect for the great 
work that has been done by our police and our firefighters and our 
emergency personnel, and they are on the front lines, and they are 
getting additional training. They are working very hard to make this 
happen.
  As I said, I have been impressed locally at some of the work that has 
been done in their planning, but the 9/11 Commission just simply, I 
think, as Democrats, we have said our first priorities would be to 
address some of the shortcomings, and that includes interoperability 
for all of our first responders, fire and police personnel.
  Second, it would be to coordinate local, State and Federal emergency 
response planning, that we would make sure that the administration 
provide local and State governments with the tools and the guidance to 
better secure our communities and make sure communities are secure and 
that we ensure that the administration makes strategic and risk-based 
decisions about how our homeland security dollars are spent so that we 
are smart, we use common sense and that we use these dollars in the 
most effective, wisest way possible.
  In that way, we can stand up here and I hope we can months from now, 
a year from now, be able to say, you know, we got these things done 
because it was not just a broad rhetorical commitment, it was putting 
our dollars, putting our expertise to work for the American people to 
make sure that our homeland is as secure as we all deserve.
  With that, I want to thank the gentlemen who joined me this evening 
for your willingness to do the freshman Special Order, and I look 
forward to being able to do it again, possibly in September, but thank 
you and thank you for your commitment to both the veterans of this 
country and also to the homeland security needs of this Nation.

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