[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 14658]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       HOUSTON'S PASSPORT CRISIS

  (Mr. BRADY of Texas asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, my message today is to our State 
Department in Houston. We have a problem, a serious passport problem 
that reached a crisis stage. We have families who applied in February 
for their passports that have not received them yet. We have wives that 
can't meet their soldier husbands on leave from Iraq. We have families 
who aren't able to go to experimental surgery out of this country, 
families leaving for the last time before college together who are 
simply denied the opportunity to travel.
  Our passport offices are overwhelmed. Our people wait in line for 
hours, if not days, getting there at 4 o'clock in the morning. We 
appreciate the 20 additional staff the State Department sent. They are 
overwhelmed. We appreciate the 1-800 number. It is a middle man and 
causing more problems.
  We need more staff. We need more information call lines manned 24/7. 
We need more resources. It is wrong. As our constituents tell us, they 
feel like they are in a third-world country. We think they deserve 
better treatment than that; and this deserves immediate attention, 
immediate, absolute action by the State Department.

                          ____________________