[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15303]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1915
                      PASSPORT PROCESSING BACKLOG

  (Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, I rise to raise awareness of 
an issue in our Texas offices and I think around the country: The 
significant application backlog in the Houston passport office.
  Last Friday morning, a number of Members of Congress from Texas and I 
went to that office. I call on the adminstration and the State 
Department to take the necessary steps to alleviate the backlog.
  I know in the Houston office, Jacqueline Harley-Bell, the regional 
director of the Houston Passport Agency, and the staff have been 
working long days and weekends, and I commend them for their efforts to 
serve the public because they are understaffed and overwhelmed by the 
number of applications they are getting.
  The Houston office has already issued nearly 11 million passports in 
the first 5\1/2\ months of 2007. That is 3 million more than the 7.9 
million that were issued in all of 2006.
  The administration needs to provide the resources necessary now for 
additional workers or funding, to clear the backlog due to the new 
requirement that folks traveling in North America by plane need to have 
a passport.
  On Thursday the administration changed the requirement, or delayed 
it, that individuals flying into Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and 
Bermuda must only present a State Department receipt they have applied 
for a passport through the end of September. But this is much later 
than it should be. People are standing in line from 2 in the morning. 
People wait in line to get rock concert tickets, not a passport. I hope 
the State Department and administration will immediately address this 
problem.

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