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HOMELAND SECURITY ACT OF 2002 -- (Extensions of Remarks - September 05, 2002)
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SPEECH OF
HON. MARK UDALLOF COLORADO
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Friday, July 26, 2002
The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 5005) to establish the Department of Homeland Security, and for other purposes:
- Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this bill. I do have some concerns about it, but I think it deserves to be passed.
- I am united with my colleagues and with the President in a shared determination to win the war against terrorism. We must do everything we can to reduce the risks of further attacks. I believe we must reorganize our government to meet that goal.
- What we have chosen to take on in the aftermath of September 11th is an enormous task, the largest reorganization of the government in half a century, a total rethinking of how we approach security. We need to plan for the protection of all domestic people, places, and things. We need to fundamentally restructure our government to be more responsive to terrorism.
- This is a tall order. Homeland security has always been an important responsibility of Federal, state and local governments. But in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, the scope of this responsibility has broadened.
- The bill before us has much in common with a report that we received just last year from a commission headed by former Senators Gary Hart of Colorado and Warren Rudman of New Hampshire. The report recommended sweeping changes, including the establishment of a Department of Homeland Security.
- I have reviewed the commission's report carefully and discussed it with Senator Hart, and I have been impressed with the soundness of the report's recommendations. I have also cosponsored two bills dealing with this subject.
- So I am glad that the President has come to agree that a new Department of Homeland Security is necessary.
- The question we face today is whether the bill before us is up to the challenge. Will this bill actually make the American people safer? I'm not entirely certain. I believe this bill generally heads in the night direction, but it still contains a number of troubling provisions.
- One concern I have is that in our rush to create this new department, we may be assembling an unwieldy bureaucracy instead of a nimble department that can be quick to respond to the challenges at hand. The proposed department's size, cost and speed may well hamper its ability to fight terrorism. We need to recognize that no department can do everything. Homeland security will be the primary responsibility of the new department, but it will also continue to be the responsibility of other departments,
of states and local governments, and of all Americans.
- It's also true that many of the agencies that will be subsumed by this new department have multiple functions, some of them having nothing to do with security. That's why I think it's right that the bill abolishes the INS and includes its enforcement bureau in the new DHS, while leaving a bureau of immigration services in the Department of Justice. I also think it's right that the bill moves only the agricultural import and entry inspection functions of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection
Service into the new department, while leaving the rest of the service--;including the unit that investigates chronic wasting disease and other possibly contagious diseases--;intact. I believe this same model should apply to the Federal Emergency Management Administration, or FEMA, which this bill would move as a whole into the new department. While it may seem that FEMA--;as the central agency in charge of disaster response and emergency management--;should constitute the heart of
the new DHS, FEMA is primarily engaged in and especially effective at responding to natural hazards. This bill should leave FEMA outside the new department, or at a minimum transfer its Office of National Preparedness to the new department, while leaving FEMA's Disaster Response and Recovery and Mitigation Directorates intact. I voted today to leave FEMA outside the new department because I fear FEMA's current mission and focus will be lost in the new bureaucracy we are creating.
- I am hopeful that the President will continue to work with the Congress to make sure the agencies moved to the new Department will be supported in their many other important duties even as they focus anew on their security roles.
- I have other concerns aside from the organization of the agency.
- The bill includes language that denies basic civil service protections for the federal workers who would be transferred to the new department. While I am encouraged by the passage of two amendments that slightly improve the bill's language in these areas, I remain fearful for the 170,000-plus employees of the new DHS whose jobs this bill would put at risk in an attempt to give the President ``flexibility'' to manage in a ``war-time'' situation. That's why I voted for amendments to preserve collective
bargaining rights, whistleblower protections, and civil service rules that have protected career employees for over 75 years. I don't believe we should use the creation of a new department as an excuse to take away these protections--;protections that Congress enacted so that
we could attract the very best to government service. Taking away these protections now signals that we don't value our federal workers, their hard-won rights, or the integral role these workers will continue to play as part of the new department in the fight against terrorism.
- I also supported an amendment striking the overly broad exemptions in the bill to the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, which was designed to preserve openness and accountability in government. The bill includes a provision excluding information voluntarily submitted to the new department from requests for disclosure; it would also preempt state disclosure laws. FOIA does not require the disclosure of national security information, sensitive law enforcement information, or confidential business
information, which makes the exemptions to FOIA in this bill unnecessary in my view.
- I think that these parts of the bill will need to be revised, and I will do all I can to improve them.
- There is one provision we debated today that I do think should remain in the bill. Last
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year, I strongly supported the airport security bill because I believed then--;as I do now--;that we must protect the public from a repetition of terrorist hijackings. One key part of that is to have baggage screened to safeguard against explosives being smuggled aboard airplanes in checked luggage.
- But today I voted to extend the baggage screening deadline established in the airport security bill because it doesn't make sense to me to mandate a deadline that clearly is impossible for a quarter of airports in this country to meet. It has been clear for some time that although 75% of airports would be able to meet the December 31st deadline , 25% of this country's largest airports would not. Denver International Airport (DIA) is among those airports still waiting for the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) to approve its security plan.
- DLA has developed its own plan that would employ a baggage-screening system that costs approximately $85 million to implement, versus $130 million for the system currently approved for use in the U.S. The bill before us today allows TSA to incrementally address individual airport requirements like DIA and accommodate new technology improvements.
- I am a cosponsor of legislation that would extend the deadline because I believe DIA will be able to provide a better, more cost-effective baggage screening system than the current TSA-approved model given a bit more time. So I am pleased that this bill includes an extension on the baggage screening system.
- In summary, I am pleased that this bill echoes the overall approach of the Hart-Rudman report recommendations. I am also pleased that the bill includes important Science Committee contributions, such as the one establishing an Undersecretary for Science and Technology in the new department, as well as provisions I offered in the Science Committee markup requiring the new department and NIST to engage in a systematic review and upgrading of voluntary consensus standards. I believe it is important
that the bill includes a provision reaffirming the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the armed forces for civil law enforcement. And it is important that the bill prohibits the government from implementing the proposed ``Operation TIPS,'' an Orwellian program under which designated citizens would be trained to look for and report suspicious behavior on the part of their fellow citizens.