Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007 -- (Senate - July 12, 2006)

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Ms. MIKULSKI. Thank you very much.

Mr. President, once again I rise with great pride to support the amendment offered by the Senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton, as she has so often in the past stood for the fact that funding to fight terrorists and to be ready for any kind of major disaster should be based on risk. In other words, money should go to where there is the greatest risk. The Senator from New York has been a longstanding advocate of this from September 12 to standing here today.

I support this amendment, as I, too, have done in the past. I am so frustrated with the Department of Homeland Security. It can't get its act together. It can't get the job done. It makes poor decisions on allocation, and it is saturated with waste and fraud.

The last straw was when I opened the paper and saw that the Department of Homeland Security was slashing funds for high-threat urban areas. The money was leaving the Capital region and New York to go to States such as Nebraska. I respect the people of Nebraska. If they are in danger, I want them protected. I don't know about the threats of Montana and Minnesota, but I sure do know about the threats in Maryland. We are part of the Capital region, the home of the President of the United States, the home of the Congress of the United States, the home of the Cabinet that runs Government, the home of the Supreme Court, and the FBI.

In the Capital region we have the Pentagon, we have the Central Intelligence Agency. In Maryland, we have three intelligence agencies gathering technical information--and they say we are not a high threat?

On September 11, we lost 60 Marylanders at the Pentagon, mostly African American, mostly who worked in the clerical positions. And we said a grateful nation would never forget. Just like the other Marylanders who died at the World Trade Center, we said a grateful nation would never forget. And the way that we are never going to forget is to make sure it doesn't happen again--to protect against attacks and, second, that we were going to do whatever we could to be able to be ready and respond to any of these attacks.

When we saw that smoke here at the Capitol that day, it just wasn't on television. I was so proud of the fact that it was Maryland first responders who were first on the scene because they work together in the Capital region. Rescue One out of Chevy Chase, MD, dashed across the Potomac to be first on site at the Pentagon. They were worried in northern Virginia because they didn't know what else would happen.

I visited that site. Again, on a bipartisan basis, I and OLYMPIA SNOWE toured the site together. We saw the rubble of the Pentagon. We saw them working to save lives. We saw how they had worked together in the Capital region. Obviously, Homeland Security, its agencies, and its database doesn't get it. They don't get it. They do not get the fact that the 9/11 Commission recognized the threats facing our urban areas and said target the resources at the areas of greatest need.

The Senate recognized the threat facing the Capital region when they worked with Senators WARNER, ALLEN, SARBANES, and myself to establish an Office of the National Capital Region so we could coordinate in the most effective way. It enabled the Capital region and also New York and other major areas to receive extra resources. However, the Department of Homeland Security that gave us the Katrina aftermath ignored Congress and ignored the Commission, and they slashed the resources for New York and the Capital region by 40 percent. They said we had gotten money. Oh. Right.

They said: Our database shows you don't deserve it. Thank God for the Department of Homeland Security's IG. There they go again over there at Homeland Security. They can't get it right. Their own inspector general said the Department's ability to assess risk is seriously flawed.

Guess what. They count an insect zoo and a bourbon festival as critical infrastructure.

When you listen to the fact that an insect zoo ranks up there with the Supreme Court, doesn't that bug you?

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security failed to list the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.

They do not know the difference between a bourbon festival and the Statue of Liberty. They don't seem to know the difference.

This is the data that the Department of Homeland Security used to allocate the funding for Homeland Security grants.

There were in the State of Indiana over 8,000 assets listed, and in New York over 5,000. Just come with me down the Baltimore-Washington corridor as you pass these agencies that are helping people. There are the threats. We have high-threat targets because of what they do in national security, such as the National Security Agency.

We have threats of the heart, like the National Institutes of Health. Can you imagine the blow to research if something happened to NIH? Then come with me over there to Calvert Cliffs where we have a nuclear power plant, and then come up along the bay and see the U.S. Naval Academy.

How does that rank? That is Maryland. Then, of course, there is New York. We all know that New York showed up on every single list.

I commend the Senator from New York for offering this amendment. I believe that as we have organizational reform for Homeland Security, as the Collins' amendment did, and the Clinton amendment made such a strong point, we should have resource funding reform, and the heart and soul of that is the resource funding should follow risk.

The Department of Homeland Security along with FEMA should be operating on a risk-based strategy with confident professional people who have to learn the difference between an insect zoo, the Supreme Court, and the White House. If they can't get that straight and they didn't know how to build lessons, and they say: Don't worry ``Brownie,'' you are doing a good job, there they go again. I am fed up with it.

If I could vote one more time to dissolve the Department of Homeland Security, I would. I can't quite do that. But what I can do is make sure that the right resources go to the areas with the greatest risk. Baltimore would benefit. The Capital region would benefit. New York would benefit. But it is not about money. It is about saving lives and saving people.

I want to enthusiastically support the Clinton amendment and know that we are here to try to do this, to save lives, to save communities, and to protect the United States of America. If they do not know how to be the Department of Homeland Security, let us in Congress be the ones who understand it and properly fund it.

In conclusion, I thank the Senator from New Hampshire because under his leadership the Commerce-Justice Subcommittee was the first committee to hold comprehensive hearings on terrorism. He remembers the questions and who was in charge. Obviously, you can see that the Department of Homeland Security is not.

I support the Clinton amendment and am happy to be a cosponsor.

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Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I supported Senator Clinton's amendment to restore FEMA to Cabinet-level rank and establish it once again as an independent agency. In the early 1990s, as the chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on VA-HUD, we funded FEMA. Senator Garn, my wonderful colleague, was my ranking member. We found that FEMA was a Cold War relic, and we went to work on a bipartisan basis, transforming it from a relic of the Cold War into a professional, prepared, all-hazards agency.

Hurricane Katrina was the storm we all feared. In the hours and days after Hurricane Katrina, like all of you I watched in disbelief and absolute frustration. Why? At the Federal Government's befuddled and boondoggled response blowing it. The people in our Gulf Coast States were doubly victimized first by the hurricane, second by the slow and sluggish response of our Government. And I thought: How like Hugo. How like Andrew. I didn't know about Betsy.

So this, of course, has prompted reform. Well, back in 1989 when we took a look at this, what did I see? What I found out as I took over the chairmanship of that subcommittee was that FEMA was a Cold War agency. It focused only on worrying about if we were hit with a nuclear attack. It was out of date, out of touch, and riddled with political hacks. If you had to give someone a favor job, whether it was at the Federal level or the State level, put them in civil defense. It was called civil defense. And many of us in my generation remember where we used to practice by hiding under those desks if war came. Well that is the way the bureaucrats were. Any time there was a question, they hid under their desk. So we set about reform. They were focused on something called continuity of Government. It was incompetent leadership. They had ridiculous ideas. In the event of a nuclear war--stop first at the post office and leave your forwarding address to these three shelters. So you get a sense of what it was like.

But Senator Garn and I looked at it. And then what happened was Hurricane Hugo hit the Carolinas, particularly South Carolina. FEMA's response was very poor. The military had to come in to get power back up in Charleston. The people went for over a week without basic functions. Sound familiar? Our former colleague Senator Hollings had to call the President's Chief of Staff, John Sununu, to get help and call the head of the Joint Chiefs, then General Colin Powell, just to get generators from the Army. It was like cats and charmer cops. Are you in charge? No, I am not in charge. They had the generators but didn't ask. It was all of that. In the meantime, there was no water, no utilities in Charleston. We began then to begin to examine what steps to take in reform.

Then along the way we were hit with Andrew. Andrew, again, was the worst disaster. Yet FEMA's response was so bad and they were so inept that President Bush I sent Andy Card, then Secretary of Transportation, to take over. I remember seeing a woman named Katie Hale saying, ``Where the hell is the cavalry on this one? We need food. We need water. We need people.''

Having said all that, it was very clear to Senator Garn and me. Our job was to protect lives, protect people, and now of course protect the homeland. Working with Garn, and then Senator Bond, we worked to change it. We commissioned three studies, and I ask you to go take a look at them. One was a GAO study, the other was a National Academy of Public Administration, and then FEMA's own inspector general.

We looked at all of this, and we wanted to be able to prevent, do all we could for prevention, and do what we could to respond. Our goals then were: First of all, FEMA has to be professionalized. They need a professional director and a professional staff. Whoever runs FEMA has to have a background in crisis management, either to come from emergency response at the State level, the way James Lee Witt or Joe Allbaugh did, or from the military or private sector where they have done crisis management and know how to organize large numbers of people. But not only professionalized Washington but insist there be professionals at each State level. And I would emphasize reform must also be directed at the States. No matter how good James Lee Witt was, no matter how dedicated Joe Allbaugh was, if they didn't have the State functioning well, it wouldn't work. As we know, the genius of our system is that each State will have a different type of threat. The terrain is different, the threat is different. And they need to be ready. So the professionalization and the way was that each State submit a plan. If you don't do the right plan and do tabletops, you are not going to get the money. I think you have to have a muscular way to have State plans in place with professional people and where there are benchmarks for measurement and then use the ultimate withholding. That is tough, but let me tell you, it works. So that is why we go for the professionalization of FEMA.

We focused on it being a risk-based agency--that means prepared for any risk that affects the risk base--because we thought then that the threat of the Cold War was coming to an end. The wall was coming down in Berlin, but the wall wasn't coming down in the Federal bureaucracy. So we said, what are the risks? The threat is natural disasters. And our States--we are coastal Senators, I share a coast with my colleague from Delaware--we are threatened by hurricanes. Soon as June comes, we are on our hurricanes readiness again--regardless of what the threat is. And now it is even more important because it could be an earthquake in California, a tornado in the Midwest, or, of course, a terrorist attack.

Next, be ready for all hazards. And again, it is the States that get ready with Washington offering the command and control and the ultimate backup of sending in the calvary should the States collapse. All hazards need to be prepared like when we had a fire in the Baltimore tunnel--we didn't know if it was predatory or not. A hazardous chemical spill, a hurricane, a tornado or even a dirty bomb.

If we practice the three R's, of readiness, meaning if we are ready, and we are ready at the State level, then we can respond where the threat occurs and then you have the infrastructure ready for recovery. We were able to put the State plans, professionalize the agency, in place.

What was never really ultimately addressed, though, is the Federal backup if there is a complete collapse. That is something I believe needs to be very carefully examined because of two things: No. 1, I recall Governor Giles of Florida when Andrew hit. He said: We need NASA satellites to tell me what my coast line looks like. We can't even call the first responders. The firehouses are underwater. And you know all of the great tragedies that you have heard. There does come a time when there is only the Federal Government that can bring in, under some kind of doctrine of mutual aid, really come in and provide the resources necessary. We lost cities--we have never lost an entire city, except back to Betsy.

That has to be dealt with. The other is the role of the Vice President in our earlier recommendation. The Vice President always backs the President up, but in a big disaster, like when the big ones hit, the Vice President should move to the Situation Room and really take charge, to make sure the Governors can handle the job, that the Governors next to the States affected can provide mutual aid, and so on, because it is also an appropriate role for the Vice President should the President be out of the country. The Vice President would be prepared and also, should the Vice President ever have to take over for any reason, would know the complete working of the FEMA disaster plans and how it should work. There are those other questions, too, of legal authority when the Government takes over. Our three R's have to be readiness, response, recovery. To do that we have to have professionalization, risk-based, all hazards.

You know, hurricanes are predictable. Terrorist attacks are not. And we have to be ready. Colleagues, I am concerned that whether it is avian flu or another hurricane getting ready for the season or something else, we don't know the answer, Who is in charge? That question has never been answered. Who manages the disaster? And most of all, who manages the panic around that? And who speaks? Your health committee members have just done a tabletop on bioterrorism. It is the same.

So I believe, No. 1, FEMA ought to be an independent agency. No. 2, maybe we need a disaster response agency, which handles this. But I also think we need to take a look at what would be our response and how we would handle these others, like avian flu. Are we going to call FEMA in? Is FEMA going to be avian flu? I don't know if we have to respond, but I don't think so. I would hope not. But should we have a new framework for that? What are the legal authorities? Can a President supersede a Governor if necessary? These are the big questions. But I believe we can create the right infrastructure. We can be ready for the natural disasters, and so on.

I am going to conclude by saying that when we work together, and I don't mean just us, but really work--we know how we have worked with Delaware. Just a couple of months ago, there was a terrible accident in a factory in West Virginia. The closest search and rescue team with helicopters was in Maryland with our State police. But because they had worked together, because they had trained together, because they knew each other, could talk to each other, trusted each other, my wonderful Maryland State troopers were able to go fly that 90 miles. The Coast Guard was too far away, this up near our Appalachian region. In the pitch blackness, with power lines around them when they couldn't see, they went down and were able to rescue two, and for the third they weren't sure whether he was going to get in the little basket that they have, but they stayed to make sure they were going to leave no one behind. Our State troopers did it, but they did it because they were professional, they were trained, they had worked together, they had trusted.

That is what they did that terrible night in West Virginia. It should be a model of what we need. Let's work together, train together, and trust each other. And that is why I supported this amendment to restore FEMA to Cabinet-level rank and establish it again as an independent agency

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