Implementing The 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007
IMPLEMENTING THE 9/11 COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - January 09, 2007)
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Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, on our side of the aisle the Democrats over the last 3 years have identified some gaping holes in our Nation's security, even in aviation where we have spent the most money. You can do it in two ways: you can have state-of-the-art equipment and not a lot of people, or a lot of people and not very good equipment, or a mix of the two.
The Republicans have chosen to do neither. They haven't been willing to buy the equipment we need: state-of-the-art explosives detection equipment at passenger checkpoints. They haven't been willing to invest in the inline screening for baggage, and they put a totally arbitrary cap on the number of screeners. There are gaping holes. We are going to plug those. A quarter of a billion dollars for explosives screening at passenger checkpoints, a known threat. A billion dollars for inline screening which the Republicans have refused to fund.
For 4 years, airports across America have begged for inline screening grants. None have been forthcoming from the Republicans. They are saying they have taken care of everything in such a great bipartisan way.
Now my friend from Florida got up and waxed poetic about San Francisco and said it was due to two things: private screeners and inline screening. Well, the inline equipment I agree with him, and we are going to fund it, unlike the majority. We will install it in every airport in America.
But I disagree on the privatized screening because actually it turns out now that the private screeners at San Francisco were tipped off before the inspectors came through. They don't do any better, and maybe would do worse without those tips, than our public employees. We are going to give them the tools they need.
On containers, Assistant Secretary Michael Jackson said they want to screen every container before they leave a U.S. port for the interior. Why? Because they might contain threats.
And we said, What does that make our ports, a sacrifice zone if they have a nuclear weapon contained in them?
We want to screen containers on the other side of the ocean. Now we hear people on that side get up and say hundreds of billions of dollars to screen these containers. Actually, it is 30 to $50 per container. There are 11 million containers. That is somewhere between 300 and $500 million a year, paid for by a modest fee on the shippers, not by the taxpayers of America.
We are going to make America more secure. We are going to plug the holes you left in our security and fix the problem.
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