Motion To Go To Conference On H.R. 1, Improving America's Security Act Of 2007

Floor Speech

MOTION TO GO TO CONFERENCE ON H.R. 1, IMPROVING AMERICA'S SECURITY ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - July 17, 2007)

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Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Let me thank the distinguished chairman of the full committee, and to the Speaker, my good friend from Tennessee, we are here on this floor for a very serious deliberation.

Over the last 10 days we have heard a number of responses from the administration; and I have often said that if and when, if and when there was a turn of events that would generate a horrific and terrorist act against this Nation, it is the Members of the United States Congress and committees with names like Homeland Security and Defense that would have to be called to the carpet.

None of us, none of us, Mr. Speaker, have any desire to be on the list of those who are derelict in their duties. In fact, Chairman Thompson has been enormously zealous in constant oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, constant briefings, and I am reminded of one that occurred in the last 10 days where the term ``gut feeling'' was introduced to us. Out of that particular briefing, many of us tightened our belts and began to reflect on the oversight hearings and the legislative initiatives that will respond and have responded to that gut reaction. So the dilemma, or the discussion today, as we bring up the 9/11 bill, may I remind my colleagues, is about terrorism. It is about the thought and the fear that Americans have of who lives amongst us.

The TWIC card, as Transportation Security Administration is about to issue forward with regulations, is one of the elements to define who is in this country that would want to do us harm. Let me say this again, Mr. Speaker. It is a card to define who wants to harm us.

As the chairwoman of the Transportation Security Subcommittee, Critical Infrastructure, we live every day with those individuals who are receiving identification, those at airports. We have done oversight about employees' ingress and egress, about the back side of the airport. We are well aware, my colleague Representative SANCHEZ, LORETTA SANCHEZ and her committee, well aware of the massiveness of the Nation's ports. We could give you a list of times that we have been to look at the intimacies of the port. But what my good friend is speaking about clearly has no direct relationship to ensuring America's security and releasing or eliminating the fear that Americans have about the next-door terrorist cell. This amendment, this motion to instruct is not constructive. For what it says is that age-long workers, union workers who through an early lifetime had the ups and downs of a criminal record, have now been cast as terrorists.

Mr. Speaker, I am not interested in opening the doors to criminal elements. I don't disrespect the fact that we are concerned about murderers and others who have done dastardly deeds. But what you are talking about is taking an age-old seasoned port worker, union member, and eliminate their livelihood by projecting onto them the question of whether or not they are in line to perpetrate a terrorist act.

The TWIC card is an identification document to ensure that those who are in possession of that card have no connection to any elements of terrorism. It is to safeguard the American public.

It is not, it is not, if you will, the sledgehammer on hardworking, taxpaying Americans. And let me be very clear: The TWIC card is no wimp. There is a serious review process that goes forward that takes into account everyone's record and includes any elements that would lead us to believe that this person might perpetrate a terrorist act.

I respect the gentlelady from Tennessee because I know that she is, as we all are, warriors against terrorism, and this Congress has to be united on this factor. I would raise the question, however, as to whether or not these modifications of a TWIC card that has already been vetted directed only at eliminating, firing, and terminating lifelong employees with strong records that have shown no inclination and no past history to terrorist acts is the appropriate direction to take.

I hope that we can join in this body, as Chairman Thompson has encouraged us as members of his committee, to focus in a bipartisan way on solutions to major problems: Critical infrastructure, nuclear and biological possibilities, the reconstruction of FEMA, the interests in protecting our ports and borders north and south. This is how, an intelligence response that shows who is here as it relates to terrorist cells and who is here to do damage. These are the key elements, along with the 9/11 bill, that lay down the underpinnings, the framework of the survival of this Nation. Let us not fall upon divisiveness in the redesign of a card that has been fully vetted in its structure, that will do what it is intended to do, which is to weed out the terrorists and to allow hardworking Americans to continue to work and provide for their families. They, too, are patriots. And we as patriots and lovers of this country must stand united together in doing the right thing to secure America.

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Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I thank the chairman. To my good friend from Tennessee, let us be very clear that homeland security is a bipartisan issue.

What the chairman has indicated is that we are yielding to the Secretary of Homeland Security for a slight opportunity to be able to modify, if you will, in his reasoned judgment, that deals with securing America. We are not ignoring sedition and treason. I want my colleagues to know that.

But the individuals that will now be subjected to the TWIC card, which costs 137 dollars and 700,000 people will be processed the first year, and 1.5 million persons the second year, these are our neighbors, individuals who have been working in this capacity who have nothing in their background that would suggest that they are terrorists.

The gentlelady's motion would literally shut down America's ports. Commerce would come to a standstill. As my good friend from Ohio has said, people rehabilitate. Give the Secretary the opportunity to use his judgment and to use his discretion to be able to secure America on the real causes of sedition and treason.

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