Department Of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (Senate - July 25, 2007)

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Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I rise to discuss an amendment Senator Collins and I intend to introduce. I gather the parliamentary situation is such that there will not be a grant of unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment, so we did want to take this opportunity to discuss an amendment which would add $100 million to the Homeland Security appropriations bill for the purpose of funding efforts at the State and local level to make communications between our law enforcement personnel interoperable--they can talk to each other. This is a pressing need for homeland security, for disaster response.

I know my friend and colleague from Maine cannot remain on the Senate floor for long. So I yield to her for some comments about our amendment. Then I will retake the floor.

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Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I thank my friend from Maine for an excellent statement.

First, I thank the leadership of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Byrd, Senator Cochran, Senator Murray, for working as hard and effectively as they have to provide funds that are critical to securing our homeland.

In fact, the committee added two and a quarter billion dollars for Homeland Security above the request of the President's budget. For that, they are to be thanked. That is exactly the right thing to do at a time when the threat of terrorism continues to be a clear and present danger for our American homeland.

Senator Collins and I are offering this amendment because, as she said, we believe the committee has not provided anything for one of our Nation's highest priorities, and thus an adjustment is needed and I speak of interoperability of communications systems among law enforcement personnel, first responders, the very fundamental capacity in an emergency to pick up whatever means of communication they have and speak to the firefighters, police officers, and emergency responders wherever they may be.

As Senator Collins indicated, just to build some history, in the Senate budget resolution conference report earlier this year adopted by the Senate, we provided for $400 million to be spent next year for this program in helping States and localities to allow their first responders to talk to each other in a crisis. That is the budget resolution. It is a first step, but it was an important step.

Senator Collins also referred to the conference committee on the 9/11 legislation that passed both Houses of the Congress. We have been in conference for some period of time. I am happy to say we concluded the conference successfully within the last 24 hours, and a report is now circulating among the members of the committee to have them sign it. I gather that a majority of members of the House committee have already signed, and Senators, in their wisdom, are taking a little longer to read the report. But I am confident that before the end of the day we will have a majority there, too, as well.

Well, the conference report on the Ð9/11 legislation, which is before us, to implement as yet unimplemented parts of the 9/11 Commission Report, or those parts that have been inadequately implemented, and/or, frankly, ideas that the respective committees in the House and the Senate have had on our own initiative to strengthen our homeland security against the threat of terrorism, which as I said earlier is clear and present, as the most recent reports on al-Qaida and its intention to strike us make painfully clear, and to create the kind of apparatus that will protect the American people in the event of natural disasters because there is an obvious overlap in what those capabilities will do.

So the 9/11 legislation conference report will be before the Senate soon. It does authorize a new interoperability emergency communications grant program. It should, hopefully, provide additional and much needed resources to help the Nation's first responders.

Now, I used the word ``hopefully'' advisedly because this new grant program the 9/11 legislation creates will not help our first responders unless we put some money into it. That is what this bill and this amendment to this bill that Senator Collins and I are offering would do. It would provide $100 million for the program in fiscal year 2008. It is below the $400 million authorized in the budget resolution. But this $100 million is a good start and an opportunity to essentially put our money where our promise was in the 9/11 legislation.

This actually is a very modest amount compared to the overall needs there are across the country. Yet it is a good beginning. 9/11 taught us many lessons about what we need to better protect our homeland, and one clearly was improve the ability of our first responders to talk to one another.

I know none of us will ever forget Ð9/11/01, that day we watched live on television as the extraordinarily brave New York City police, firefighters, and other emergency personnel raced into the doomed buildings trying to save lives, many of them not actually on duty but knowing a crisis had occurred, running to help their fellow citizens, to help their fellow first responders.

But as we watched, we could not see what was happening inside the building where another tragedy was occurring. Inside the World Trade Center buildings, the uncommon heroism of the first responders was running into unnecessary chaos. The incredible bravery of those men and women was running into avoidable confusion, all of it caused by their inability to talk to one another on the communications systems they had.

One fire chief told the 9/11 Commission:

People watching on TV that day certainly had more knowledge of what was happening 100 floors above us than we did in the lobby of that building.

The sad, tragic fact is we know that this failure of interoperability of communications cost lives, too many lives. There were other communications breakdowns that day that hampered the response efforts at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, PA. Then, as Senator Collins said, during Hurricane Katrina, and the gulf coast, we saw a problem of communications that went beyond interoperability; it was the failure to operate in that crisis.

Phone lines, cell towers, and electrical systems were destroyed by the storms, making it nearly impossible at times for many first responders and

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government officials on the gulf coast to talk to each other, to get the public assistance, to rescue people in danger. This massive failure was so bad that some emergency officials on the gulf coast were forced to resort to runners to communicate with their first responders in the field.

Think of that. Here we are in the 21st century, and this great American Nation that has spawned a revolution in global communications technologies, where in a catastrophic crisis, our first responders, whose duty it is to protect us, had to resort to communications techniques that we thought we had left behind on the battlefields of the Civil War, and that was to resort to runners.

This amendment would provide the $100 million for this emergency grant program created in the 9/11 bill. The funding would come from a small, across-the-board cut in all other Department of Homeland Security programs. That is the only way we can think fairly to do it. It is real small, about a quarter of 1 percent of the DHS budget, to be exact 0.27 percent, a small amount to shift into a program that is necessary to save lives when disaster strikes.

It is important to note that these funds will be provided to States only after the Office of Emergency Communications in the Department of Homeland Security has approved statewide interoperability communications plans so we are not just going to have city A or fire department B or ambulance company C apply and get their own grants. You have to be part of a plan in every State.

I note again the $400 million in dedicated funding for this program that was provided for in the Senate-passed and House-passed budget resolution earlier this year in anticipation of this new program. Perhaps because the 9/11 bill that has just been completed in conference was not finished when the Appropriations Committee met to adopt this Homeland Security appropriations bill, the committee did not include any funding for interoperability communications.

House appropriators did include $50 million to start the program. Now the Senate must do its part.

We owe it to our first responders, the men and women whose duty it is to protect us and all the people they protect in cities and towns across the Nation, to help them create the kinds of communications systems that will enable them to talk to each other in crisis so they can react swiftly, efficiently, and effectively when the alarm bell rings and duty calls them to respond.

At the appropriate moment, when it is possible to do so, Senator Collins and I will introduce an amendment to achieve the purposes I have stated.

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