Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2005-Continued
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005-CONTINUED
AMENDMENT NO. 3656
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk and I ask for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the pending amendment is set aside.
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from New York [Mr. Schumer], for himself, Mr. Sarbanes, Mr. Reed, Mrs. Clinton, and Mr. Kennedy, proposes an amendment numbered 3656.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To increase funding for rail and transit security grants)
On page 20, line 7, strike "$1,200,000,000" and insert "1,550,000,000".
On page 20, line 13, strike "$150,000,000" and insert "$500,000,000".
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I will be brief. I know the hour is late, but as I am sure this body knows, these issues, I believe, are extremely important and have to be considered. This amendment deals with rail security. It is rail security and transit grants.
Now, first, I do want to say that we are providing $278 million for these grants. The amendment by my friend from West Virginia raised the amount to that. But it is not close to enough when we are considering that rail is one of the great dangers we face in this war on terrorism. If anything, we have learned since last year's appropriations bill that al-Qaida has chosen rail as one of its methods of terror. We all looked in shock at what happened in Madrid.
Our rail systems, whether they be mass transit, subways, commuter rails, passenger rails, freight rails, are utterly unprotected. While we are making small steps in the direction of protecting them, we are not moving close to quickly enough. Despite the significant threat to transit systems, the funding for transit security has been grossly inadequate.
Over the last 2 years, Congress appropriated only $115 million in transit security: $65 million in fiscal year 2003; $50 million-less-in 2004. The administration's budget requested no additional funding. Now, of course, we have raised it a little bit here but not close to enough.
Furthermore, only 30 to 40 percent of what has been appropriated for transit security has been received by transit agencies. So even with the small amounts we have appropriated, our agencies that are supposed to make our subways, our mass transit, our commuter rail, our passenger rail safer have not been able to do it. As a result, many transit agencies, including those in my city, in my State, many of which are likely to be at risk, have pressing security needs that are still unfunded. In fact, the Banking Committee found that we have invested $9.16 per passenger on aviation improvements but less than 1 cent per passenger on transit security improvements. Now does that make any sense: $9.16 on air travel, less than 1 cent on transit?
On April 8, the Commerce Committee passed the Rail Security Act of 2004. The bill would provide $1.2 billion to enhance the safety of our Nation's mass rail systems. On May 6, the Banking Committee unanimously passed the Public Transportation Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. That bill would provide over $5 billion to enhance the safety of the Nation's mass transit systems and would mean so much to the New York area where we face a need for hundreds of millions of dollars to shore up our security. So when my friend from Mississippi will get up and say, well, we are giving some money, it is not close to what the authorizing committees felt was needed. It is not a little less; it is not a lot less; it is a huge amount less. If the Commerce Committee would say that $1.2 billion is needed and the Banking Committee would say that $5 billion is needed and we are appropriating as little as we are, clearly we are not doing something right.
These two bills were not taken up by the Senate leadership for several months, and then, in July, Secretary Ridge announced there was credible information indicating al-Qaida is moving ahead with plans for a large-scale attack in the U.S. aimed at disrupting the political elections. In reaction, all of a sudden the Senate leadership decided to try to pass some security measures that were long overdue. I am told the reason they did not bring them up is because they felt these measures cost too much. I am sure my esteemed colleague from Mississippi will make that argument again today, that spending $350 million to secure the thousands of miles of tracks, tunnels, bridges, and stations used by millions of Americans every day is too expensive. I have to respectfully disagree. We are vulnerable. God forbid 10 terrorists strap explosives to themselves and go into 10 of our busiest rail stations and detonate them at a single time. This would cause huge loss of life, tremendous suffering, and economic hardship.
There are things we can do. We can develop detectors that fit mass transit as we are doing in the airports. We are not. We can protect our tunnels and bridges upon which trains go. We are not. The bottom line is, we are doing virtually nothing.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, could I ask my friend to withhold? We have a unanimous consent request that Members have been waiting on for a while.
Mr. SCHUMER. I am happy to yield.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I appreciate the understanding of my colleague from Mississippi. I think I have used pretty much my time on transit even though I have been given another 10 minutes.
I just want to say this in conclusion: We are currently spending $5 billion a month in Iraq alone. While I wholeheartedly support making sure that our troops have everything they need-and I have supported all of these funding requests-if we can spend $5 billion a month in Iraq, we can surely spend $350 million over 5 years to help ensure the safety of our transit riders here at home. The priorities are wrong. There is a disconnect. We spend what it takes to win a war on terror overseas, as we should. We spend virtually nothing to protect ourselves at home. To say that a couple hundred million dollars is too much when the safety of our citizens is at stake and we are spending $5 billion a month in Iraq is a schizophrenia that this country, as we fight this war on terror in this brave, new world, cannot afford.
I urge adoption of the amendment.
I yield the floor.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive the applicable sections of that act for the purpose of the pending amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays.
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AMENDMENT NO. 3655
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I offer the Schumer amendment on immigration security. The amendment is at the desk, I believe.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from New York [Mr. Schumer] proposes an amendment numbered 3655.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To appropriate an additional $350,000,000 to improve the security at points of entry into the United States)
On page 7, line 16, strike "$2,413,438,000," and insert the following: "$2,763,438,000, of which $200,000,000 shall be reserved for the International Civil Aviation Organization to establish biometric and document identification standards to measure multiple immutable physical characteristics, including fingerprints, eye retinas, and eye-to-eye width and for the Department of Homeland Security to place multiple biometric identifiers at each point of entry; of which $50,000,000 shall be reserved for a program that requires the government of each country participating in the visa waiver program to certify that such country will comply with the biometric standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization; of which $25,000,000 shall be reserved for the entry and exit data systems of the Department of Homeland Security to accommodate traffic flow increases; of which $50,000,000 shall be reserved to integrate the entry and exit data collection and analysis systems of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation; of which $25,000,000 shall be reserved to establish a uniform translation and transliteration service for all ports of entry to identify the names of individuals entering and exiting the United States;".
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, there are so many places where we have to tighten up our security at home. We have talked about security in the air and security at the ports and security on the rails and security with trucks. We have talked about helping our police and our firefighters and hospitals. There is another area that we do have to address even at this late hour because it is so crucial. That is security at our country's borders.
The question is, Who can come across our borders, whether by land or sea or by air, and how do we monitor who they are, and how do we make sure terrorists do not come into this country as they did in the years and months before 9/11, where one part of the Government knew that those who came across the borders might well cause harm, but those who were at the borders letting people into this country did not?
The good news is that technology can help us. We can keep our borders open and free. We can have commerce that we need and at the same time separate those few bad apples. Technology will allow us to do that. But we are not doing it. Again, we run the risk that our porous borders will serve as an attraction to those who want to be in this country to do evil things, either here or abroad.
The amendment I have offered would provide funding necessary to strengthen the eyes and ears and coordination of personnel at our country's borders. Perhaps the greatest threat to our country as a whole is what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has called "people of mass destruction" or PMDs coming through our borders. It was people of mass destruction who turned airplanes into missiles on 9/11, and we have to do something to avoid that.
My amendment contains five parts. First, the amendment provides $200 million to help bring the biometric technology already at our busiest ports of entry up to the standards called for by the 9/11 Commission and the task force report. The 19 hijackers who invaded my city and our country 3 years ago ran through the borders in a wave of deception. Were there more accurate measures of identifying those terrorists when they entered the country, we might not have suffered 9/11.
Three years after 9/11, it is staggering that we are leaving so much of our safety up to the subjective, fallible judgment of individuals rather than to superior biometric technology. The first part of the amendment deals with upgrading that technology.
Second, my amendment would provide $50 million to help ensure that all travelers entering the United States are held to the same high level of scrutiny. Specifically, the amendment would provide funding to help persuade visa waiver program governments to produce passports compatible with the state-of-the-art biometric technology that I hope will be deployed at U.S. ports of entry.
Third, the amendment would provide $25 million to fund the expansion of the Homeland Security Department's exit and entry data systems to accommodate the ever increasing traffic of travelers in and out of our Nation's ports of entry. As the pace of globalization quickens, U.S. airports, bridges, and ports see a rising number of visitors. We have to have the technology to keep up with that increasing number.
Fourth, the amendment addresses the need to integrate the entry and exit data systems housed within the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the Department of State. We have in our Government a number of sophisticated databases collecting critical information about individuals who could harm our country. Each of these systems has different access rules and runs on different algorithms. It makes integration of these systems with one another and with the people at the borders very chancy and difficult.
Finally, the amendment would provide $25 million to support a uniform transliteration and translation system to identify each visitor entering and exiting. You don't want to let someone in because Mohammed or Bill was spelled incorrectly and that person slipped through the borders.
I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. The bottom line is simple. We have a long way to go to make our borders safe. The frustration that many
of us have is we can do it but we are not. Again, we are taking tiny baby steps where bold, imaginative, and large steps are required. No one, no matter what their ideology, party, or even vote on this measure, wants to repeat what happened at 9/11 when people came across our borders and should not have. This amendment will help close that loophole. It is worth the cost. I urge its adoption.
I yield the floor.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive the applicable sections of that act for the purposes of the pending amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.