National Laboratories Mean National Security Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time
as I may consume.

I rise in strong support of H.R. 3438, the National Laboratories Mean
National Security Act, legislation that I have introduced that would
expand the way in which national laboratories can help protect our
homeland.

I want to thank the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Mr.
McCaul, and the ranking member, Mr. Thompson, for allowing this
bipartisan bill to move to the floor.

I also want to thank my colleague on the committee, a fellow
freshman, Mrs. Brooks, for working with me on this bill. Mrs. Brooks, I
understand, is leaving the committee and will be going to the Committee
on Energy and Commerce. We are going to miss her.

I have enjoyed working with you also as a fellow prosecutor and as
someone who has been an active participant in the United Solutions
Caucus, trying to find ways that freshmen, Republican and Democrat, can
work together.

We are fortunate in this country to have a system of Department of
Energy national laboratories, at which some of the brightest scientists
in our country can work on some of the most complex issues of our time.

They are keeping our national nuclear defense secure, advancing clean
energy sources, and changing ways to protect us from the threat of
chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear terrorist attacks. Now
it is time to make sure that we maximize the way that our national
laboratories and the gifted minds who work there can protect and secure
the homeland.

I am honored to represent two of these national laboratories,
Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories, and I look forward
to representing them again in the 114th Congress.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the thousands of employees
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National
Laboratories, and our laboratories across the country for their
commitment to country and their faithfulness to science and advancing
human progress.

Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, and the remaining DOE labs are truly
unique institutions. One part of their uniqueness is their operating
structure. This structure has caused an issue, and that is what this
bill is designed to fix. It is to maximize and utilize the national
laboratories in every way possible to keep us safe and secure at home.

Now, to maximize efficiency and agility at our national laboratories,
almost all the laboratories are what is called government-owned,
contractor-operated--GOCO. While the Federal government owns the labs,
they are operated by private sector organizations. Only one is
government-owned and government-operated.

Here is the issue. The Department of Homeland Security issues
millions of dollars in grants every year to State and local agencies.

Some State and local homeland security grant recipients have
expressed uncertainty about whether or not they can work with
Department of Energy national laboratories on homeland security issues
with these grant funding sources.

As Members know, FEMA offers grant programs, like the Urban Area
Security Initiative, to help States, local governments, and other
public servant entities to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks.

In fact, in my district, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, led by
Sheriff Greg Ahern, uses this grant, the UASI grant, to support Urban
Shield, which is a comprehensive, region-wide preparedness exercise
that prepares first responders in the case of a natural or manmade
disaster.

The confusion for some recipients may have been caused by the fact
that they believe that they cannot use government-owned, contractor-
operated laboratories with Federal funds. FEMA may have been under a
similar impression or been unclear to recipients on this point as well.

These concerns are misplaced. There is no prohibition against using
these funds. My bill will make sure, once and for all, that we use and
we fully maximize our national laboratories and make sure that every
recipient knows these dollars can be used there.

My bill would clarify the issue by explicitly including in law DOE
national labs as entities with which FEMA homeland security grant
recipients could work.

Providing this clarification would allow our DOE national labs to
fully use their knowledge and experience to improve our homeland
security. For example, at Sandia National Laboratories, they are
providing modeling and simulations to help jurisdictions develop threat
hazard identification risk assessments.

Lawrence Livermore houses the National Atmospheric Release Advisory
Center, which provides tools that help us predict and map how chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear threats might spread in the
atmosphere.

H.R. 3438 is an important clarification in the law which will allow
our scientists at Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, and across the country to
more fully contribute to homeland security.

As Mrs. Brooks pointed out, it is also a bipartisan idea, and it is a
measure that was sponsored by former Republican Congressman and former
prosecutor Dan Lungren, so I think it is fitting that it takes two
prosecutors to bring it back to the floor here today to fix this. It
passed in the last Congress by a voice vote.

Some of the best and brightest minds in the world are toiling away
right now at our national laboratories. Today, let's make sure that
nothing stands in the way of maximizing these public servants' ability
to keep our country safe.

I urge all Members to support H.R. 3438.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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