Amidst all of the news this week about the Supreme Court, there were a couple other items of note. First off, the House considered several pieces of reform legislation about the Department of Homeland Security. Since it was created, DHS has been a big mess (and slow to clean itself up). You may recall that the whole reason DHS was created in the first place was to improve coordination, communication and effectiveness between the various agencies. You may also recall that a specific problem that came to light on 9/11 was the lack of interoperability of radio equipment between first responders. Congress has passed legislation repeatedly, including this week, trying to prod DHS to get its act together on radio interoperability. Fifteen years and they still haven't been able to make it work. While I'm sure it is a very complicated technical challenge, keep in mind that we managed to put a man on the moon despite those technical challenges.
And if, as a concerned citizen, you wanted to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get information about DHS' inability to solve these problems (or anything else), you would find yourself at the end of a very long line. We had to pass another piece of legislation this week specifically to address that FOIA backlog.
In short, there are an awful lot of very dedicated people who work for that agency, but they have struggled mightily over the years to pull it together. It's a classic example of why some people's unwavering faith in government to solve all problems is a little misguided.
In any case, that was the main floor activity this week that went unnoticed. The only other thing I wanted to mention is to give everybody some idea of where things stand on the trade agreement front. In short, although a lot of my colleagues and I voted against it, the Trade Promotion Authority bill passed in both the House and Senate. That does not mean that the trade agreement itself has passed. Far from it. The details of the agreement still need to be finalized by all of the dozen countries who are a part of it. That could happen quickly or it might not happen at all. It's hard to say. Congress will also have a chance to vote to kill the trade deal when the final agreement terms are set. Until then, the country remains in the dark as the details of the draft agreement are kept very secret. As an American, I don't appreciate the lack of transparency and as your representative in the federal government, pushing back on that lack of transparency is something I have the opportunity to do. So whether it's DHS not being responsive to FOIA requests or the administration keeping this trade agreement secret, we're going to keep pushing back.
As always, I hope you all will keep me posted on what you're concerned about. And if you'd like any more information about the implications of the TPA bill or anything else, please let me know. Thanks again.