Thad Cochran

Mr. COCHRAN

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I think we have an opportunity for Senators to discuss these amendments out of order, if they would like. I don't think there would be any objection made to that.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, knowing that the Senator from New York wishes to offer an amendment, I am not going to talk long. But I want to make one observation. We ought not to be getting into the business in the Senate of deciding for States and localities how they spend this grant money or how they spend the SAFER Act money. We need to have the flexibility to make those decisions with State and local governments. If we start telling a fire department they have to buy equipment with this amount of money, that they have to train people with this other amount of money, they have to equip trucks and vehicles with this amount, this amount is for that or the other, we are making a big mistake. We are not the managers of these departments. We are not in the position to make the best decisions about how to efficiently use funds from Washington that will help our communities be safer and improve the quality of service provided by firefighters, law enforcement personnel, emergency management workers, or the rest. That is why the grant programs are broad and general. The States develop the plans for using the funds available to them from the Department of Homeland Security in many of these areas. It is the States and localities we ought to depend on to make the best decisions. If we did what the Senator from Connecticut is suggesting we do, we would get into the business of making these departments allocate funds for one category or one specific activity or the other, and that is a big mistake. Adopting this amendment flies right in the face of the administrative policies that this Department is trying to develop and implement, and it is working to make our communities safer because we are leaving the decisions to those who are in the best position to know what is needed in their communities. Do the firefighters need training in a certain area or another? I don't know the answer to that, if it applies to a fire department in my State. But the chief may know. He ought to know. He is in a better position to make the recommendations to the State officials as to what their needs are. These people are applying for these funds. They are having to set out how they propose to use them. At other levels of administration, the decision is made to assign priorities and which ones have a higher priority than another. That ought not to be made on the floor of the U.S. Senate. It is a mistake to get into the details as suggested by this amendment and take money away from activities that are ongoing, that are planned for this year, and then cut the funding for it. That is just going to make it more and more difficult to have a coherent, balanced approach to homeland security. We hope the Senate will reject the amendment of the Senator from Connecticut. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, the Senate has made progress on this bill. We hope to continue to consider amendments during the remainder of the session today. The leader would like us to complete action on this bill tonight. I hope we can achieve that goal. If we can't, we can go into the next day and try to complete action before noon on Wednesday. But we hope we can complete action today. We urge Senators who have amendments, suggestions for changes in the bill, to come to the floor. We will consider those amendments and deal with them in an orderly way. We hope we can reject most of them. There are some we can agree to. I see my good friend from Connecticut is on the floor and has an amendment. I am happy to yield the floor.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, we appreciate very much the offering of the amendment by the Senator from Connecticut. We oppose the amendment, and I have some very persuasive comments I am going to make on that subject. But before I proceed to do so, the Senator from New York has indicated an interest in offering an amendment and describing it to the Senate. I am happy to withhold my discussion of the Dodd amendment. I ask unanimous consent, if the Senator has no objection, to set aside his amendment temporarily so the Senator from New York can offer her amendment.

Mr. COCHRAN

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. COCHRAN

Mr. COCHRAN. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. COCHRAN. I thank the distinguished leader and I thank all Senators for that agreement.

Mr. COCHRAN. I will be happy to yield to my friend.

Mr. COCHRAN. I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. COCHRAN

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries and Coast Guard be authorized to meet on Tuesday, September 14, 2004, at 8:30 a.m. on Magnuson/Stevens Act.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet Tuesday, September 14, 2004 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in Dirksen 628 for the purpose of conducting a hearing.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights be authorized to meet on Tuesday, September 14, 2004 to conduct a hearing on ``Hospital Group Purchasing: How To Maintain Innovation and Cost Savings'', at 2:00 p.m. in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Witness List: Dr. Robert Betz, President and CEO, Health Industry Group Purchasing Association, Arlington, VA. Joe E. Kiani, President and CEP, Masimo Corporation, Irvine, CA. David Balto, Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, LLP, Washington, DC.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to continue its markup on Tuesday, September 14, 2004 at 10 a.m. in Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 226. Agenda I. Nominations Claude A. Allen, to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fourth Circuit; David E. Nahmias, of Georgia, to be United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia; Ricardo H. Hinojosa, to be Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission; Michael O'Neill, to be a Member of the United States Sentencing Commission; Ruben Castillo, to be a Member of the United States Sentencing Commission; William Sanchez, to be Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practice; Richard B. Roper III, of Texas, to be United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas for the term of four years. II. Legislation S. 1635, L-1 Visa (Intracompany Transferee) Reform Act of 2003, Chambliss; S. 1700, Advancing Justice through DNA Technology Act of 2003, Hatch, Biden, Specter, Leahy, DeWine, Feinstein, Kennedy, Schumer, Durbin, Kohl, Edwards; S. 2396, Federal Courts Improvement Act of 2004, Hatch, Leahy, Chambliss, Durbin, Schumer; H.R. 1417, To amend title 17, United States Code, to replace copyright arbitration royalty panels with Copyright Royalty Judges Act of 2003, Smith-TX, Berman-CA, Conyers-MI; S. 2204, A bill to provide criminal penalties for false information and hoaxes relating to terrorism Act of 2004, Hatch, Schumer, Cornyn, Feinstein, DeWine; S. 1860, A bill to reauthorize the Office of National Drug Control Policy Act of 2003, Hatch, Biden, Grassley; S. 2195, A bill to amend the Controlled Substances Act to clarify the definition of anabolic steroids and to provide for research and education activities relating to steroids and steroid precursors Act of 2004, Biden, Hatch, Grassley, Feinstein; S.J. Res. 23, A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States providing for the event that one- fourth of the members of either the House of Representatives or the Senate are killed or incapacitated Act of 2003, Cornyn, Chambliss.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia, be authorized to meet on Tuesday, September 14, 2004 at 9:30 a.m. for a hearing entitled, ``The 9/11 Commission Human Capital Recommendations: A Critical Element of Reform.''

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Public Land and Forests of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 14 at 2:30 p.m. The purpose of the hearing is to receive testimony on S. 2532, to establish wilderness areas, promote conservation, improve public land, and provide for the high quality development in Lincoln County, NV, and for other purposes; S. 2723, to designate certain land in the State of Oregon as wilderness, and for other purposes; and S. 2709, to provide for the reforestation of appropriate forest cover on forest land derived from the public domain, and for other purposes.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 14, 2004 at 10 a.m. to hold a hearing on the nomination of Porter J. Gross to be Director of Central Intelligence.

Mr. COCHRAN

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, we reviewed the amendment offered by the Senator from Washington. We agree to support it, and we ask the Senate to adopt it.

Mr. COCHRAN. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, the American Trucking Association has delivered a letter to me. It is signed by 34 organizations or industries that are concerned that the passage of the Schumer amendment would result in an enormous burden on our national economic recovery, that it would impose enormous costs on many industries, that it would force haulers to undertake expensive new activities that have not been approved or suggested by the Transportation Security Administration as necessary or as improvements to the security systems now in place. This is a three-page letter. Rather than have it read into the Record, I ask unanimous consent the letter, dated September 13, addressed to me, be printed in the Record.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, this amendment offers to add a substantial amount of money to the operational budget of the U.S. Coast Guard. I remind Senators that the Coast Guard's total appropriation in this next fiscal year is $705 million above last year's appropriation. It is about $134 million above the President's request for overall U.S. Coast Guard activity. We urge the Senate to vote no against the Lautenberg amendment. I make a point of order under section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act that the amendment provides spending in excess of the subcommittee's 302(b) allocation.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I think the Senate has heard as much discussion as they probably need to form an opinion about this amendment. We urge Senators to vote yes on the motion to table and permit the committee to continue to work with the Department and industries that are involved to bring the best possible technologies into play to protect the security of our country and the transportation industries.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I thought there were 2 minutes remaining.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, at 5:30, we are going to be voting in the Senate on a motion to table the Schumer amendment. The Senator described his amendment recently and talked about the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has not done anything, essentially, to protect against the explosives or other dangers occurring when trucks with hazardous material are driven throughout the country, and that an additional $70 million, I think, is the total amount of new money to be added to this bill for this purpose. It is described in the Senator's amendment as a tracking system for hazardous material trucks, hazmat trucks, and a background check system for commercial drivers' licenses. I am suggesting to the Senate that this is an additional $70 million that cannot be efficiently used for this purpose in 1 fiscal year, and I am going to tell you why. The Appropriations Committee has already provided funding for a number of different programs designed to accomplish the goals that the Senator has described in his comments about and his description of his amendment when he previously offered it. Last year, in fiscal year 2004, Congress appropriated $9.4 million for an effort to develop a high-explosive countermeasure system in the Science and Technology Directorate. Research is being undertaken and a program that will follow on is funded at $33.590 million to provide technologies and programs that would interdict explosive attacks against buildings from all modes of transportation, including trucking. It is also designed to protect critical infrastructure and the Nation's civilian population. This is an increase of $23.89 million from the budget request submitted by the administration. We have tried to communicate with the Transportation Security Administration and other agencies of the Department of Homeland Security to see what funds could be utilized to help make this the most sophisticated and effective system available to the American public in protecting buildings, protecting civilian populations, protecting the trucking systems and the infrastructure of our country against problems of vehicle bombs, problems of hazardous materials being confiscated and converted into explosives to damage infrastructure: highways, tunnels, bridges, buildings, and the like. So the Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency is issuing a broad agency announcement for systems for vehicle bomb detection using optical and nuclear thermal neutron analysis. The Science and Technology Directorate is piloting several sites using different means for detecting vehicle bombs at checkpoints. There are other initiatives to deny terrorists the use of commercial explosives and materials for making such bombs. So across the board, what I am saying, there is a broad indepth, comprehensive effort underway and using a variety of technologies and programs that seek to achieve, and will achieve, the goal suggested by the Senator from New York. We do not need to adopt this amendment to accomplish the goal he talks about that we need to pursue. We are doing what the Senator has suggested should be done. There is a Hazardous Material Shipper Training Program in place for drivers and others who are involved as employees in that industry, providing information about security requirements and responsibilities of those engaged in the trucking industry. It is promoting security awareness for each mode of transportation, not just truckers but other shippers as well. Funds have been provided in the 2004 appropriations bill to test certain technologies, new technologies to track high-risk trucks on the Nation's highways. The Senator said there is no program such as that in place. Programs are being tested to be implemented. We want to be sure the Transportation Security Administration has the ability to track vehicles throughout the entire country, in Alaska and Hawaii as well, to identify the best practices and the standards and regulations that ought to be implemented and enforced by Federal, State, local, and industry stakeholders as well. Congress has provided over $42 million for the Highway Watch Program to promote security awareness among all segments of the commercial motor carrier industry and the transportation community at large. For this fiscal year, in this bill that is before the Senate, $15 million is provided for this program. For the previous 2 fiscal years, $12 million has been provided for the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to test and evaluate a variety of technologies, such as global positioning systems, wireless communications, use of global positioning satellites, alarm systems, biometric identification, and radio frequency identification devices to ensure that dangerous or potentially dangerous vehicles are identified. Field testing has just been completed, and the evaluation phase in this program has begun. These are steps toward the goal that we all share, and that is identified by the Senator from New York as a very imminent and urgent need. It is an urgent need, and we are treating it as such over the prior appropriations bill's approval and provisions, as well as this year's appropriations bill. There was a mandate in the PATRIOT Act that the Transportation Security Administration has implemented, in partnership with the departments in the State motor vehicle area, to ensure that all drivers who are licensed to transport hazardous materials are subjected to Federal background checks to be sure the people who are operating these vehicles ought to be operating them; that they are not high-risk people; that they do not have something in their background that raises alarms about their dependability. The Transportation Security Administration has undertaken background checks on 2.7 million drivers who have hazardous materials endorsements on their commercial driver's licenses. These background checks have identified approximately 36 individuals who are no longer allowed to transport hazardous materials. TSA will complete this background check, and when it is completed they will have conducted name-based background checks on all 3.5 million drivers this year. There will be an FBI fingerprint-based criminal history check undertaken as well. The offset would affect the Office of Under Secretary of Management's Human Resources Division. In terms of research, what I am suggesting is that every effort possible is being made, through grants provided by the Department of Homeland Security, technology development, and deployment in the department, to develop a more efficient system for identifying drivers to be sure they are trustworthy and are not threats to the Nation's security through the operation of vehicles carrying hazardous materials, the confiscation of vehicles that are carrying hazardous materials or that could be converted into bombmaking vehicles. All of this is being done in an aggressive and comprehensive way by the Department of Homeland Security, in cooperation with State and local authorities throughout the country. Private sector groups, shippers who are undertaking to safeguard the content of packages that go into vehicles, are also very actively involved in helping ensure that the public is not going to be put in danger through the use of our transportation system in this way. We think the provisions of the bill are adequate. To provide funding that the Senator is suggesting is needed will be wasteful and cannot be efficiently used for the purposes he seeks. The goals are notable and laudable. We share them and we are doing everything we can to ensure that we have in place the programs, training, research, and technologies that we need to protect ourselves from these kinds of attacks and attacks against the Nation's critical infrastructure and population centers.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I move to table the Schumer amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays.