Thad Cochran

Mr. COCHRAN

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I know of no Senators who want to speak on this issue who have not already spoken. I think we are ready for the vote. Have the yeas and nays been ordered?

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, on behalf of the Senator from Indiana, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. COCHRAN. It is my understanding from the TSA that the $309 million for LOI's in our bill is sufficient to meet the expected demands of airports that are ready to begin formal design and construction.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for bringing this important issue before the Senate today. The committee report that accompanies this Homeland Security appropriations bill calls on the Bureau to review staffing nationwide and to submit a comprehensive deployment plan, to include existing and newly funded positions. We expect the Bureau to use these additional staffing resources to address any pressing needs.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I am very familiar with the institution my friend from Virginia speaks of, VMI, and I assure my colleague that I will work with him to ensure that the necessary resources are provided to it. Letters of Intent

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I know of no other amendments that will be offered. I think we are ready for third reading.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the bill was passed.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I move that the Senate insist on its amendments and request a conference with the House and the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I join in the request of the Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. COCHRAN

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, have the yeas and nays been ordered on the motion to waive?

Mr. COCHRAN. I ask for the yeas and nays on the motion to waive.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. COCHRAN. I make a point of order under section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act that the amendment provides funding in excess of the subcommittee's 302(b) allocation.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, that is satisfactory with this side. We appreciate the help of the Senator from Nevada in working out this time arrangement.

Mr. COCHRAN. 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, I raise a point of order under rule XVI that the amendment constitutes general legislation on an appropriations measure and is not in order.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I must say that I agree, as a general rule, with the distinguished Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from Nevada about the way the Senate should transact its business. I agree completely. There are situations, such as on the Budget Act, when we are limited in the amount of time we have for the consideration of a measure and necessarily we end up with one of these vote-aramas, as the Senator points out. I think, as a general rule, as we consider a bill, after the debate on the amendment is complete, or whatever the issue is, such as a motion to waive a point of order, we should vote on it. I agree. For that reason, I advise Senators that we are about to have a vote on the motion to waive by Senator Dodd on the point of order that was previously made to the Dodd amendment. The yeas and nays have been ordered on the motion to waive.

Mr. COCHRAN. Yes.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, it is my intention to review the amendment, and when I have had an opportunity to reread it, I will be in a better position to respond to it. I am very hopeful the funding in this bill will enable the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the heads of the various directorates and the other agencies that are funded in this bill--the Coast Guard and others--to carry out their responsibilities to improve the overall security of our homeland to protect against terrorist attacks, to try to anticipate terrorists attacks, and to recover from natural disasters. We have within this Department a wide range of functions and responsibilities, one of which has been identified in this amendment as, I suppose, being funded at too high a level because the offset that is contained is to take funds from one of these directorates and move it to the function of port security. It is a very difficult challenge to try to balance the competing interests within this Department to make sure each area is not only well staffed with people who know what they are doing, but that they have the funds to carry out their mission. The directorate that suffers if this amendment is adopted is the one who helps bring together the intelligence information to assess the vulnerabilities of various critical infrastructure areas such as chemical facilities identified by the Senator from West Virginia. If that money is taken away, it will be less likely they can carry out their mission in the way we would all hope they could. This is a very important area of activity for the Department of Homeland Security. It is an area that, if limited in the way proposed by this amendment, would reduce the capacity to obtain intelligence or warnings and to carry out the threat analysis functions that are the responsibility of this directorate, and $292 million would be taken from the directorate responsible for information analysis and infrastructure protection. That is 35 percent of the funds that are made available in the bill for this directorate. This is a drastic cut. It is a meat-ax approach to one directorate, to shift funds to another area that we all recognize is in need of funding, but it already is funded. It is funded at a level that, in the judgment of our committee, would help ensure that our ports are protected, that we are able to defend against not only terrorist attacks but any other activity that would threaten or undermine the security interests of the United States. Just this week, an article was carried by the Washington Post talking about inadequacies of the new intelligence unit at the Department of Homeland Security and talking about the challenges it faced. I read the article and am familiar with some of the charges made in the article. But the conclusion was that they were not able to compete with the CIA, the FBI, the other established intelligence-gathering agencies because they were having a hard time attracting competent people and getting the number of analysts they ought to have in this Department to carry out their responsibilities. It pointed out, for example, that the intelligence analysts don't have the computers they need that are capable of receiving classified, top secret and above, documents. If this amendment is adopted, it is going to make it even more difficult. I can't imagine their being able to sustain the workforce they have. People they tried to recruit to come aboard this Department and help deal with these new challenges may have to be dismissed. The ability of the Department to perform assessments of critical infrastructure--drinking water supply systems, chemical facilities, as I mentioned--and other areas where large numbers of people may gather from time to time; arenas, stadium crowds, baseball parks, and the Nation's seaports are just some that come to mind. I am hopeful that the Senate will reject this amendment. It is clear to me that there are a lot of Senators who would like to increase the funding available for port security grants. If you are going to award a grant to a port, you have to be able to evaluate the security needs of these ports. All the ports in the United States are filing applications. There is a backlog of applications. One of the reasons for the backlog, in terms of assessing and approving and selecting the ones to be funded, is lack of personnel to do the job. It seems to me this amendment seeks to improve port security but at the same time take away money that would be used to assess which ports are in greater need, where should the grant money go, which ones of the applications have the highest merit. You have to have people to do that. This amendment takes away money for the people to make those assessments. Also affected by the offset would be the National Communications System, which would be cut deeply if this amendment were accepted. The priority telecommunications programs would not be able to be implemented, programs which allow high-ranking officials to be able to use cellular telecommunications in the event of a terrorist attack or other catastrophic event. This was a major problem on September 11. We talked about the breakdown in communications. One agency could not communicate with the other. This has been a problem nationwide. The adoption of this amendment would exacerbate that problem. I think the amendment, while I know the distinguished Senator from West Virginia is deeply concerned about the port security issue, would undermine one of the most important activities and cripple an already tight budget situation, make it more difficult for our intelligence units to function effectively in the Department of Homeland Security. At the appropriate time, it is my intention to move to table the amendment of the Senator from West Virginia, but I do not intend to make that motion until other Senators who may wish to be heard on the amendment have a chance to speak.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, we appreciate the assistance of the distinguished Senator from Nevada. We have tried to find out the number of amendments that may remain to be offered to the bill so we can get some idea of what we are looking at in terms of the time we have for consideration. We hope to complete action on this bill later today. I am confident we can do that. We still have a number of amendments that have to be offered and dealt with. We hope Senators who do have amendments will come to the floor and offer them. In just a couple of minutes, we are going to ask unanimous consent that the list of amendments we know about be the only amendments in order to the bill. We have several amendments on that list. Just glancing at the list, it looks like about 12 in number at this point. We hope Senators won't call and say they ``may'' have an amendment. If they do have one, they have a right to offer it. We will respect the right of any Senator to offer an amendment to the bill. We have considered most of the amendments about which we have heard. I am going to ask that Senators who have an amendment let us know about it so we can clear the list on both sides and limit the number of amendments that remain to be offered to the bill.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the motion was rejected.