Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. All right. Great. So that leaves us with your amendment No. 1189, dealing with air cargo, and amendment No. 1190, dealing with hazardous materials; is that correct?

Mr. GREGG. It has been agreed to? OK, we missed that.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent the three amendments which are pending, by the Senator from Colorado, 1207, 1209, and 1210 be agreed to.

Mr. GREGG. I simply note that we will be voting on this, hopefully, later today when we have more of a contingency available to participate.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, the Senator from Connecticut, joined by the Senator from Michigan, as I understand it, has offered an amendment which would increase the funding for first responder activity by $16 billion. I note, as an initial comment, that this represents a 50- percent increase in funding for this bill in toto. In other words, the entire funding of the Homeland Security agency is about $31 billion, and $15 billion on top of that would be a dramatic increase, to say the least. The logic for the approach is that there is a representation that the Rudman Commission and other people who have looked at this issue say first responders need more money. It is hard to argue with the fact that first responders do need more money, but the question becomes, in a world where we do not have unlimited resources, where should we put the resources to get the best results in this fight on the war on terrorism? An additional logic for their position is because we are spending significant dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan on a monthly basis, $5 billion is the number suggested by both Senators that we should be able to simply, easily afford and $15 billion of additional spending for the Homeland Security agency in the area of first responder activity. I suggest, at the beginning, that type of logic could lead to basically there being no end of spending on all sorts of programs. If we are going to use the example of the amount of dollars it takes to keep our service people properly equipped and properly armed and properly taken care of when they are in a field of battle, when they are engaged with an enemy on a daily basis, if we are going to use that number as the number which defines what we should spend, whether it is fire departments in New Hampshire or education departments in Connecticut or libraries in Michigan or colleges in West Virginia, we are going to end up with amendment after amendment which spends billions upon billions of dollars on the representation that, gee, we are spending all this money in fighting this war to try to make sure our troops are properly supported so, therefore, why can't we spend a lot of money somewhere else? I do not think there is a lot of consistency to that logic. We know we have a limited amount of money as a Federal Government to spend--at least we should. We did pass a budget to try to put in place the context of how much money we have to spend. And in the context of that budget, we did fund the war, we did fund the Defense Department, and we did fund the other functions of Government at a certain level. We dramatically increased the funding, for example, in education, we dramatically increased the funding in the area of homeland security, and we dramatically increased the funding for first responders, but within the context of a budget. So when you bring an amendment to the floor that essentially says, Ignore the budget and spend $15 billion next year on first responders and then spend another $5 billion on top of that, which would be the Stabenow amendment on providing communications equipment, you are essentially saying we have no fiscal discipline and our purposes are not controlled by any sort of logic as to the relationship of the amount of money which the Federal Government takes in versus the amount of money the Federal Government spends. The representation from the Senator from Connecticut is, if we were simply to repeal some of these permanent taxes that were extended in the budget, we could pay for this. I note for the Senator from Connecticut that he may not have noted this because he did not vote for the budget, and I understand he may not have focused a lot of time on it. But the budget, as passed by the Congress, did not have any permanent tax extensions in it relative to general income tax. The only permanent extensions in the budget are for tuition tax credits for kids going to school, tax deductions for teachers who spend money to pay for school supplies in their classrooms, and a couple of other lesser tax deductions within the Code. So maybe he wants to repeal those extensions. I think those extensions are good policy. If that is his position, that will recover maybe--I don't know, I am not sure how much it would recover off the top of my head, but it would not be a great deal of money, and it certainly would not be enough money to cover this $16 billion which is being proposed. The budget did not, and it is a misrepresentation to come to the floor and represent that it did, extend permanently any rate tax cuts at all. So this argument that, well, we can just do it by changing the budget, by changing the terms as to the way it applies to tax policy is incorrect on its face because there were no permanent extensions. The issue really is this: Within the context of a reasonable budget for national defense and for homeland security, where should the dollars go first? What are the priorities? We made a conscious decision in this bill to focus the dollars on what we saw as the primary threats. I believe, and I was joined by the Senator from West Virginia and I think he agrees, that we should have a threat-based funding approach to the whole issue of homeland security. If one listened to Secretary Chertoff yesterday, that is what he plans to do. What are the priority threats? No. 1, right at the top of the list, unquestionably the most significant threat is the question of weapons of mass destruction. So we have put a significant amount of dollars into trying to increase our capacity to address, first, the detection and, second, a response capability in the area of weapons of mass destruction. No. 2, the second largest threat which we have, in our opinion, is the fact that we have borders which are extraordinarily porous. Madam President, 3 million a year is the estimate of how many people come into this country illegally; 500 million people come into this country legally, and we really do not know a great deal about what their purpose is or what they are doing coming in and out of the country. In fact, we do not know if they are criminals because our databases are not capable of analyzing their entry documentation to determine whether they are some sort of threat or whether they are just citizens from another country who are coming here to enjoy our great Nation. We have committed significant resources in this bill. We have moved more than $600 million from various accounts into border security, specifically putting more feet on the border in the sense of adding many more Border Patrol personnel, giving those Border Patrol personnel the capital structure they need to support themselves, physical infrastructure, adding more detention beds, focusing on upgrading our computer and IT systems relative to entry-exit activity, especially the US-VISIT Program. That is because that is a huge threat. Those are the two huge priority threats on which we focused. The issue of first responders is a priority for us as a nation, but is it the No. 1 item that should be focused on in this bill? No. Is it Homeland Security's first line of activity? Quite honestly, it is not. It is a major line of activity, but the first lines of activity are the ones for which Federal Government is primarily responsible, such as airline safety, border safety, making sure we are ready to deal with weapons of mass destruction. That is why we mention those issues. But in the specific area of first responder accounts, this proposal, which would up the funding in first responders by $16 billion and the proposal of the Senator from Michigan which would up the funding for a new line item, it would create a new line item in first responders of $5 billion for communications assistance, truly is a misallocation of resources. Even if we could afford it, we would not want to put that money into those accounts at that level. Why? Because these groups involved in developing first responder capability are not capable of spending that amount of money. How do we know that? Because we have $7 billion--$3 billion from the year 2004 and $4 billion from the year 2005--sitting in Washington, in the Federal Treasury, which has not gone out yet for first responder funding activity. Why is that? It is because, first, the Department of Homeland Security has some problems, and we are trying to address those in this bill, and we put in specific language to try to change that, and I know Secretary Chertoff has addressed it, but it is larger than that. It is not just the homeland security issue, it is the fact that one of the points the Rudman Commission made, and was even more aggressively made by the Gilmore Commission, which was another high-quality group of people who got together to study this issue, was that until you have a plan for how you are going to spend this money, if you just send it back to the States and to the communities without a plan which they have to follow, all you are doing is revenue sharing. It is going to end up being a plus-up for local agencies. Some will buy new cruisers or buy bomb dogs or just buy dogs, and they will buy whatever they want to buy without any plan or organization. The reason the $7 billion is still in the Treasury instead of out there on the streets helping out the fire, police, and local agencies is that the assessment plans, which are critical to the effort of getting in place a thoughtful approach to first responder funding and how they use these dollars, have not yet been completed. States are still working on assessment plans so they can come forward with these plans, and then the money will go out, and it will be spent in an orderly way instead of a haphazard way. We do not want to get back into the situation we had in the 1970s, where essentially we were sending out hundreds of millions of dollars-- not billions of dollars as we are today--to various groups across the country in the name of better law enforcement. A great deal of it ended up buying equipment and items that turned out to be not only not productive but counterproductive because a lot of interoperability communications was bought with that money when there was no plan overlying that LEA money to require interoperability. So the police department would get a grant for $20,000, $30,000 and go out and buy their system of communications, and then the fire department in the same town would get their $20,000 or $30,000, and they would go out and buy theirs, and neither could talk to each other because there was no plan. The whole concept behind the assessment approach is so we can have a plan so that the civil defense centers in the States--fire in the States, police in the States, first responder health care communities in the States--are all coordinated and the money goes out in a coordinated way, that when it is completed, we actually have a situation where, if there is an incident and these folks who are so committed to making their communities stronger and better have to respond to it, it will be done in a focused and coordinated way pursuant to a plan which has been funded and focused in a coordinated way. First off, the theory behind this, that we can spend another $21 billion because we are spending $30 billion in Iraq is--I think that theory totally disconnects. Secondly, the concept that this may be paid for some day by repealing the budget point on permanent extension of tax cuts is purely incorrect because there were no permanent extensions in the budget. Thirdly, if we are going to spend money on national security in the homeland area, we should spend it on threat-based activity, which is what this bill does. And the threats, in order of priority, put the issue of first responders lower than some of the first responsibilities of Homeland Security, such as border security, airline security, weapons of mass destruction protection, and intelligence-gathering agencies. That is absolutely critical. Fourth, as a practical matter, we can appropriate all this money, but it cannot be spent, so there is no point in appropriating it at this time. Maybe a year from now, maybe 2 years from now, after that $7 billion has come down a little bit. Remember, we are adding another $4 billion to it this year anyway. This bill is not cheap on the side of first responders. We are putting another $4 billion on top of the $7 billion that still has not been spent. When these assessment plans get in place and we start to generate some proper activity that allows this money to be spent in an orderly way and does not get wasted, then we might want to significantly increase this funding because we know it will be effectively used. But right now, to increase this funding just means it is going to sit at the Treasury, instead of being used where it really needs to be used, which is on threats which exist today and which we have to address today, which brings me to the underlying issue of threat because we are going to hear about this again and again. There is going to be an attempt to spend another $1 billion, $2 billion, or $3 billion--I do not know what the final number will be--on mass transit. The key to our capacity to defend ourselves from these terrorists is our capacity to stop them before they get here, and that means we have to have better intelligence and we have to have better border security. When they do get here, the key is to make sure they do not have the opportunity to use their hate and their commitment to trying to kill Americans in a vast way versus in a confined way by stopping them from having weapons of mass destruction or using a vehicle that would allow them to plus up their heinous crimes such as they did on 9/11 when they used airplanes as weapons, as missiles essentially. So it all becomes a matter of order of threat, where the dollars should be. And the No. 1 issue we have to address is better gathering of intelligence, in which Homeland Security has a limited role, but Secretary Chertoff is going to expand that effort; followed by the issue of weapons of mass destruction; followed by border security; followed by the first responsibilities of the Federal Government which are things such as air traffic control and air management; followed by, of course, funding and helping out first responders, which we have done, which is why there is still $7 billion sitting in the bank because we have done it, but the system is not yet ready to effectively handle that money. It will be soon, hopefully. A lot of pressure is being put on both the Department of Homeland Security in this bill and on the State assessment plans to accomplish that. This proposal is maybe well intentioned, but it is misguided at all sorts of different levels. Therefore, I cannot support it. Obviously, even if it were within the budget I would not support it because this is not where we need to allocate resources at this time at this level of activity. I make my point of order at this time that under section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act the amendment provides spending in excess of the subcommittee's 302(b) allocation.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, if I can get the attention of the Senator from New York, as I understand it, we reached an understanding on your amendment No. 1184, as modified. Are you going to send a modification to the desk? We can just agree to it now.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator's amendment No. 1184 be agreed to.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I have sent the amendment to the desk on behalf of Senator Ensign. I do not necessarily support this amendment as the chairman of the subcommittee, but as a courtesy to the Senator, I wanted to send it up to get him in the queue. We look forward to having other Senators bring amendments forward, and we will try to assist them in getting time and votes. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. GREGG. Thank you. Today, Mr. President, we are going to try to continue to move forward on the Homeland Security appropriations bill. I hope Members, if they have amendments, will bring them to the floor so we can expedite this bill. I understand there are a number of Members who do intend to come to the floor, and we will look forward to entertaining their ideas. Amendment No. 1124 Initially, Mr. President, let me send to the desk an amendment on behalf of Senator Ensign. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. GREGG. I ask that the amendment be reported.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator from Michigan yield?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, what is the regular order under the bill? What is the pending amendment?

Mr. GREGG. My hope is that we can accept the amendments of the Senator from Colorado, then we will have further discussion of the pending amendment of the Senator from Michigan, probably with a point of order being made at that point, and then we would turn to the Senator from Massachusetts for up to 15 minutes. That is the game plan, hopefully. So when the Senator from Michigan completes her statement, I will proceed with that proposal.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I wish to respond to the Senator from Michigan, but prior to doing that, I yield to the Senator from Colorado so we can straighten out his amendments. Amendments Nos. 1209 and 1210, As Modified

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the second- degree amendment offered by Senator Hatch be agreed to.

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

Mr. GREGG. This is $16 billion, $16 billion into an account where there presently is sitting $7 billion in the bank. We as a nation obviously have a lot of vulnerabilities because we are an open society. I wish we could cover them all. But the simple fact is there is not enough money to cover them all. We need to prioritize. This bill does that. This amendment basically flies in the face of good utilization of the dollars because we simply could not spend these types of dollars if they were appropriated effectively. They may get spent but not effectively, in our opinion. It is much more appropriate to look at addressing weapons of mass destruction, border patrol, airline security, and to make sure we have in place the proper systems in order to protect the homeland through these assessment programs which are going forward before we put a large amount of money--$16 billion, which would be half the budget of the Homeland Security agency--into new spending initiatives or additional spending initiatives, the $4 billion in the bill and the $7 billion in the pipeline. The point of order has been made. This is a motion to waive it. This amendment would add $16 billion to the deficit. We do not think it would accomplish what its purpose is.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 10 a.m. tomorrow, the Senate proceed to a series of votes in relation to the following amendments or motions where pending; further, that no second- degree amendments be in order to any of the amendments prior to the votes, and that there be 2 minutes equally divided for debate prior to each vote; finally, that the first vote in the series be 15 minutes, with the remaining votes in the series limited to 10 minutes each. The first amendment will be Senators Ensign and McCain second-degree amendment No. 1219; the second amendment will be Senator Schumer's amendment No. 1189; third will be Senator Schumer's amendment No. 1190; fourth will be Senator McCain's amendment No. 1171, as modified, as amended by the Hatch amendment; and fifth will be Senator Stabenow's amendment No. 1217.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, at this time I call up amendment No. 1172 on behalf of Senator Thomas and ask it be reported.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, at this point I raise 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. GREGG. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate stand in recess until 4 o'clock.

Mr. GREGG

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