Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be agreed to.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, the regular order is the Baucus amendment; is that correct?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Baucus amendment be set aside and that the Byrd amendment be returned as the regular order. It is amendment No. 4620.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be agreed to.

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, the unmanned aerial vehicle program is something the subcommittee is supportive of. This concept of having one on the northern border is something we also support. The Senators have a good amendment. I think the addition of language on the FAA makes it an operable amendment. If FAA were not engaged, it would not be an operable amendment. It merges well with the initiative in the bill which is to stand up the northern airway, which initiative Senators Burns, Dorgan, Conrad, and Baucus asked be started. This bill funds two aircraft out of North Dakota to make sure that we have manned aircraft on the border. So this is an attempt to tool up the northern border. It is something that is going to take a lot more work. Certainly in the long run there is going to have to be more than one unmanned vehicle on the northern border. There will have to be quite a few. As was mentioned by Senator Baucus, the northern border appears to have a high risk of terrorists coming across it. We know numerous instances now of the northern border being used for potential terrorist crossings. Therefore, we cannot ignore that border; we are not ignoring the border. But the issues there are a lot different than the southern border because of the length of the border. In fact, it is heavily wooded wilderness and difficult terrain to surveil. So I believe these unmanned vehicles will be critical in the long run. I congratulate the Senators for bringing this amendment forward. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be accepted.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we await further amendments. The Senator from Illinois wishes to speak as in morning business.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, it is my understanding that the Senator from New York is going to offer an amendment at this time. I ask unanimous consent that the time between now and 5 o'clock be divided as follows: The Senator from New York have 40 minutes and that I have 15 minutes in opposition. I think that adds up to the right time-- actually, now, it doesn't--that I have 20 minutes in opposition. Whatever is left after 40 minutes, that is what I have in opposition, and at 5 o'clock we proceed to a vote on the amendment of the Senator. There will be 40 minutes for the Senator from New York, 20 minutes will be reserved to myself, and at the conclusion of that time we will proceed to a vote, or earlier should the time be yielded back on the time of the Senator from New York.

Mr. GREGG. This is on the Clinton amendment?

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

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, let me begin by saying that when I read the article that was in the paper about the decision to basically transfer a significant amount of dollars from New York and Washington, I was surprised and quite shocked. I said to myself: That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Because I think most of us understand that New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, and a couple of other spots which are probably better not to mention, are truly the No. 1 targets. Certainly, New York is at the top of every list, as is the city of Washington. So I thought: Why are we doing that? Or why was the Department doing that? They did not advise us, obviously. I looked into it, and they have a peer-review process for the application of these funds. All these funds go out under a threat-based concept. This has been the insistence of this committee. There are funds that do go out under the formula. I do not happen to be a big fan of the formula. It is not a lot of funds compared to the entire block of funds. But the vast majority of the funds flow out on the basis of threat-based decisions. Now, what happened was, of the 46 cities that were in competition for these funds, New York came in 44th and the District of Columbia came in 42nd in evaluation of their proposals. And their proposals, in fact, were just plain poorly written; not only poorly written, they were poorly structured, and they did not have behind them the backup that was necessary to make them viable proposals. In that context, the decision was made to take these funds and move them over to other applicants who had put in better proposals. I guess if I had been managing the Department, what I would have said is: Listen, we know that Washington and New York are the primary targets. We also know these proposals, as they came forward, were just not very good proposals and really did not accomplish the goals we are seeking in the issue of addressing threat and effectiveness. And effectiveness should be part of this. We should not take effectiveness out because there is no point sending money out if we are not going to get results for it. Probably, if I had been in charge, had the magic wand, I would have said, escrow this money until we can work with these two cities, and regions in the case of New York and Washington, and get the plans in order. But that is not the decision that was made. The decision was made to move the dollars to other locales. So there are equities, in my opinion, in the arguments made by the Senators from New York and the Senators from Maryland and New Jersey. And the equities are strong enough that we actually put language in our report that requests that the Department place a higher priority on risk and that they focus on dealing with this type of a situation. And I am certainly expecting it will not happen again the way it happened this year. But that is not the essence of this amendment. The essence of this amendment offered by the Senator from New York is to increase funding above our allocation--I guess it claims it as an emergency--and to basically put additional dollars on the table for the purposes of these types of threat-based grants. Now, I think it is important to understand that since we started this program we have put $14.6 billion into the pipeline to try to assist the cities and areas of highest risk, and that in this bill we have $2.4 billion to accomplish that. That is a lot of money. And of that money, only $6.1 billion has actually been taken down. In other words, there is still literally close to $9 billion when you consider this year of money available to address these issues. And to put another big chunk of money on top of that, really, I do not think is going to improve the situation from the standpoint of what New York and Washington are concerned about, because I think there is enough money in the pipeline to accomplish much of what they desire. The right way to correct this problem relative to New York and Washington is to have the Department understand these are the priority sites, and that if the proposals coming in from these two regions are not of a quality that give the Department confidence that the money is going to go out and be used effectively, then they should sit down with these two regions and work out the process so we do it right--escrow the money, sit down, work out the problem, figure out how the money can be used so everybody knows it is being use effectively. So that would be the way I would resolve this issue. To simply put more money in the pipeline, when we have this much money in the pipeline, I do not think is going to resolve it. For all we know, they might still not get the money if they went through this same approval process they had this year. Hopefully, they won't. I did note comments by the mayor of New York--and I respect him for this-- where he said he recognized the proposal they sent down here was not up to snuff. That is my characterization, but that is the way I read it. And he is right. It was not. But that did not mean they should not have gotten the money. It should have meant the Department should have sat down with them and figured out how to get it right. However, that is, as they say, history. As we have moved forward, I believe we have put in adequate language to make it clear. And certainly this floor discussion, I hope, illuminates the issue further, that we expect these two regions to receive the resources which are in the pipeline, and to receive them in a robust way, but under the condition that the various programs which they send down here have been worked through so both sides have confidence the money is going to be used effectively. I will, however, have to make a point of order against this amendment from the Senator from New York because I do not believe the best approach at this time is to simply bust the budget, put more money in the pipeline, declaring an emergency, in order to address what was really a programmatic issue and a failure of communication, to be quite honest--a massive failure--between the city of New York and the city of Washington and the Department of Homeland Security as to how they should have handled the funds which were in the pipeline. So when the proper time comes, I will make a point of order that this amendment busts the budget and is not an appropriate use of the emergency designation. Amendment No. 4587 As to Senator Schumer's amendment, which is a follow-on to Senator Biden's amendment, I would just renew the comments I made under Senator Biden's amendment. We have again increased the funding for rail. It is not anywhere near where I would like to be able to put it, but it is an increase. But, more importantly, there is a large amount of money again in the pipeline coming through the funding for Amtrak--$770 million, which is available for capital improvement. On top of that, it is very interesting, if this is such a high priority, why has the discretionary money which we are sending to these major metropolitan communities been used in such a minor way to address rail security? The average, I believe I said earlier, was like 2 percent, and in New York's case they are using 8 percent of their discretionary money for rail security. They get a huge amount of money. In fact, New York--and I think this should be mentioned for part of the Record--gets dramatically more money; even when they lost the funds in this competitive grant process, they still get, I think, about twice what any other community gets, twice what any other community in the country gets. And they deserve it, quite honestly. They are where the basic threat is. So I do not begrudge them that. But the fact is, they get a large amount of resources, and they could take much more than 8 percent of those resources and put them toward rail, if they wanted to. But they do not. And to simply put more money on top of this, and, thus, once again go well beyond our allocation, is a mistake and not the fiscally prudent thing to do, nor is it the best way to approach the threat in the context of the dollars which are coming from other areas and can be used to address the threat--such as the underlying Amtrak funding, such as the grants program, which is billions of dollars, and the basic funding in this bill for rail security. So I will also make a point of order against that amendment. I have suggested--and I suggested it to Senator Biden and to Senator Schumer--if rail really feels it needs a significant increase in resources, they could do it the same way the airlines have done it, by assessing a fee on passengers. That is how we pay for the airlines. That is how we are paying, basically, for TSA. A $5 fee would generate, essentially, the number that Senator Biden wanted. About a third of that would generate the number that Senator Schumer feels is necessary. And that is one way they could redress their issue and still stay within the budget, if they felt it was that important a question. Amendment No. 4576 So at this point, Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time, unless the Senator from New York--she used up all her time. I didn't know if the Senator wanted to respond to anything I said.

Mr. GREGG. Does the Senator want any of my time to respond or is the Senator all set?

Mr. GREGG. I yield the Senator 2 minutes of my time.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I raise a point of order against the pending amendment because it would cause the bill to violate section 302(f) of the Budget Act.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we now move to the Schumer amendment. At the conclusion of the debate, I reserve the right to make a point of order against the Schumer amendment. I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes equally divided.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator from New York yield? I believe we had a 1-minute agreement.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, also in the interest of moving things along, the debate in opposition to this amendment has been made relative to the Biden amendment. It is basically a ``little Biden,'' and it is in excess of the ability of this committee to fund it at the levels being suggested. Pursuant to the deeming language in Public Law 109-234, I raise a point of order against the emergency designation in the pending amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I raise a point of order against the pending amendment. The amendment would cause the bill to violate section 302 of the Budget Act.

Mr. GREGG. I raise a point of order the amendment would cause the bill to violate section 302 of the Budget Act.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, the game plan now is to recognize the Senator from New Jersey to speak on his amendment. Then we will go to the Senator from Alabama to speak on amendments which he is going to offer. There will not be any more votes tonight. Those will be the only amendments offered this evening. I will formally ask unanimous consent to that point. Then tomorrow morning we hope to structure it so we begin voting around 10 or 10:30, initially on the amendment of the Senator from New Jersey and potentially, or hopefully, on the amendment of the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Pennsylvania, which they will have a chance to debate in the morning prior to the amendments. Then, around 12 o'clock, we know we are going to have an amendment offered by the Senator from Ohio and we will go to that amendment. In the interim, there will also be an issue of the amendments of the Senator from Alabama and other amendments which people may wish to bring forward. At this time I ask unanimous consent the Senator from New Jersey be recognized, followed by the Senator from Alabama, to offer their amendments, and that those be the only amendments offered this evening, and at the conclusion of the debate on their amendments we go to a period of morning business.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. GREGG. I am intrigued by the amendment. We have worked very hard on the committee to have a threat-based funding formula, so that is my goal. I have no problem with the reduction to 2.5 even though it would prejudice my own State. But my view is that the target should be where the funding goes. I just wanted to be sure that when the Senator uses those terms of art here, that it is not his intention to undermine the capacity of peer review groups to look at the issue. The Senator used the term ``unless all such grants are allocated based on threat, vulnerability, and consequence to the maximum extent practical,'' which seem to be pretty good words of art. For the record, I would like to make it clear that the Senator is not trying to adjust the peer review process which looks at threat and effectiveness of the plan. Is that correct?

Mr. GREGG. In light of that, I probably will support the amendment, although I suspect there are others who will oppose the reduction of 2.5. In any event, I think the amendment is a good amendment.