Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the yeas and nays on this amendment be vitiated and Senators agree to take it by voice vote.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield a minute to the junior Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. GREGG. How much time remains on the measure?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the amendment of the Senator from West Virginia. I understand the personal involvement and concern he has for the mine safety in his State and the extraordinary tragedies they have experienced. I hope there is a way we can work this amendment out. In its present form it does raise taxes to pay for it, which I will not be able to support, but I am hopeful we can work something out. I yield back the balance of our time in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. GREGG. The next amendment in order, I believe, is the amendment of the Senator from Georgia.

Mr. GREGG. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. GREGG. I don't believe there is opposition. The Senator from Missouri is ready to go and then we go to the Senator from Washington for her amendment.

Mr. GREGG. It is my understanding the Senator from New York and the Senator from New Jersey wish to speak, and the junior Senator from New Jersey only has 2 minutes remaining or something like that?

Mr. GREGG. I don't think she is speaking on this amendment.

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

Mr. GREGG. My understanding was the Senator from New York wanted 2 minutes and the Senator from New Jersey wanted 2 minutes. Does the junior Senator from New Jersey desire more time?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, in a second we are going to go to the Senator from Ohio, who is going to speak relative to the resolution. But I want to quickly respond. The Senator from Washington has proposed an amendment which raises the cap, and it raises taxes. There is a better way to do it. The better way is Senator Santorum's amendment, which will come tomorrow, which says we identify CDBG as a priority, and within the caps we find the money for CDBG recognizing we may have to do an across-the-board cut of other accounts. That is the right way to do this. It sets priorities. The Senator from Washington is the ranking member on the appropriating committee which will have responsibility for this. Historically that committee has always funded this account. They have always found this to be a priority, and they have always found the money to do it. I do not think that history is going to change this year. I do think Senator Santorum has the right way to do this. We should not be passing a tax-and-spend amendment, which is what this amounts to. At this point, I will yield back the remainder of the time in opposition to the Murray amendment and yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum. I ask unanimous consent that the time be allocated equally to both sides.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we yield back the remainder of our time on the Akaka amendment. I believe the next amendment in order will be the Talent-Cantwell amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, there is 30 minutes on her amendment, equally divided.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, this amendment, as the Senator from New Jersey mentioned at the end, raises taxes. It raises the cap, so it spends a lot more money. And in the context of overall port security, although it makes a statement, it is not necessarily going to do a whole lot more than what we are doing already. There is, of course, because of the Dubai Ports World situation, a human cry for more port security. We have attempted over the last few years to try to address port security, and there is still a lot more to do. But there has been a very large commitment to port security, and there has been a lot done. Over $10 billion has been committed to port security since 9/11. By next year, 2007, 85 percent of all cargo coming into the United States will be screened. We have in place at the 42 largest shipping ports that ship to the United States significant infrastructure which actually checks the cargo that is going on those ships. What has happened here is that there has been a decision made, and it is the right decision, that the best way to protect ourselves is not to wait for the cargo, the container to end up on a shipping dock in Newark or a shipping dock in Long Beach, but to have that container checked before it gets on the boat that is going to bring it across the ocean to Long Beach or to Newark. So a huge amount of infrastructure commitment, people and personnel and technology, is being put into that goal. Of course, it doesn't get scored as port grants, which is what this amendment is offering up, a port grant. Rather, it actually does what the port grant money can't do: it gives us offshore protection of cargo coming into the United States. As I said, by 2007, as a result of this initiative, 85 percent of all cargo will be screened. In addition, the Coast Guard has been tooled up so that it can actually physically go out and stop a container vessel or a tanker on the open ocean if it is concerned that the vessel is coming from a port that doesn't have adequate security relative to the loading of the ship, or if it has some other concern, such as information that the ship might have some threatening cargo. We have put in place an outer curtain, which the Coast Guard is pursuing. So a lot has been done. Not only has a lot been done, but we are still doing more. In the last budget from Homeland Security, we dramatically increased port security funding for this type of a grant program that the Senator from New Jersey has proposed. In this budget, we propose $2 billion of new spending for border security, which can be used for port security in the underlying budget over what the President asked for, and then we proposed another $2 billion of border security which can be used for port issues in the supplemental budget, which runs parallel to this basic budget. So that is $4 billion of new funds which are going to flow into border security, of which a fair amount will go into the ports. So the commitment has been significant and continues to be significant, and it is hard to claim that we aren't actually starting to get results from what we are buying. A lot of this port grant money, on the other hand, which goes to the port that is in place, that goes to the facility on American soil, is ending up, unfortunately--maybe not so much going to--it is going to security needs, but it is going to security needs which traditionally would have been paid for by the managers of these ports. Basically what they are doing is they are taking the Federal grant money, and instead of building a fence, which they should have built anyway and they needed anyway, or instead of building major lighting which they needed and should have put in place anyway out of their own funds, they are replacing those funds with Federal dollars and using Federal dollars to do what they should have done anyway. So there is an issue there as to whether we are getting the most bang for the buck through the Port Security Grant Program. But, in any event, independent of that, to represent that this has not been a very robust effort in the area of port security is wrong. Is there a way to go? Of course there is a way to go. The Senator from New Jersey is suggesting that we should physically inspect every cargo container coming into the United States. We don't physically inspect every car that comes across our border. We don't physically inspect every individual who comes across our border, or every piece of luggage that comes across our border. And there is a reason for that. It is called: You can't do it and still have an economy that is going to function. What we do, however, is set up a very aggressive regime at these various ports around the world that are shipping to us, especially the major ports where we check for what we think is the most threatening potential cargo, which we all know what it is. And we are expanding that regime out beyond those shipping ports to the actual place where the containers are filled and putting in place certification programs which are reviewed and which have on-the-ground inspection capability. Is there more to do? Yes, there is more to do, no question about it. But the point is, this budget assumes there is more to do and puts the money in it to do more, significantly more. However, this is the cause du jour--I recognize that--and the relevance of what is actually being done isn't considered. The relevance of the money that is in the pipeline isn't considered. It simply becomes an issue of throw more money at it and therefore claim that we are resolving the problem faster. As a practical matter, the $4 billion that we have allocated towards border security in this bill is a huge increase, and it significantly increases accounts. The $10 billion that we have already put into this effort is showing results, and we are on the path to a very organized approach toward how we deal with our ports. We intend to do more, and we believe we have funded that adequately in this bill. However, I know there are going to be additional amendments. I think the leader has an amendment on this point which is at least paid for directly. The biggest problem with this amendment is it is not only a large number, especially in the context of the $4 billion that is already there on top of that, but it is a number that is paid for with a tax increase. I do not believe increasing taxes is the right way to go, nor do I believe breaking the cap is the right way to go. Mr. President, how much time is remaining on this amendment?

Mr. GREGG. I yield back our time.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I greatly respect the Senator from Michigan. I especially respect and appreciate her dedication to trying to make sure we straighten out this issue of interoperability because she clearly has identified it as a critical issue in the area of first responders. And we know it is. We know it has to be addressed. I don't, however, agree with the approach she is taking, which is essentially to put significantly more dollars into the pipeline. Why? Basically for this reason: In the last budget process, the Commerce-State-Justice committee put $2 billion of additional money into the interoperability pipeline. Then in the deficit reduction bill, which no Democrats voted for, but this was not the big item that caused that to happen-- actually, I am sorry, I think two Democrats voted for it--we put an additional billion dollars into interoperability. And really a large part of that was in response to some of the points that have been made by the Senator from Michigan. So she has done a pretty good job of energizing money flowing into these accounts--in fact, so much so that when you tie that in with the first responder funds which are already in the pipeline, $5 billion of which have not been drawn down yet, which funds will go disproportionately, I suspect, toward interoperability issues, easily being a plurality the way the funds will be spent, if not a majority of the way the funds will be spent, you literally have a huge amount of money in the pipeline headed out to the States, to communities for the purposes of addressing the issue of interoperability. The problem isn't dollars right now. The problem is the technical ability of different agencies to agree on an interoperable standard. Every State sees it. You certainly see it across State lines where State police organizations have trouble communicating with local police organizations and fire departments have a different system than the other police in the community. And then the Federal agencies on top of that--Customs, Immigration, FBI, ATF--have problems communicating with the State people. The county people have problems communicating with the State people. They have all, over the years, bought different systems. There is already in place a massive amount of communications equipment out there, and you can't just replace it all. We could never afford to do that. You have to create an atmosphere where, as they either upgrade or they change or they basically agree to try to work together, there is a system to accomplish that. The problem we have today is that those systems are not in place. Most of the State plans we have received that involve interoperability as an element--every State plan has interoperability as one of its priorities--have not been executed because of the fact that they can't figure out how to do interoperability. Literally, they have been negotiating now for 5 or 6 years on a regime, an understanding, a protocol for general interoperability, and they can't reach agreement. What is happening is--and the Senator from Michigan makes this point, too. I don't know if she did in her statement; I regrettably had to leave the Chamber--there is a lot of inventiveness out there. We have turned loose the creative juices of America on this because there is a lot of money in the pipeline, and a lot of people want to participate in it. There are a lot of good ideas coming up quickly as to how to do interoperability without having to do massive hardware changes, and how you can get different systems built by different contractors to communicate with each other. They are not in place yet, but the dollars are there to buy them. A lot of money is there to buy them. We do not need this money at this time. At some point in the future, we are going to need the money--when the house starts to get in order and there is a sugaring off of what the proper technology is and maybe there is an agreement on a national standard or something, then we will need some more money. We will put more money in at that time. To put more money in at this time is unnecessary, to be very honest. I am afraid we will simply overwhelm the system with dollars and end up with a lot of blue lights and cruisers being purchased and not a lot of good, standardized, interoperable communications systems. That is one reason I oppose it. The other reason I oppose the amendment is it would raise the caps. I don't think we should be raising the caps in this budget. I made that case about 15 times in the last 2 days, so I won't state that case. It is a pretty valid case. We are opposed to this amendment. I appreciate the energy of the Senator from Michigan on this issue. I think she has had an impact already, and I believe it is reflected in the fact that there is so much money presently in the pipeline. But it has not been spent. Until there is a better plan to spend it, I don't think we need additional funds. I yield back our time on this amendment. I think the Senator's time has expired; is that correct?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are ready to go to the next amendment. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I believe there was a unanimous consent agreement that the Bingaman amendment would run until 3 o'clock, and then we would start voting. I believe the time was to be equally divided between the proponents and the opponents. So my understanding would be the Senator from New Mexico would have about half of that time. I think it started at about 2:25, so the Senator from New Mexico would have half of 35 minutes. Was that not the understanding that was reached? I thought it was the understanding reached.

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. This is an amendment to make corrections to the resolution so it conforms to the resolution as ordered reported by the committee. It has been agreed to by both sides. I ask unanimous consent that it be agreed to.

Mr. GREGG. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I understand that will be equally divided.