Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, again, I thank Senator Wyden. It was a pleasure for us and our staffs to work with him and his staff. As I said, this is a substantial accomplishment. I particularly enjoyed the Senator's reference to the late, great Senator Pat Moynihan. I have a vision of Pat in Heaven smiling right now. I can see that smile. He is probably not wearing that hat that we all loved so much at the time. The important thing here is this is a right of appeal, if you will, regarding the President's power to classify documents. That is a right that will exist in a limited number of Members of Congress, interestingly and importantly, of both parties. The ultimate beneficiaries, of course, are the American people. Members of Congress have access to matters that are fully classified. So this is really the public's right to know. If these Members of Congress decide that the public has a right to know, ought to have a right to know the content of something that has been classified, they will have the right to appeal to this board for review. It is a very finely balanced compromise that is substantial, real, and preserves the President's right as Commander in Chief to have the final word. So this was real legislating in the public interest. I thank the Senator and his cosponsors for the leadership and persistence that brought this matter to the floor and results now in this agreement which I think will receive unanimous consent from the Senate.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment. I thank Senator Coleman for submitting it. The Homeland Security Council was, as I recall, created by the President and then made into statute as part of the Homeland Security Act that created the Department of Homeland Security. It was meant to be an advisory board to the Secretary of Homeland Security and also a place to which the Secretary could bring representatives of other departments that might not be in the security community normally, such as the Department of Health and Human Services, in terms of bioterrorism, for instance. So I think it has played an important role. The 9/11 Commission report very gently recommended that we consider merging the Homeland Security Council into the National Security Council. Senator Coleman raises a concern that I think is justified as to, one, whether all of these items ought to be on the agenda of the National Security Council, which is already quite busy; two, that this council has a constructive role to play uniquely for the Department of Homeland Security, and insofar as one of the thoughts behind the Commission's suggestion was that merging the Homeland Security Council into the National Security Council would provide a forum where disputes between departments could be resolved, the President, of course, always reserves the right to call the heads of the relevant departments together to do that. So the long and the short of it is, I think it is too early to--what was the Mark Twain line? The rumors of my death are premature, or something like that. I think the same could be said of the Homeland Security Council. There is a reason for it to live on. Senator Coleman's amendment achieves that, and I support it.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, the Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden, along with a very impressive bipartisan group of cosponsors, introduced an amendment of real import 2 days ago. We said we would try very hard to work it out. I am quite delighted and grateful that we have worked it out in a way that is acceptable to all involved and it accomplishes a very significant public purpose. I thank the Senator from Oregon for all he did to bring us to that point. I happily yield the floor to him.

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

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank the chairman. That is certainly my hope. I am grateful that all the parties have come together about this amendment. I think we have a solution that doesn't create another board but does realize the goals that Senator Wyden and the other bipartisan sponsors of the amendment have, to have a reasonable means of asking for a second look, if I can put it that way, at a classification decision made by the executive branch with regard to congressional access to intelligence information. I am very pleased about that and I hope we can get the language here and do it this afternoon. I also say to our colleagues how important is the announcement made earlier today by the bipartisan leadership, Senator Frist and Senator Daschle. I hope people will respond to it. First, I thank the two of them for the extent to which they have worked in support of the effort Senator Collins and I are making and that they are together in support of the effort, which is exactly the standard that needs to be set as we work on this critical national security matter. Second, there is a clear message, which is that Senator Frist and Senator Daschle may together move to invoke cloture unless there is a steady movement of Senators to the floor introducing their amendments, because there is an excessive--there is an indication of an intention to file over 200 amendments. Senator Frist has made clear that we are not going to depart from Washington until we finish this bill and take action on the report of the working group, led by Senators McConnell and Reid, with regard to reform of congressional oversight of intelligence, as urged on us by the 9/11 Commission. I am very grateful for that statement of policy by the leadership. We ought not leave here until the Senate completes its work on these two critically important matters. These are urgent. There would simply be no excuse to our constituents, to the American people at large, to have left for political campaigns while the Nation is under clear and present danger of terrorist attack, with a certain unsettling imminence suggested as we lead up to our national elections. I join with Senator Collins in thanking our colleagues who have come to the floor with amendments; those, as was the case with Senators McCain and Burns, who worked out a very significant and real compromise on what could have been a long distraction on the road to adopting our proposal. I hope people will now come to the floor. We will be here for a while more today. Obviously, we will be here tomorrow. Leadership told us we will be here Friday and Monday. The sooner we get these amendments in and consider them and dispose of them, the sooner we are going to pass this bill, move on to legislative reform, and recess. With thanks for the pace we are setting so far and for the support we are receiving, I urge Members who have amendments to come to the floor and offer them at this time. We are open for business. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am proud to be a cosponsor of this amendment with Senator McCain. It is part of legislation that we introduced early in September, along with Senators Specter and Bayh and others, to implement all the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. This definitely complements the core of the proposal that Senator Collins and I and the members of the Governmental Affairs Committee made to the full Senate. The underlying bill would make historic changes to reform our intelligence community to do the best job we possibly can of knowing where our terrorist enemies are, what they are planning, and to strike at them before they can strike at us based on that intelligence. We have to be prepared for occasions when terrorist attacks may succeed. That is exactly what this measure is all about. It is preparing our local communities to join in the prevention of attacks and then to improve the public and private infrastructures to be ready to respond in the best possible way. The 9/11 Commission recognized that even big cities with first responders and public service systems that are highly well regarded can be overwhelmed by a terrorist attack as we saw on September 11. That is why this amendment would encourage people to come together, to work together to coordinate the capabilities of each of their communities into a greater unified force. This amendment would, therefore, help promote integrated emergency command systems that give an array of response agencies at the local level clear roles and leadership in the event of a crisis. Specifically, it encourages the Department of Homeland Security to condition its terrorism preparedness grants on evidence that the communities are adopting a so-called incident command system, a coordinated system which I have seen in effect in communities in Connecticut and around the country. The amendment also calls on the Department of Homeland Security to help create emergency community capabilities in urban areas that are most likely to be targeted for terrorist attacks. This is the complement to the agreement between Senators McCain and Burns we just adopted. Finally, the amendment urges the Secretary of Defense to regularly report on the plans and strategies of NORTHCOM, the northern command, the new command designed to defend, through the military, the U.S. homeland. We want to know more about the role envisioned for NORTHCOM, to ensure that the unique capabilities of the DOD are well organized, prepared, and available should the President need to activate them for the defense of our homeland. Together these provisions are going to bolster our defenses against terrorism, even as the underlying bill--if I can put it this way--works to strengthen our offense, which is the offense of the best, most coordinated intelligence system we can have. I strongly urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Before I yield the floor, if there is no further debate, I believe this is a noncontroversial amendment, though a substantial one, and I urge its adoption.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 3774

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I join with the Senator from Mississippi in thanking and congratulating Senator McCain and Senator Burns for this agreement. I also thank Senator Lott for his part in securing this agreement. I know he was very helpful. They really reached not only an amicable but a meaningful compromise on how to accomplish one of the goals of the 9/11 Commission, which in its report describes the consequences of the inability of public safety officials to communicate at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. The Commission recommended, specifically, that the Congress ``support pending legislation which provides for the expedited and increased assignment of radio spectrum for public safety purposes.'' Senator McCain offered an amendment. The potential existed not only for disagreement about it but for very long debate which would have made it hard for the Senate to move forward expeditiously on the urgent underlying legislation. Senator Burns and Senator McCain have reached an agreement which is meaningful. It gets something done. I might say, I hope and believe that it may set a precedent for other amendments pending. There are a lot of people who have said we face some intractable issues on this bill, but here we see clear evidence we can work through these issues and, in that sense, set a precedent for how we can work through the other pending issues on this bill. I thank everyone involved. I will strongly support the amendment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I also rise to oppose this amendment by the Senator from Pennsylvania. This is, as Senator Collins has indicated, a matter we discussed in what I thought was a very thoughtful discussion in our committee deliberation on a similar amendment. There are good arguments on both sides. The objective here is to balance the independence we want our national intelligence director to have with the importance of having a trusting relationship with the President of the United States. In the end, I concluded it would be wrong to give a fixed term to the national intelligence director for the reason to which I just heard Senator Collins refer. Remember, we have given the national intelligence director two main responsibilities. One is to administer the intelligence community. The other is to be the principal intelligence adviser to the President of the United States. In fact, one could argue, although the national intelligence director as administrator has many customers, if you will, for intelligence, the No. 1 customer is the President of the United States as President and certainly as Commander in Chief. So that is a relationship that must be a trusting relationship. The danger is that an incoming President will be given someone in whom he does not have that kind of confidence. Unfortunately, history-- recent history--gives us an example of that, without attributing blame. President Clinton and then-Director of the FBI, Mr. Freeh, had a relationship that was not mutually confident, and, therefore, he had somebody in that critical position who had very little contact with the President of the United States. He was Director of the FBI, not the principal personal intelligence adviser in the sense of giving advice personally to the President of the United States. The concern about the independence of the national intelligence adviser is an important one. I feel very strongly that in this bill Senator Collins and I offer, and our committee offers to the Senate, we have done a lot to protect the independence of the national intelligence director. For instance, contrary to the original proposal of the 9/11 Commission, which proposed that this office of the national intelligence director be in the White House, we said no, that may raise questions and in fact problems with regard to the independence of the NID if he or she is just down the hall from the President. That ought to be out of the Executive Office of the President and established as an independent agency. We went well beyond that in a title particularly that was added in our committee, most of the work of which was done by Senator Levin, which is all about the independence of the office, the objectivity of the intelligence that the adviser, the director gives to the President, to the country, to the agencies he serves, independence even to the extent that we say the national intelligence director should be like the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in this sense: that he does not need administration approval to testify before Congress, does not need his testimony cleared, if you will, by the OMB. So there is a lot built in here that is meant to guarantee, as best a statute can, the independence of this office, without hamstringing--if that is the right phrase here--a President with a national intelligence director in whom he does not have trust or in whom he loses trust as time goes on. But this is that critical a position. I would not want to give a national intelligence director a set term any more than I would want to give a Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Director of OMB, or National Security Adviser fixed terms. These are positions that must every day be filled by people who enjoy the confidence and trust of the President of the United States. For that reason, I oppose the amendment and urge our colleagues to do so as well.

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

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I also urge opposition to the Specter amendment. The fact is, our committee has found a balance. We have created someone in charge of the intelligence community who is not there now, giving that person the authority Senator Collins has referred to, but leaving line control over the agencies of the intelligence community, including the Department of Defense, within the Department of Defense and those existing agencies. The fact is, this amendment goes too far and goes too far politically because if this amendment should pass, this bill is not going to go anywhere in the House, and we will end up leaving ourselves vulnerable.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, before the Senator from Ohio leaves the floor, I want to thank him. Although we disagree on the Specter amendment, his questions have illuminated the details of the underlying Governmental Affairs Committee proposal in a way that I as one of the sponsors feel shows a balance, which is we are trying to do something the 9/11 Commission says we urgently and desperately need to do, which is to fill the gap where the Commission said there is no one in charge of America's intelligence today--a lot of great assets but no one in charge. It is like an army without a general or a football team without a quarterback. So we are creating a national intelligence director. We are giving that position, that strength, which the current director of Central Intelligence doesn't have. We are separating that position from the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. But we are not giving the director line authority over the constituent agencies. He is going to be there to call the plays, if you will, to resolve conflicts, to make sure all the assets of the intelligence community--here we do have totally shared goals--are serving the national interest and all of the customers of the intelligence community and, most importantly, serving the President of the United States who represents the national interest, but not in control with line authority over the constituent agencies. As has been said, we think that will make, and the 9/11 Commission said it will create, a top-heavy organization. We don't need to do it. I am quoting Secretary of State Powell's statement which he made to us on September 13 when he testified at a hearing. He said: The director of central intelligence was there before but the DCI did not have that kind of authority. I add parenthetically that is the authority we are giving the national intelligence director. Colin Powell said: In this town, it is budget authority that counts. Can you move money? Can you set standards for people? Do you have the access needed to the President? The NID will have all of that. I think this is a far more powerful player, and that will help the State Department. There is a substantial transformation of what exists now. But it doesn't remove day-to-day control over operations from the individual departments. It is that balance that is part of the strength of our proposal, I submit to my colleagues. There are those on both sides who are unhappy about our balance. Senator Specter is stating it much too simplistically and we didn't go far enough to give power to the NID, so his amendment would effectively create a secretary of intelligence with line control over all the constituent parts of the intelligence community. There will be other amendments from people who feel we have gone too far, particularly with regard to the Department of Defense, because in fact we do change budget control authority from the Department of Defense to the national intelligence director, to strengthen that position for exactly the reason Secretary Powell says, acknowledging that the intelligence director serves the President and the entire Government insofar as Government agencies need good intelligence, including the State Department. And the Secretary effectively said to us, he explicitly said, he is confident that the State Department will get more and better intelligence which it needs to advise the President on the conduct of our foreign policy. It is critical. Obviously, the needs for the Defense Department and warfighters are also critical, but they are not the only ones who need intelligence in our Government. The new director will, I think, better be able to satisfy all of those customers for the best possible intelligence. I think it has been a helpful debate. I hope our colleagues who are not on the floor are keeping an ear to the debate, or at least their staff is, because it reminds me of some of the debates we had in the Governmental Affairs Committee which ultimately led us to a point where there were many disagreements along the way, with almost 50 amendments filed, where the bill was reported out of committee on a nonpartisan vote, unanimous vote. I don't have explicit hopes that will happen in the full Senate, but I look forward to as thoughtful an exchange as we have just had, leading to a resounding vote for the kind of transformational reform of our intelligence community that the 9/11 Commission recommends, which we all know is desperately needed as soon as possible to better protect the American people from the clear and present danger of terrorist attacks. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Perhaps it was my language that was confusing. I do not think the statutory language is. The fact is, there is an addition of authority to the NID--there is no question about that--that the DCI does not have, and that is to issue and manage collection and analysis tasking. What I was trying to say earlier, and I want to distinguish this, is the current law enables the DCI to convene the agency representatives, which they do every day, to resolve and decide where our national assets go, and then to resolve a conflict, as described in the language that I read from, which is what the current DCI has. We have added, very importantly, and the Senator is right, the ability of the national intelligence director additionally to issue and manage collection and analysis tasking.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. If the Senator will yield, if I may respond. I want to refer the Senator to page 14 of our bill in section 4, enumerating the powers of the national intelligence director. We say ``establish collection and analysis requirements for the intelligence community to determine collection and analysis priorities, issue and manage collection analysis tasking, and resolve conflicts in the tasking of elements of the intelligence community within the national intelligence program, except as otherwise agreed with the Secretary of Defense pursuant to the direction of the President.'' So this is language that completely mirrors existing statute for the Director of Central Intelligence. From testimony we heard, it is fortunately working very well that the conflicts, by the testimony of at least one head of one of the agencies, just do not occur; they work it out.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. If the chairman will yield, these are very important questions the Senator from Ohio is raising. I want to assure him, first, that we raised the same questions during our committee's deliberation, including meetings with the heads of these national intelligence agencies that are within the Department of Defense. The Senator from Ohio is undoubtedly aware of the reality, which is that the current Director of Central Intelligence has the authority under law to convene a committee, an interagency committee, which every day apparently makes, as one witness said to us, thousands of decisions about where our signal intelligence and image intelligence assets go. In fact, one of the heads of an agency said he didn't remember a time when there was an inability to agree. There is also, clearly, in the end, both in current law, as I understand it, and in the proposal we are making, if the rare situation occurs, you have to have somebody in power to make that decision. Now it is the CIA. Under our proposal, it would be the national intelligence director.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Absolutely.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, if I may answer the question, my hope is--and I believe it is the chairman's hope--that we will stay on the bill and people will come over and introduce more amendments, that we have more debate between now and 2:15.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, first let me say to Senator Specter that he is quite right, we do, much more often than not, agree on matters. Unfortunately this amendment is not one of them, notwithstanding the arguments he just made. There is an interesting historical note we are familiar with that when the 10-year term for the FBI Director came into effect, I was not here, but I gather it was as a matter of reform as against the effective lifetime term that the former Director, Mr. Hoover, had. So that was in that reality. Here is the circumstance I am worried about. We have done everything we can in this bill to create independence in the national intelligence director position and to set standards that say: You have to level with the President. The worst thing that can happen is if you feel you have to create a good personal relationship and satisfy policy desires. In fact, we have language in here that is quite remarkable that says the national director ``must provide intelligence to the President that is timely, objective, independent of political consideration, and based on all sources available to the intelligence community, information that has not been shaped to serve policy considerations, that comes from a variety of intelligence assessments and analytical views.'' I am quoting directly from our proposal. We have set up the office of ombudsman, a very unusual office, and, thanks to a combination of Senator Rockefeller and Senator Shelby, created within it an analytical review unit which will do a kind of quality control on the work of the intelligence director, again to try to ensure that there is a real independence and objectivity and willingness to speak the truth. The situation I would worry about, if we have a director for a fixed year term of 10 years, would be that the President simply loses confidence in that director for one reason or another. So on critically important questions such as we have seen in our time--do you send American troops into combat, what foreign policy do we adopt toward threatening nations such as Iran and North Korea--if you have a President lacking confidence or trust, and it could be in the competence of the individual or in his or her dispassion or objectivity, you leave the President either without adequate intelligence advice on matters of great national importance or you encourage the President to end-run the national intelligence director, go directly to the head of the CIA and other agencies. That is not a healthy situation. Of course, it totally undercuts exactly what we are trying do to do, which is to create a national intelligence director who will oversee the total intelligence community. For those reasons, in this situation, I continue to oppose the Specter amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, this is a good amendment. I thank Senator Cornyn for offering it. I urge its adoption.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to call attention to a critical piece of this legislation--the requirement in section 5 of H.R. 4259, the Department of Homeland Security Financial Accountability Act, for an annual homeland security strategy. Before 9/11, we did not truly perceive the threat of terrorism on our own soil, and what homeland security efforts we did have underway were badly divided. Dozens of agencies responsible for pieces of our homeland security were scattered across the Federal Government, and were largely unconnected to State and local officials and first responders on the front lines in our nation's cities and towns. There were overlaps and, more critically, treacherous gaps. And because everyone was responsible for parts of the effort, no one was ultimately in charge. We took one large step to remedy these weaknesses by creating the Department of Homeland Security, DHS. The Department brings more than two dozen of the Federal Government's critical homeland security agencies and programs under one roof, allowing for unprecedented coordination and cooperation. It also created a Cabinet Secretary charged with managing the budget and personnel of these agencies, and capable of providing a focal point for homeland programs and issues in the Cabinet and beyond. But we knew that in addition to creating a better organization we would need to lay out a clear roadmap to galvanize our homeland defenses--at all levels of Government and the private sector. That is what many of us called for and, regretfully, it is something this Nation still sorely lacks. The administration did produce a ``National Strategy for Homeland Security'' in July 2002 that correctly identified many of the challenges we face in preparing to meet the threat of terrorism. But that document predates the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and is already badly out of date. More significantly, as the highly regarded Gilmore Commission on terrorism noted in its final report last December: Much is still required in order to achieve an effective, comprehensive, unified national strategy and to translate vision into action. Notably, absent is a clear prioritization for the use of scarce resources against a diffuse, unclear threat as part of the spectrum of threats--some significantly more common than terrorism. The panel has serious concerns about the current state of homeland security efforts along the full spectrum from awareness to recovery and is worried that efforts by the government may provide the perception of enhanced security that causes the nation to become complacent about the many critical actions still required. It is true that the Department of Homeland Security is proceeding with some more targeted strategic regarding specific areas of concern, but these cannot replace a comprehensive strategy that sets the ultimate policies and priorities for our homeland effort. That is why I am pleased that the legislation before us calls upon the administration to develop and update its homeland security strategy in connection with its budgeting process for the Department of Homeland Security. More specifically, the legislation requires that the Secretary for Homeland Security: . . . set forth the homeland security strategy of the department, which shall be developed and updated as appropriate annually . . . and explain how that strategy relates to the Department's planned budgeting. As it does so, the administration should adhere to the guiding principles laid out in the February 3, 2004 report by the General Accounting Office, GAO, now referred to as the Government Accountability Office, regarding the Nation's various strategies related to terrorism and homeland security. In that report, the GAO surveyed 7 existing Federal strategies related to terrorism--including the National Strategy for Homeland Security--and laid out guiding principles to improve these strategies. These principles stress accountability and prioritization as requirements for a sound strategy. The new strategy must employ risk assessment and analysis to help prioritize strategic goals, then indicate the specific activities needed to achieve those goals, as well as the likely costs and how such funds should be generated. In other words, the strategy must make real choices about priorities and resources. The current strategy identifies many goals, but rarely provides real deadlines for action, standards or performance measures to assess progress, or details on the resources required for stated initiatives. The strategy should clearly spell out organizational roles and responsibilities, including the proper roles of State, local, private and international actors and the coordinating mechanisms to bring these actors together. Almost 3 years after 9/11, we still too often must ask ``who is in charge?'' of key pieces of our homeland security agenda. And, critically, the homeland security strategy must address how it relates to other Federal strategies regarding terrorist threats, and how the strategies will be integrated. Such a strategy must also provide more leadership on critical components of our homeland effort, such as a thoroughgoing strategy to maximize information sharing related to homeland security throughout the Federal Government and with state and local officials and, where appropriate, the private sector. The strategy must look at preparing the public health sector to detect and respond to terrorist attacks, at integrating military capabilities into our homeland security planning, at building emergency preparedness throughout all levels of Government and the private sector, and securing our critical infrastructure, much of which is in private hands. While the Department of Homeland Security is central to our effort to protect the homeland, many critical components of the homeland security effort nonetheless lie outside the Department. An effective strategy must address all key homeland security programs, and should involve the cooperation of the Homeland Security Council and the President's Special Assistant for Homeland Security to assist the Secretary in gathering appropriate input from throughout the Federal government. The Department of Homeland Security has made important strides in improving our homeland defenses. But in the face of ongoing threats of terrorist attacks on our homeland, we cannot afford anything less than our best effort. Today, we still lack strong direction on critical aspects of our homeland security effort. A new and more forceful national strategy will energize and organize our resources--at all levels of Government and within the private sector--to better meet the threats ahead.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. The Senator is correct.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment which I cosponsored with Senator McCain. This is the first of several he and I will be introducing, along with other Members, which would implement recommendations of the 9/11 Commission not included in the underlying bill that Senator Collins and I have introduced which focuses on intelligence reform.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the recognition. Senator Collins and I have to go a short walk to a meeting, so I take this opportunity and use it briefly to rise in support of the Collins-Carper amendment submitted by the chairman of the committee and the distinguished Senator from Delaware, who worked very hard on this very important topic and area before the 9/11 Commission Report was assigned to the Governmental Affairs Committee. This is an important addition to the National Intelligence Reform Act, the underlying proposal that came out of our committee last week, because it would help ensure that in these dangerous times the needs of our States and local first responders are met in a reasonable and coordinated way. In the past 3 years since September 11, beginning on September 11, our first responders and preventers have made real progress in boosting America's preparedness to deal with the threat of terrorism. But as an independent task force of the Council on Foreign Relations found last year: the United States has not reached a sufficient national level of emergency preparedness and remains dangerously unprepared to handle catastrophic attack on American soil--dangerously unprepared. That I take to refer particularly not to the law enforcers, who are the first preventers, but to the capacity of our total response system at the local and State level to respond to a catastrophic attack. This amendment, unanimously approved by a total nonpartisan vote in our committee, is an important first step in ensuring that our local first responders get the resources they need. First, this amendment simplifies the existing homeland security grant process by creating an interagency committee to coordinate Federal requirements for homeland security planning and reporting, and it eliminates redundancies. It would establish a clearinghouse to offer local communities one-stop shopping for information on available Federal grants. Second and most important, this amendment would reform the way homeland security grant money is currently distributed. In crafting these funding provisions, the committee acted consistent with the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to significantly increase the amount of homeland security funding distributed based on threats but, the judgment we reached, not to eliminate a minimum amount to go to every State. The reason for that is unfortunately the reality of the terrorist threat and the nature of our terrorist enemies. Yes, they have shown they will strike at visible national symbols, that to some extent they will focus on big cities, but the fact is that anyone who pays attention to the terrorist mode of operating around the world will see what they also do is to strike at unpredictable, undefended, vulnerable targets. Remember, these people do not hold themselves to any rules of civilized or humane behavior, so they have no hesitancy to put a bomb on a bus occupied by families, men, women, children; to attack a school and wantonly slaughter children, in some cases their teachers. In a reality such as this, gruesome and chilling as it is, the fact is every part of America needs some help from the Federal Government in getting itself prepared to prevent and respond, and that is exactly what this amendment would do. I continue to believe that this part of our own domestic army of preventers and responders in the war on terrorism is not adequately funded. This amendment does not of itself change that, but it does represent a sensible bipartisan approach and goes a long way to ensuring that whatever funding we do provide--and I hope that number will increase--is allocated in a manner that is best designed to protect all of the American people. I thank Senator Collins and Senator Carper for the extraordinary work they did on this issue in our committee. Senator Carper, characteristic of himself, took hold of a complicated problem with difficult political ramifications to it but a real critical national need attached to it and worked very hard to bring about this result, which I feel very strongly deserves the overwhelming support of Members of the Senate. I thank the chair, and I yield the floor.