David Price

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of Representative Moore's amendment striking the requirement of congressional notification for foreign assistance to Liberia. I joined Ms. Moore on a recent delegation to Liberia under the auspices of the House Democracy Assistance Commission, which has an ongoing partnership with the Liberian Congress. We are working to support the new democratic government in Liberia, under the leadership of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a government that is attempting to lift Liberia from the wreckage of its recent history of civil war and dictatorship. We met with President Sirleaf, and she told us that the window of opportunity for this democratic government to demonstrate progress is brief. Liberia is facing enormous challenges: intractable poverty, an unemployment rate of 85 percent, crumbling infrastructure, and a public health crisis. The Liberian government simply must find a way to deliver significant advances if it is to convince its citizens that democracy is a viable option. Our foreign assistance is critical to helping President Sirleaf show rapid progress. It is supporting the development of the economy, the strengthening of the government, the provision of basic services like electricity, and the reintegration of civil war combatants into productive roles in society. But the biggest hindrance to our assistance efforts in Liberia is an outdated notification requirement that sets up a series of bureaucratic hurdles, delaying the delivery of our aid, often by several months. With time so critical in accomplishing progress, we cannot afford these delays. I urge my colleagues to support Representative Moore's well- designed and well-considered amendment to eliminate this outdated requirement and to give Liberia the chance it deserves to succeed.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Clerk be authorized to make technical corrections in the engrossment of H.R. 2638, to include corrections of spelling, punctuation, section numbering and cross-referencing, and the insertion of appropriate headings.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, this motion to recommit, to put it as bluntly as I can possibly put it, would kill this bill. It would simply kill the bill. The wording, the tell-tale wording, ``to report the same back promptly,'' those are code words for killing this bill. Now, one has to acknowledge that there are some hot buttons that this motion to recommit touches, words like ``fencing'' and ``border protection.'' But Members should understand that if they are really interested in border protection, if they are interested in immigration enforcement, if they are interested in funding for a concerted effort, which this bill initiates, to identify and deport persons who have committed serious crimes, if they are interested in enhanced port security and transit security and support for local communities, if our Members are interested in those critical priorities, which is what this bill is focused on, then they will defeat this cleverly-worded fraud. It will kill the bill. We should defeat the motion to recommit. That is all I believe that needs to be said. I ask for my colleagues to vote no. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise and report the bill back to the House with sundry amendments, with the recommendation that the amendments be agreed to and that the bill, as amended, do pass.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I am happy to yield.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I have a simple and straightforward amendment that I am offering as a result of the long debate we've had, the many amendments we've adopted, and where we stand at the end of this. The amendment would allocate $5 million, a modest adjustment, to FEMA's Firefighter Assistance Grants, specifically, the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response program, the SAFER program. As I'm sure most Members know, the SAFER program helps local fire departments to increase the number of frontline firefighters. The goal is for fire departments to increase their staffing and deployment capabilities, and ultimately to obtain 24-hour staffing. We, in this bill, have done our very best to more adequately fund the fire grants and the SAFER program. But the need is great, and we believe this is a prudent and useful and productive place to invest these additional funds. Mr. Chairman, this amendment has been cleared on both sides of the aisle. I ask our colleagues to approve this critical funding for our firefighters.

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Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word for the purposes of a colloquy with the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Clarke), and I'm happy to yield to her at this time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am opposed to this amendment, and I will briefly explain my reasoning. I do support the development of an effective screening program that would prevent known terrorists from boarding airlines headed to the United States; of course we all favor that. For that reason, I recommended $10 million more for Secure Flight than what Congress appropriated last year, and that is in this bill. Further funding is premature. Many times tonight, I am sure we are going to be dealing with questions of priorities and objectives with which we all agree. But as many people on both sides of the aisle are fond of saying, it doesn't solve anything just to throw money at something. You have to look at what can be intelligently and wisely spent, and we have done that throughout this bill. This Secure Flight program is troubled in ways that make us reluctant to throw the kind of money at it that the gentleman is suggesting. While earlier this year TSA completed the year-long assessment of the program, the assessment didn't include total cost estimates for development of the program and did not assure the committee that privacy rights will be protected. The Government Accountability Office has reported multiple times this year on concerns it has with the Secure Flight program. It has recommended a variety of management actions that TSA should undertake to get this program back on track. The agency must have to have incentives to undertake those improvements. We don't do them any favors simply by loading more money onto existing appropriations. TSA continues to provide our subcommittee with conflicting information on how the budget requests for Secure Flight will be spent in 2008. And, finally, recent documents show that the operational testing of this program has now slipped into 2009. For all of these reasons, we very carefully calibrated what the traffic will bear and what the appropriation should be. It's an increase, but there is no rationale for the kind of increase the gentleman is suggesting. Now, like many other people, the gentleman has targeted Secretary Chertoff's office for the offset, a cut of $15 million. Well, if everybody does that, and many plan to, then we are going to reduce these accounts to the point that DHS simply cannot consolidate its 60 locations into this new headquarters facility and they can't carry on their basic operations. So, Mr. Chairman, until TSA can get a firm handle on what Secure Flight will do, the milestones to develop this program, its costs, and how it will protect the privacy of U.S. citizens, it is premature to provide additional funding for this troubled program. I urge Members to oppose this amendment.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment, but I rise mainly to raise questions with him and see if we can't work something out on this because I very much identify with what he is trying to achieve here. After all, North Carolina is very hurricane-prone. We certainly support your goals, support the gentleman's goals in building up preparedness. But I believe moving money around within FEMA, as the gentleman has proposed, is unlikely to achieve the goal. Let me explain why I think that is so. The gentleman is proposing to move funds from the management and administration account at FEMA to the disaster relief account. However, FEMA tells us and I believe this is accurate, the very account that FEMA uses to support the activity that the gentleman is interested in is the management and administration account. Now we are providing a good bit of money here. We are providing adequate funding, I believe, for identifying hurricane-related preparedness gaps within the FEMA management and administration accounts. We are funding it at $685 million. That is $150 million above the current fiscal year. But we don't want to take money from that account, particularly when it is being applied to the very purpose the gentleman identifies. So here is what I would like to suggest, Mr. Chairman. If the gentleman would be willing to withdraw the amendment, I would certainly be happy to work with him to ensure that FEMA is fulfilling its responsibilities on identifying preparedness gaps related to hurricanes. The season is approaching, and we need to assure ourselves about that. I fully appreciate that goal. And as the conference approaches, if there are further ways that we can address this, we should. But I do suggest that the amendment be withdrawn because I think there needs to be some further investigation of exactly which accounts we are talking about to perform the functions that the gentleman is concerned about.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I can assure the gentleman, Mr. Chairman, that I will work with him in communicating that priority. We have also had our staff in consultations, and we are told that management and administration is the correct account for what the gentleman is talking about. We'll need to do a little more work on that. We'll confer with you. So we will appreciate the chance to collaborate going forward.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I rise to thank the gentleman for his amendment and indicate that I'm hopeful we can work with him on this CEDAP program. I certainly support it. Many on our side of the aisle support it. We understand the value that it provides for rural communities in need of emergency response equipment. We were frankly surprised that the President zeroed out this program. We think that was unwise. As the gentleman has stated, we restored the CEDAP program to $20 million, but we were faced with the challenge of needing to work on a number of the grant programs to bring them up to the levels needed. The gentleman presumably not knowing quite where else to turn has proposed reducing some of those programs to make up the difference here with CEDAP. Some of those offsets we're not particularly happy with, the State grants, the fire grants, the port security grants and so forth. So it's a difficult problem. The gentleman knows quite well that this program has strong support in this House. I'm well aware of that. It has strong support in the other body. We will be going to conference and trying to come to an understanding of what level we can afford here and what level is wise. So while I can't support the amendment in its present form, I certainly don't want to downplay the challenge here, and I want to assure the gentleman that going forward we're aware of this need. We're aware of his concern in particular, and we will work very hard to address it.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Reclaiming my time, I most certainly do make that pledge to you both in terms of looking at the CEDAP dollars and also in terms of finding other ways that we can address this need.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would remove a restriction that the committee included in order to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from wasting more money developing a human capital system that would, we believe, be judged illegal. DHS has not been willing to negotiate with its employees unions to develop a human capital system that lines up with the negotiated labor contracts. That becomes our committee's problem, when money that gets appropriated is wasted on projects that are judged illegal and in violation of contractual agreements. DHS shouldn't be spending millions of dollars on systems that will need to be thrown away simply to frustrate unions and to intimidate their employees. It's a waste of taxpayers' money and from what I have heard, Mr. Chairman, has led to many morale problems at the Department. I will remind Members that unfortunately the Department of Homeland Security ranked dead last in employee morale across government agencies in a survey taken recently. We need to reject this amendment, and I ask my colleagues to do so.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I commend my friend, the chairman of the Homeland Security authorizing committee, for a fine amendment, and I am pleased to suggest that it be adopted.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, the amendment, as the gentleman has stated, would impose a statutory cap of 45,000 on the number of aviation screeners. I'm reluctantly opposed to this, because under the Committee mark, we fund considerably fewer than that amount, that number. We fund only 43,688 screeners. So we're nowhere close to the statutory cap that the gentleman would impose. The budget is what really controls how many screeners TSA can fund, as 53 percent of TSA's aviation security budget goes to screener salaries and benefits. Now, I agree with the gentleman that our goal should be to provide more efficient explosive detection systems, ones that rely less on humans and more on machines that identify possible threats. Instead of the cap, I think a better way to provide the funding for additional explosive detection systems for passengers and carry on baggage and checked baggage and air cargo is to fund those systems adequately. And the bill before us does that. It has $251 million more than the President's request for these systems. To make sure that DHS spends funding for better detection systems, we've withheld funding from a key asset, namely, their new headquarters building, until the Department submits an expenditure plan for checkpoint and explosive detection systems. We do believe that this will provide a rather powerful incentive for TSA to become less people dependent and more technology driven in the near term. But I just want to stress that I agree with the gentleman on that point, that priority. I should also say, Mr. Chairman, that our authorizers oppose this cap. They've specifically asked us not to include this bill language in fiscal 2008. I'm more than willing to work with the gentleman to ensure that the committee is kept well informed of screener staffing levels at airports. And if it appears that TSA is out of control regarding staffing, we will be the first to get on the case. But I cannot support this amendment. Speaking of authorizers, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.