Adam Schiff

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for sharing the experience of your constituent. I think each of us has sat down with troops returning from Iraq and heard the stories of the lack of lifesaving equipment that they have had to cope with. I had lunch with a guardsman from my district a couple of weeks ago who told me during the year he was in Iraq, the Humvees they were riding in had no doors, and they had to jerry-rig sheets of plywood separated by sacks of sand or concrete, what we call hillbilly armor, to protect themselves as they went from base to base, asking each other, why are we having to do this? And when we consider all of the misspent and unaccounted for billions of reconstruction dollars and how many coagulant bandages that would pay for or body armor or uparmored vehicles, I think it is the case of going to war with the leadership you have, not the leadership you would like. And I thank the gentleman. If the gentleman has time, we can have a colloquy later on but let me turn to my other colleague from Georgia, Mr. Scott, one of our great leaders on national security issues, and I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I have to yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. SCHIFF. If I could ask of the gentleman from Georgia, prior to the Memorial Day weekend, you shared a short anecdote about meeting one of your constituents in Iraq. Can you tell us about that because I think it so characterizes the sacrifice we are talking about.

Mr. SCHIFF. I am sure that both my colleagues have had the experience of visiting our troops in the hospital in Ramstein, Germany, and here in Washington. Their thoughts are with their colleagues they left behind. They want to get back to their troops to make sure they are there for their buddies. I had one soldier who was so concerned, could I do something about the fact that one of the people in his battalion really deserved recognition for what he had done, and since he wasn't there to make the report this other soldier would not get the recognition they deserved. This is what he was worried about as he lay in the hospital. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, this week I introduced the Fostering our Future Act of 2006, along with my colleague, the distinguished gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart). This is a bill to help our Nation's foster youth by strengthening dependency courts and requiring accountability. Foster care is a critical safety net for half a million abused and neglected American children. It is, however, a system in need of support and reform. 20 percent of all foster kids will be forced to wait over 5 years for a safe, permanent family. Even worse, almost 20,000 older youth age out of the system without the assistance of a permanent family every year. Frequent foster home transfers create turbulence and insecurity that heighten the emotional, behavioral and educational challenges faced by these youth. The doubling of the foster care population since the early 1980s compounds this problem by creating enormous caseloads and taxing the capacity of foster homes. The end result is that foster kids through no fault of their own are more likely to experience homelessness, unemployment and other life course problems despite their resilience and courage. Imagine what it is like to be 8 years old, neglected by your parents and then taken away from them. You are told that you must live with a family that is not your own. You would be confused by court proceedings that govern your future and frightened that you might be transferred to yet another home. You would certainly feel alienated from your peers who talk about mom and dad. Imagine what that must feel like. These children deserve better. They should be guaranteed physical and emotional safety. They should have continuing relationships with caregivers and loved ones. They should have an informed voice in the legal decisions made about their lives. And they should enter adulthood prepared to live a happy, healthy and productive life. We have a responsibility to these children to meet these goals. Anything less is unacceptable. Practitioners and policy experts have conducted thorough analyses and advanced proposals to overhaul the foster care system. The most prominent example, a comprehensive 2004 report by the bipartisan Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care identified several areas where the Federal Government could support these kids by strengthening the Nation's foster care systems. The Pew Commission found that State dependency court systems were failing to sufficiently track cases and train personnel, because they do not receive Federal funds to do so. Inner-agency collaboration and performance measurement where they exist have been inconsistent both within and between States and tend to focus on bureaucratic needs rather than outcomes. I was pleased earlier this year when under the leadership of the Ways and Means chairman of the subcommittee, Mr. Herger, the committee passed legislation that included $100 million in new funding to improve our foster care system. These funds have been allocated to improve juvenile and family courts, help track and analyze caseloads, train judges and other court personnel and bolster collaboration between State courts and State child welfare agencies. While this is a critical first step, it is time we implement the rest of the court-related provisions recommended by the Pew Commission, and this legislation we introduced will do exactly that. Our State foster care system struggled to retain qualified dependency attorneys who are often burdened by substantial debt. A recent survey found that one-third of practicing dependency attorneys graduated with over $75,000 in outstanding loans, and 44 percent of them currently owe more than $50,000. High turnover among dependency attorneys has led to a dearth of experienced lawyers who have a comprehensive understanding of the system and maintain valuable relationships with their young clients. The Fostering Our Future Act that we are introducing responds to these shortcomings. It encourages Statewide interagency collaboration and data sharing. It ensures effective representation is available to children and families. It establishes a loan forgiveness program to attract and retain qualified child welfare attorneys. And most importantly, by focusing on child welfare outcomes, this legislation will keep the needs of children and families rather than the needs of bureaucracies front and center. I commend the child welfare workers of America for the invaluable services they provide and for constantly struggling to get this issue the attention it deserves. Foster care plays a crucial role in the Nation's child welfare safety net, but it is in desperate need of change and support. I call on my colleagues to join us working for the day when all of our Nation's children are protected, nurtured and loved. And I invite you to join me in that quest by co-sponsoring the Fostering Our Future Act of 2006.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlemen, and these issues and the others we will continue to explore in the coming weeks as we further amplify Real Security. Let me just end on this note. I had lunch with one of the Guardsmen from my district who served in the war in Iraq. He described to me how they had to put sheets of plywood and sandbags in to fill the doorways in their humvees because they did not have up-armored vehicles for their runs. The fact that our Guard have to go to those lengths, part of the Real Security plan that I outlined earlier was making sure our troops have the best equipment possible. We have not lived up to that standard. That is going to change under Real Security.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, for much of our history the United States has not feared a direct attack. The vast expanses of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans allowed our young Nation to survive and thrive safe from the predation of the great powers of the 19th Century, and the growth of our military power in the 20th Century reinforced the belief that no hostile power could strike us here at home. Only the British, nearly two centuries ago during the War of 1812 have mounted a sustained military campaign on American soil. Japan attacked both Hawaii and Alaska during World War II, but was unable to carry out a major ground offensive against the United States. Our relative physical isolation fostered a sense of the invulnerability of the American people. Our borders with Canada and Mexico were relatively open, and we traditionally welcomed foreigners to our shores both as visitors and immigrants. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, American policymakers viewed terrorism as primarily a Middle Eastern and European problem. Even when the targets were Americans the acts themselves took place abroad. The hijacking of TWA 847, the Rome and Vienna airport massacres, the La Belle discotheque bombing, the seizure of the Achille Lauro and the bombing of Pan Am 103 resulted in hundreds of American casualties, but they all took place overseas. This reinforced the deeply held belief that terrorists would not strike in this country. As a result, our Government at all levels was not configured to deal with terrorism, nor was the phrase ``homeland security'' part of our national lexicon. During the 1990s terrorism came to America. The 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center began to rouse us from our complacency, and the Oklahoma City bombing 2 years later shocked Americans into the realization that mass casualty terrorism could happen here. The fact that the Oklahoma City bombing was an act of home-grown terrorists, however, mitigated the sense of urgency that should have spurred Congress and the executive branch to take serious action to prepare for an act of international terrorism on our shores. So, Mr. Speaker, our Nation did not see the gathering clouds for what they were, and America remained complacent. The September 11, 2001 attacks shattered that sense of security. Through the tears and their anger the American people demanded action. And the President and Congress promised swift and comprehensive measures to safeguard our Nation. In the 4\1/2\ years since 9/11, the Federal Government has undergone a massive reorganization centered on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and a reorganization of the American intelligence community. Government buildings and other high-value targets are now ringed by concrete barriers. Aviation security has been Federalized, foreign visitors are routinely fingerprinted and photographed upon entry into the United States. Law enforcement has been granted greater authority to monitor the activities of people it considers potential terrorists. But to what end? Are these measures and hundreds of others making us safer? The answer, Mr. Speaker, is that in some ways we are safer now than we were on September 11. In other ways we are not safer. And we are not nearly as safe as we should be and as we could be. Numerous commissions and investigations at the Federal, State and local level, as well as a multitude of private studies have pointed to broad systemic and other flaws in our homeland security program. Tonight I have a message for the American people. The Democrats have a plan to better secure our homeland. Our plan is tough and smart and it is comprehensive. This plan is part of an overall effort to reconfigure America's security for the 21st Century, a plan that we call Real Security. Several weeks ago Members of our party from both the House and the Senate, Minority Leader Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Reid, and others unveiled a comprehensive blueprint to better protect America and to restore our Nation's position of international leadership. Our plan, Real Security, was devised with the assistance of a broad range of experts, former military officers, retired diplomats, law enforcement personnel, homeland security experts and others, who helped identify key areas where current policies have failed and where new ones were needed. In a series of six Special Orders, my colleagues and I have been sharing with the American people our vision for a more secure America. The plan has five pillars, and each of our Special Order hours has been addressing them in turn. The first, building a military for the 21st century. The second, the steps to winning the war on terror. Third, protecting our homeland. Fourth, a way forward in Iraq. And, fifth, energy independence for America. Three weeks ago, we discussed the first pillar of our plan, building a military for the 21st century. We discussed the need to rebuild our state-of-the-art military, to provide the best equipment and training to our troops, to assure accurate intelligence and a strategy for success, to build a GI bill of rights for the 21st century, and to strengthen the National Guard. Last week, we discussed a comprehensive plan to win the war on terror which focused on a wide range of strategies to destroy the threat posed by Islamic radicalism. We outlined steps to destroy al Qaeda and finish the job in Afghanistan, to double our special forces and improve intelligence. We talked about how we will eliminate terrorist breeding grounds, the preventative diplomacy and new international leadership that must be brought to the cause in the war on terror; our goal of securing loose nuclear materials by 2010, probably the most urgent national security threat we face and stopping the nuclear weapons development in Iran and North Korea. In the coming weeks we will be discussing a new course in Iraq to make sure that 2006 is a year of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with the Iraqis assuming primary responsibility for securing and governing their country with the responsible deployment of U.S. forces. Democrats will insist that Iraqis make the political compromises necessary to unite their country, defeat the insurgency, promote regional diplomacy, and strongly encourage our allies and other nations to play a constructive role. Our security will remain threatened as long as we remain dependent on Middle Eastern oil. The fifth pillar and the one with the far-reaching ramifications for our country and the world is to achieve energy independence for America by 2020. The real pillar of security that I will be addressing tonight with my colleague David Scott, the gentleman from Georgia, is the one that most directly touches on the lives of ordinary Americans. Since 9/11, the lives of Americans have been changed by the new reality of the need to secure the United States and the American people here at home. As I have just said, most experts have concluded that there are huge gaps in our preparations and that we need a new strategy to secure America. Tonight, we will introduce you to our plan. When Democrats are in charge, we will immediately implement the recommendations of the independent bipartisan 9/11 Commission, including securing national borders, ports, airports, and mass transit systems. We will screen 100 percent of our cargo bound for the U.S. in ships and airplanes at the point of origin, and secure and safeguard America's nuclear and chemical plants, its food, and water supplies. We will prevent the outsourcing of critical components of our national security infrastructure such as our ports, our airports, and our mass transit. We will provide our firefighters, emergency medical workers, police officers, and other workers on the front lines with the training, the staffing, the equipment and the cutting-edge technology that they need. And we will protect America from the biological terrorism and pandemics including the avian flu by investing in public health infrastructure and training public health workers. Providing real homeland security requires taking a pragmatic and comprehensive approach that uses resources to effectively maximize security and balances our offensive and defensive efforts. At any given time, we have to make hard choices about how to spend our national security dollars. The Democratic plan directs resources to those areas that minimize the risk of a terrorist attack. We rejected the reactive mentality that too often plagues the Federal bureaucracy of planning against the last attack. Under real security, we will integrate our foreign and domestic security efforts, balancing the projection of power abroad with securing the country at home. Central to this will be the implementations of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. This commission was one of the most effective bipartisan commissions in our Nation's history. It had access to some of the most experienced professionals and influential experts on homeland security. The commissioners weighed a wide range of issues, including emergency preparedness, transportation, critical infrastructure, and first responders and made sensible and sweeping recommendations to the administration and to Congress. Unfortunately, the administration's performance on implementing these recommendations has been unimpressive. In fact, in December of last year the 9/11 Commission Public Discourse Project, made up of the members of the commission, issued a report card on its progress. The report card was filled with Cs, Ds, and Fs for the administration's implementation of the 9/11 recommendations. In a statement accompanying the report card, Chairman Thomas Kean, a Republican, and Vice Chair Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, said, ``Many obvious steps that the American people assume have been completed have not been. Some of these failures are shocking.'' What we have seen over the last 4 years, Mr. Speaker, has been a failure of leadership and a failure of initiative. I would now like to yield time to my colleague, a leader on national security issues, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for his comments and for all of his work in this area. The gentleman highlighted the lapses that we saw in homeland security with Katrina, which I think were all the more graphic with the fact that we could literally see Katrina coming. Now, with infinite ways to perpetrate a terrorist attack, we may not see it coming in exactly the form it takes, and if we were not better prepared as a Nation for the hurricanes we could see coming, it gives me great concern about those attacks we do not foresee with that degree of precision. These failures in the preparation and response to Katrina were also, I think, the result of a failure of initiative. The report of the bipartisan congressional committee that investigated the response to Katrina, in fact, was entitled ``A Failure of Initiative.'' The report cataloged a series of errors in judgment and in planning, including a failure to prepare for a catastrophic event, a failure to execute the National Response Plan, a failure to evacuate New Orleans and other vulnerable areas, and a lack of information sharing and coordination. We were not prepared for a natural disaster that gave us several days of advance notice. We are even less likely to be prepared for a disaster, natural or man-made, that strikes us suddenly. Under our Real Security plan, the Department of Homeland Security would develop a comprehensive national emergency preparedness and response plan that spells out the responsibility for government and private agencies at every level. While the Department of Homeland Security had a response plan before Katrina, it lacked the details about coordinating various agencies and jurisdictions, and it was not treated seriously even within the bureaucracy. For example, a review by the Joint Chiefs of Staff found that the National Response Plan did not even specify the role of the Pentagon and other Federal agencies in assisting local leaders during disasters. In addition, a GAO report found that the National Guard units that responded to Katrina had only 34 percent of their authorized equipment, which also slowed their response. These, I think, are some of the failures my colleague from Georgia alluded to, and these are also I think incumbent on the party in power in Congress to do its oversight, to make sure that we are prepared, to hold the executive accountable. We have not done that oversight. We did not do it before Katrina. We have not done it adequately since, and under Real Security, it not only requires organizational changes within the executive, but also requires Congress to step up to its responsibilities, would you say?

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the late Octavia E. Butler. Ms. Butler will be greatly missed. The world of literature lost a literary genius whose novels and short stories broke the conventional expectations of African Americans, women, and science fiction writers. Ms. Butler was a Pasadena, California native who attended John Muir High School. She graduated from Pasadena City College in 1968. Octavia spent most of her adult life in the Pasadena/Altadena area where she lived until just a few years ago when she moved to Seattle, Washington. While Octavia's fans have marveled over her extraordinary literary creations, those who knew her as a friend also marveled at her ability to remain down to earth and unmoved by fame. As an adult, Ms. Butler had traveled all over the world, from the Amazon to Russia, to gather authentic material for her books. Ms. Butler was an internationally acclaimed science fiction author whose novels explored pressing issues such as race, gender, slavery, poverty, and politics. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive a $295,000 genius grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She also received two Hugo Awards and two Nebula Awards for her science fiction works. During her funeral service, on March 11, 2006, the Pasadena City Mayor's office read a proclamation that declared March 17, 2006, to be Octavia Butler Day. Octavia is the author of many novels, including Patternmaster, Adulthood Rite, Mind of My Mind, and Kindred. For many years, Kindred, which is Pasadena's ``One City, One Story'' choice this year, was required reading at John Muir High School. The program is designed to broaden and deepen the appreciation for reading. I ask all Members of the United States House of Representatives to pause to honor a great woman, Octavia E. Butler, who inspired so many people through her words and her vision. She will be missed not only by her family, but by all who were fortunate enough to cross her path or enjoy her novels.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Res. 499, condemning the murder of American journalist Paul Klebnikov in Moscow and the murders of other members of the media in the Russian Federation. Less than two weeks ago, on World Press Freedom Day, my colleague Mike Pence and I launched the new Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press. Representatives from a variety of non-governmental organizations came to extend their endorsement of this undertaking and several other Members of Congress spoke about the importance of press freedom for promoting democracy and human rights around the world. The guests of honor, however--and the reason we were all there--were the journalists who came to share their stories of persecution and harassment. He Qinglian spent a year under 24-hour surveillance when the Chinese Propaganda Department accused her of `inciting antagonism between the different strata of Chinese society' with her exposes of government corruption. After trying to investigate the presence of Taliban and AI-Qaeda elements in tribal areas in the autonomous zone between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Khawar Mehdi Rizvi was detained and tortured by Pakistani security forces for almost three months, before human rights groups and media organizations helped secure his escape to the United States. We were also joined by Musa Klebnikov, the widow of American journalist, Paul Klebnikov, whose unresolved murder this resolution condemns. Mrs. Klebnikov told us that Paul believed that without freedom of the press there is no civil society, and can be no true democracy. He died for this ideal, becoming one of the fallen heroes of this ongoing worldwide struggle. Paul committed himself to revealing the corrupt underside of Russia as well as celebrating its successes. His murder reveals both the importance of this type of work as well as the dangers facing journalists in the Russian Federation. Paul was the twelfth reporter to be killed in Russia since President Putin came to power in 2000. Russia's press laws remain very far below European standards and in the nearly two years since Paul's murder, working conditions for journalists continued to worsen alarmingly. Paul's murder stimulated the Russian government to dedicate real effort to prosecuting the hit men who shot him, and this resolution commends that effort. Unfortunately, two days after expressing her hope that this trial would set a standard for future cases of media persecution, the Russian court acquitted his killers. This resolution calls upon the Government of Russia to continue its inquiries into Paul's murder and to take appropriate action to protect the independence and freedom of journalists in the country. Paul Klebnikov's murder exposed the problem of violence against journalists in Russia and increased the awareness of widespread threats to press freedom. The Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press was created to highlight and condemn media censorship and the persecution of journalists around the world. This Resolution is an important affirmation of these objectives, and I commend my colleague, Mr. McCotter, for bringing it to the floor, and encourage broad support for its passage.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, the single most important function of the Congress is to ensure our Nation's security. Since the time of the Revolutionary War when the Continental Congress directed the efforts of our fledgling Nation to free itself from British rule, the legislative branch has made the security of our Nation a priority. Bipartisanship has been at the center of America's national security policymaking for much of our history. In standing behind our Armed Forces and standing up for our diplomatic priorities, in supporting the Intelligence Community, and in supporting the President in times of crisis, Congress has often spoken with one voice. This unanimity was never stronger than the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. When President Bush addressed Congress and the Nation on September 20, there were no Democrats or Republicans in this Chamber. There were only Americans. That unity extended around the world to friends and foes alike. In London, 2 days after the attacks, Queen Elizabeth ordered the Coldstream Guards to play the Star Spangled Banner at the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, the first time a foreign anthem had been played at that ceremony. In Paris, the newspaper Le Monde ran an editorial on September 12 that was entitled simply, ``We Are All Americans.'' In the wake of the attacks, NATO invoked for the first time in its history, article 5 of the NATO charter, declaring an attack on the United States to be an attack on the alliance. As American military assets rushed towards Afghanistan in preparation for the invasion that would topple the Taliban regime, NATO Airborne Warning and Control System, AWACs air craft patrolled American skies in round-the-clock patrol to protect us. Four and a half years later, this national and international unity seems quaint. Here at home, our country is now bitterly divided. Our States are red or they are blue. Our communities are divided too. Americans don't even get their news from the same place anymore. Many Republicans only watch Fox, and many Democrats will only watch, well, anything else. Overseas, we are isolated. Where America was seen as a victim in the wake of 9/11, in the capitals of even some of our closest allies we are now too often viewed as an aggressor. American troops are fighting and dying in Iraq while many of our closest friends sit on the sidelines refusing to provide even promised economic support. The policies of the current administration and majority in Congress have not only squandered domestic unity and international goodwill; they have poorly managed the war on terror and failed to adequately improve our security here at home. Even as we spend $1 billion a week in Iraq, basic security at home remains underfunded. And as we shall hear from my friend and colleague, Chris Van Hollen, Afghanistan is in danger of slipping back into the grip of the Taliban. In the days after September 11, the President vowed to capture Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, and that we would smoke al Qaeda out of their caves. Tragically, Mr. Speaker, Osama is still very much alive, and the inability of the pre-eminent super-power to capture him is as dangerous as it is emblematic of the need for a new strategy in the war on terror. Tonight I have a message for the American people: the Democrats have a plan to win the war on terror. Our plan is tough, it is smart, and it is comprehensive. This plan is part of an overall effort to reconfigure America's security for the 21st century, a plan that we call Real Security. Several week ago, Members of our party from both the House and the Senate unveiled a comprehensive blueprint to better protect America and to restore our Nation's position of international leadership. Our plan, Real Security, was devised with the assistance of a broad range of experts, former military officers, retired diplomats, law enforcement personnel, homeland security experts, and others who helped identify key areas where current policies have failed and where new ones were needed. In a series of six Special Order hours in the evening, my colleagues and I have been sharing with the American people our vision for a more secure America. The plan has five pillars, and each of our Special Order hours has been addressing them in turn. The first is building a military for the 21st century. The second is winning the war on terrorism. The third is securing our homeland. The fourth is a way forward in Iraq. And the fifth is achieving energy independence for America. Two weeks ago, we discussed the first pillar of our plan, building a military for the 21st century. This would involve rebuilding a state- of-the-art military, making sure that we have the world's best equipment and training, providing accurate intelligence and a strategy for success, providing a GI bill of rights for the 21st century, and strengthening the National Guard. In future weeks we will address Homeland Security. In the wake of 9/ 11, there have been numerous commissions and investigations at the Federal, State, and local levels as well as a multitude of private studies. All of them have pointed to the broad systemic and other flaws in our homeland security programs. Almost 2 years ago, the independent bipartisan 9/11 Commission published its report, but most of its recommendations have yet to be implemented. The Homeland Security plan will implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations. We will screen all containers and cargo. We will safeguard nuclear and chemical plants. We will prohibit the outsourcing at ports, airports and mass transportation to foreign interests. We will train and equip first responders, and we will invest in public health to safeguard Americans. We will also be discussing a new course in Iraq that will ensure that 2006 is a year of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with the Iraqis assuming primary responsibility for securing and governing their country with a responsible redeployment of U.S. forces. Democrats will insist that Iraqis make the political compromises necessary to unite their country and defeat the insurgency, promote regional diplomacy, and strongly encourage our allies in other nations to play a constructive role. Our security will remain threatened as long as we remain dependent on Middle Eastern oil. The fifth pillar and the one with the most far- reaching ramifications for our country and the world is to achieve energy independence for America by 2020. This will involve eliminating reliance on Middle Eastern oil, increasing the production of alternative fuels in America, promoting hybrid and flex fuel vehicle technologies, and manufacturing and enhancing the energy efficiency and conservation incentives. The pillar of Real Security that we are going to address tonight is in many ways at the center of all of these issues. Since 9/11, the war on terrorism, specifically radical Islamic terrorism, has affected our entire conduct of national security policy. Unfortunately, there is a clear consensus among most experts that we need a new strategy to win the war on terror. Tonight, I would like to introduce you to our plan. When Democrats are in charge, we will finish the job by eliminating Osama bin Laden, by destroying terrorist networks like al Qaeda, by finishing work in Afghanistan and ending the threat posed by the Taliban. We will double the size of our Special Forces, increase our human intelligence capabilities, and ensure our intelligence is free from political pressure. We will eliminate terrorist breeding grounds by combating the economic, social, and political conditions that allow extremism to thrive; lead international efforts to uphold and defend human rights; and renew longstanding alliances that have advanced our national security objectives. We will secure by 2010 loose nuclear materials that terrorists could use to build nuclear weapons or dirty bombs. And we will redouble efforts to stop nuclear weapons development in Iran and North Korea. Our first priority is to eliminate Osama bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda and its other terrorist networks. Who would have imagined on September 11 that after more than 4\1/2\ years, the man responsible, the mastermind of the greatest single loss of American life in a single attack, Osama bin Laden, would still be at large? And now, in fact, al Qaeda has morphed into a worldwide amalgam of discrete cells that are even more difficult to track down. Under Real Security, Democrats will use all of the tools at our disposal, military, intelligence, diplomatic, legal, to fight terrorism. To destroy al Qaeda and other terrorists on the ground, we will double the size of our Special Forces. Special Forces were instrumental in working with local Afghan forces to drive the Taliban from Afghanistan, and they are uniquely suited to counter insurgency and counter terrorist operations. Unfortunately, many of the Special Forces units that were working to build a new Afghanistan were diverted to Iraq and replaced with less versatile troops. Building a military for the 21st century begins with an acknowledgment that we are in a new era that has a set of challenges and threats distinct from those we faced during the Cold War. In this new world, we need a military that is highly mobile, self-sustaining, and capable of operating in small units. On the one hand, our ability to use air power has extended our global reach and allows us to engage enemies without large numbers of ground troops being employed, as was the case in Kosovo and Afghanistan. On the other hand, the war on terror, ongoing operations in Iraq, and the increasing need for American forces to play a stabilizing role as peacekeepers and peace enforcers demands the sustained commitment of American forces. Special Forces units are mobile, lethal, adaptable, and trained to work with indigenous forces, a key to winning against insurgencies and terrorists who are expert at portraying Americans as infidels bent on destroying Islam, undermining local societies and local customs and culture. But even the best military cannot obtain its objectives without good, sound intelligence. In many respects, 9/11 was a failure of intelligence. Agencies that should have been sharing information with each other could not or would not, and tantalizing, vital threads were left unconnected. This failure was followed by the deplorable failure of our intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in which dissenting voices within the intelligence community were stifled, and group think took hold and steered analysis. The U.S. intelligence community is made up of some of America's brightest minds and most dedicated servants, but these talented individuals are working harder and harder just to maintain a status quo that is increasingly irrelevant to the new challenges presented by weapons of mass destruction. America's enemies today are different from those we faced during the Cold War and pose far more complex threats to our national and international security. We have more numerous and diverse intelligence targets today, with dozens of national and hundreds of non-state entities able to strike a devastating blow to our territory and our economic interests. Furthermore, the weapons that pose the greatest dangers to our strategic and economic interests are difficult to detect and even harder to counteract. Both the 9/11 Commission and the Silbermann-Robb Commission advocated sweeping reforms of the intelligence community to streamline procedures and facilitate better flows of information and analysis. Both commissions identified resistance to change as the greatest obstacle to better intelligence for senior policymakers. What we need is an intelligence community that is flexible, able to respond quickly and effectively to an ever-shifting environment and to the rapid pace of today's technological changes. The dispatch of Porter Goss as CIA director indicates that these changes at the agency have still not been undertaken. The coordination we need is still not present in our intelligence community. The Intelligence Reform Bill that Congress passed in 2004 created a new Director of National Intelligence, but gave the office only ambiguous authorities to carry out its broad responsibilities. The challenges faced by the DNI are myriad, building better human intelligence networks, improving the quality of analysis produced by the 15 agencies under its control and rebuilding the morale of a community that has been badly shaken by 9/11, by Iraq and which continues to this day. Even as the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, struggles to control numerous organizations with separate missions and cultures, he needs to preserve a diversity of analysis and a community-wide culture that encourages structured debate among agencies and analysts over the interpretation of information while cooperating in a common purpose with a shared strategic vision. For too long, the demands for current intelligence have presented the intelligence community from adopting a broader strategic perspective. Such an approach is essential for developing long-term plans, for penetrating today's difficult targets, and identifying political and social trends, shaping tomorrow's threats. Perhaps the most important piece of our plan is a commitment to eliminate terrorist breeding grounds. Terrorists who attacked this country on September 11 emerged from a part of the world where oppression often finds its outlet in jihadi extremism and hatred of the West, especially the United States. After the 9/11 attack, the President and other senior administration officials vowed to ``drain the swamp'' that birthed al Qaeda and other radical Islamists. Despite this boast, the administration has done little to combat the social, economic and political conditions that allow extremism to thrive. Under Real Security, Democrats will fight terrorism, not only militarily, but also by leading international efforts to eradicate poverty, universalize education and provide economic opportunity for those who now provide such a fertile ground for the recruitment of suicide bombers. We will also renew the long-standing alliances that have advanced our national security objectives for more than a century. We will encourage the growth of civil society, democracy and free-market economics in the Middle East. Extremism thrives and spreads in countries where brittle, autocratic regimes jealously guard wealth and political power while the vast majority of its citizens languish in poverty. For example, despite the Arab's world vast oil wealth and its rich cultural history, the region has languished in large part because its leaders refuse to enact the liberalization necessary to release the power of hundreds of millions of people. We will use the power of diplomacy and economic aid much more consistently and effectively to bring about real meaningful change that allows for the growth of political, secular institutions. As we have seen in too many cases in recent years, millions of Arabs face the choice between secular, authoritarianism and theocratic rule by religious extremists. Strong diplomatic relations are essential to America's security. As Madeleine Albright, who served as Secretary of State under President Clinton, has said, diplomacy is our first line of defense. During the last several years, we have failed to use this essential tool of American power wisely, and it has cost us dearly. Democrats will again make human rights central to our conduct of national security, living up to our values, even as we make ourselves safer. In a few minutes, I will address in specific terms the threat posed by loose nuclear materials and the lethargy at which we are trying to secure those materials. But before I do, I want to introduce my friend and colleague, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, to share his thoughts on the dangers posed, in particular in Afghanistan, but also his thoughts on intelligence reform and on the Democrats' Real Security Plan. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the gentleman for all of his leadership on these issues and the superb work he has done to improve the Nation's security. You mentioned the growing problems and growing threats we are experiencing with IEDs, with suicide bombings in Afghanistan. I have had a chance to visit our troops there a couple of times. I was very struck by what one of the soldiers I talked with said during my first visit. He said, You know, we all feel we are in the third front of a two front war, Iraq being the first, then the war on terror, and Afghanistan being the forgotten war. We have Americans fighting and dying there, unfortunately, all the time. For those that are on the ground, Afghanistan is very much the first front. Given the origin of the attacks of 9/11, it really is the first front in the war on terror. Given the presence of Osama bin Laden somewhere in the mountainous regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, that is the central front on the war on terror. I want to touch on some of the last two planks of our war on terror plan, and then I would like to come back to some of the comments you made on the lack of oversight in this body, because I think your remarks are right on the money, and it is really an institutional abdication of this Congress not to do its job of oversight. Under Real Security, we will confront the prospect, the specter, the danger of nuclear terrorism by greatly accelerating the pace at which we are securing nuclear material that can be used to make a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb, by eliminating loose nuclear material by 2010. We will also redouble our efforts to stop nuclear weapons development in Iran and North Korea. While Democrats understand that no option can be taken off the table, we are committed to muscular diplomacy as the best option for curbing Pyongyang and Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Osama bin Laden once termed the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction a religious duty. Intelligence officials have warned that al Qaeda and other radical Islamists are committed to obtaining a nuclear weapon and using it against the United States. A number of experts feel if we fail to change course, an act of nuclear terrorism is only a matter of time. They are equally united in the conviction that we can avert such an attack by taking a series of steps to prevent nuclear material from falling into the hands of terrorists. The President has repeatedly called the prospect of a nuclear attack by terrorists the greatest national security threat facing the United States. However, the administration's lackluster efforts to prevent terrorists from acquiring WMD demonstrate a failure of leadership. In fact, the 9/11 Commission Public Discourse Project gave the administration a D grade in this area on its December 2005 report card. The Democratic Real Security plan commits to an aggressive effort to secure by 2010 loose nuclear material that terrorists could use to build nuclear bombs or dirty bombs. The Democratic approach to prevent terrorists from acquiring WMD is tough and smart. It uses our resources and know-how to make weapons material and capabilities secure and to deter countries from building weapons in the first place. In many cases, we know where there are nuclear and chemical facilities and materials that aren't adequately protected. Around the world, there are hundreds of tons of weapons grade nuclear material without the level of security we have established for our own nuclear material. This material is spread across hundreds of sites in dozens of countries. We must lock down these materials before they fall into the wrong hands. But we are moving very slowly. At current rates of progress, it could take us decades to secure materials that could be used in a nuclear attack, a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States. We can do better. To do anything less is grossly negligent with our Nation's future. A comprehensive strategy to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction has several parts. It involves securing nuclear material around the world to a gold standard and actually removing nuclear material from the most vulnerable sites. It involves detecting and defeating efforts to smuggle nuclear material and technologies. It involves strengthening the international community's efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. To protect Americans as fully as we can, we must work in a global partnership to keep these weapons away from terrorists and governments that would use them against us. The United States can't be everywhere, can't catch every violation or pay for every inspection. Illegal weapons networks now span the globe, and our partnerships to stop them must be equally global. We need other nations to help do this hard, expensive work and help communicate the benefits of playing by the rules and the consequences when the rules are broken. We need our allies to share in the burden of global security. To get our allies' support, Democrats will press to include the security of nuclear material in the agenda and diplomatic efforts at the very highest levels. Without the necessary leadership, cooperation negotiated by mid-level bureaucrats will be limited to the slow pace of the last decade. In addition, Democrats will work with the international atomic watchdog group, the IAEA, to develop comprehensive gold standards for the security of nuclear material and assure that other nations have the ability and will to implement these standards. The international community has demonstrated its support for this approach through U.N. resolution 2004. It will require American leadership to translate this vision into action. Here in our government, Democrats will demand interagency cooperation and program innovation to accelerate progress on combating loose nukes. There are several Federal programs working to secure nuclear material that do not interact well with each other. Further coordination will improve the best use of resources and the sharing of best practices. The President has not charged the Federal bureaucracy with creating fresh and innovative programs to secure nuclear material, and business as usual or modest increases in funding to limited programs will not reach the goal of securing all bomb-making material by 2010. We must also move quickly to secure the global supply chain. Millions of containers move around the world every year containing the goods that we need. However, they are also an easy target for terrorists to smuggle WMD material. Under the Real Security plan, every container shipped to the United States will be scanned at the point of origin. Despite the urgency of this global threat, the administration and majority have not taken action commensurate with the threat. On more than one occasion, legislation has been introduced by Democrats to provide real security, but has been blocked. An amendment by Representative Obey would have provided an additional $2.5 billion for homeland security, including substantial support for nuclear nonproliferation activities, but it was blocked by the majority. An amendment offered by Representative Markey to scan all shipping containers was also blocked. Legislation that I introduced to require the screening of cargo on commercial planes, on passenger jets, commercial cargo on passenger jets was also denied a hearing. The administration and majority have failed to translate the urgency of preventing WMD and nuclear terrorism into action. This must change. After the attacks of September 11, senior officials repeatedly asserted that we had failed to prevent the attacks because of a failure of imagination. This was the central finding of the 9/11 Commission. We know about the danger of nuclear terrorism. We are in a race with terrorists who are actively seeking nuclear weapons. The choice is ours: accept the present failure of leadership and risk a nuclear disaster, or take action to prevent it. When one considers the consequences, the choice is really no choice at all. But I would like to turn now to an issue that was raised by my colleague from Maryland, and that is the role that we have in this body to provide oversight, oversight of the security of our troops overseas. Today I offered an amendment to the defense department authorization that requires periodic reports on our efforts to disable, to interdict, and to destroy these improvised explosive devices that are claiming the lives of so many Americans. I have lost at least four of my constituents in Iraq, most of them from improvised explosive devices. I am not satisfied that we are doing all we can to up-armor our vehicles, to provide the state-of-the-art body and side armor that will keep our troops alive. I am not satisfied that we are acting swiftly enough to deploy these technologies that are being developed to jam and otherwise disable these improvised explosive devices. My constituents would be willing to line up around the block to work in a factory overnight around the clock to produce these materials to protect our troops. There is no lack of a willingness to serve. There is no lack of a willingness to sacrifice among the American people. But they have to be asked, and we in Congress have to provide the leadership to make sure that we are doing everything we can to provide the protection of our troops. We also have to make sure we are doing our oversight in this body, to make sure that we have the intelligence agencies doing the work to protect us, and, at the same time that we protect our Constitution. My friend from Maryland makes the point that administrations and majorities can choose their own policies, but they can't choose their own facts. I would add to that, Mr. Van Hollen, they can't choose their own Constitution either. We all operate under the same Constitution. It is a Constitution that has served us very well. It is a Constitution that has allowed us to adapt to the changing needs of the Nation and its people and to the emerging threats facing the country. As one of our justices said some time ago, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. It doesn't prevent us from taking the steps we need to protect the country. But it does do an awfully important job of making sure, at the same time, that we protect our civil liberties. I, like my colleague, have been very concerned that some of the NSA programs which could be done under the oversight of the FISA court, and in my view are legally required to be done under the oversight of the FISA court, are not being done with court review. Today there was yet another revelation of a broader NSA program that may be obtaining information about tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of calls within the United States, a program that probably until news leaks today, Americans and Members of this body were unaware of. Now certainly there is a need for confidentiality. But at the same time in this body, in classified hearings, there is a need for oversight. And we have not been willing to do it. There has been an allergy by the majority to do the oversight, to make sure that the limits on the executive go beyond the mere good faith of the executive. When the Attorney General testified in the Judiciary Committee, I asked him what were the limits of the authority as Commander in Chief? Could they bug purely domestic calls without court approval? And the Attorney General said, well, he would not rule it out. If that is the case, then what is the limiting principle? It is nothing other than the good faith of the executive, and that is not the limiting principle of our Constitution. I would be delighted to yield to my colleagues the gentlemen from Maryland.

Mr. SCHIFF. If I can interject, Mr. Van Hollen. Prior to the vote on the authorization to use force, several of us were invited to the White House to sit down with Mr. Tenet. I was most concerned about the nuclear program, Iraq's nuclear program, about the evidence that you discussed a moment earlier. And I asked Mr. Tenet and then head of the NSA, our now Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, how confident were they in the intelligence on Iraq's nuclear program? On a scale of 1-10, how confident were they? They were a 10. They were supremely confident. And they were supremely wrong. And as you very well point out, this has had the most enormous of consequences in terms of this Congress making a decision to go to war, in terms of our credibility vis-a-vis Iran now. When we talk about oversight, the lack of oversight has these most far reaching consequences.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. I was struck, and perhaps you were too, as some of the networks pointed out with the near identity of language that the President used in describing his proposed nominee, General Hayden, for the post of Director of the CIA, saying that he was the right man at the right time for the right job, which was merely identical to what he said about Porter Goss a year and a half earlier, which kind of begged the question about what time he was referring to today. Is his proposed nominee the right man at the time a year and a half ago, or the right man right now when the last right man is being pushed out the door? But I suspect what it means is that during the last 18 months the agency has been adrift and that we are not much farther ahead than we were a year and a half ago in assimilating our intelligence agencies and coordinating them and improving the quality of our human intelligence which was identified as such a glaring weakness within our overall intelligence capability. But getting back to the consequences of all of this, the consequences of Congress' lack of oversight. When we talk about Congress being in the dark about this new NSA program, for example, the problem is that without someone being able to review whether these programs make sense, whether they are getting the results we need, we may be expending enormous sums of money and manpower and time and energy in fishing expeditions that lead us nowhere. Even if they were within the confines of the Constitution, which is a substantial enough question, that does not mean that they are actually effective. We may have mountains of data about domestic calls to the United States that is of little or no value except to raise the anxiety of the American people that their privacy is being eroded. There would be nothing worse than the erosion of our privacy without any commensurate benefit to the national security. But unless we do our oversight, it is impossible for us to know. And, unfortunately, I think that dearth of oversight has allowed these intelligence reforms to drift along or, worse, allowed the coordination of intelligence to degenerate over the last year and a half.

Mr. SCHIFF. That is very well put, and we have seen the consequences of our intelligence failures. They manifest. We have seen the consequences of our diplomatic failures as we are seeing in abundance now with Iran where we just had a terrible setback in our efforts to mobilize the international communities to deal with Iran's weapons program. We have seen the consequences in our failure to stop North Korea from proliferating. But I am confident with our Real Security plan we can reverse the decline in our own national security, and I want to thank the gentleman from Maryland again for all of his great work and for joining this Special Order hour.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for working with me on this amendment, and I in particular want to thank you for all of your diligence in making sure that we have the best equipment and that the Pentagon is doing everything else possible to interdict and to defend against these improvised explosive devices. We have all been to the funerals of our constituents that were lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of them have been lost through improvised explosive devices. I think it is the number one cause of American deaths in Iraq, and I think three out of the four families that I have gotten to know that have lost loved ones in Iraq were killed by IEDs. They have been responsible for 38 percent of all U.S. deaths in Iraq, including those from non-hostile causes, for every month since May of 2005. Through Sunday, IEDs caused 790 American deaths in Iraq, representing a third of all U.S. fatalities since the start of the war. Clearly, the Iraqi insurgents have learned to adapt to U.S. defensive measures by using bigger, more sophisticated and better concealed bombs. In the first few months of the insurgency, IEDs were often little more than crude pipe bombs that used old-fashioned wire detonators. Now they are sometimes made with multiple artillery shells, Iranian explosives, and rocket propellant. Gone are the days of wire detonators that were easy to spot. IEDs are now detonated by cell phones or a garage door opener and other devices. They range in size from massive explosives capable of destroying 5-ton vehicles to precision-shaped charges that tear through armored vehicles. IEDs have also become, unfortunately, a greater problem in Afghanistan where, according to analysts, Taliban and al Qaeda forces have been studying the lessons learned by the insurgents in Iraq. Over the past several months, American and NATO forces have been the victim of roadside bombs that previously we had just seen in Iraq. So, Mr. Chairman, to the chairman of the committee and the ranking member, I very much look forward to working with you on this issue. I appreciate your willingness to work on this amendment.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate John Davitt who is retiring as Superintendent-President of Glendale Community College after 38 years of exemplary service. Dr. Davitt has been president of Glendale Community College since 1985 and is the longest-tenured head of a community college in California. He is credited with overseeing a tripling of enrollment, bringing the current student population to about 22,000. There are literally tens of thousands of former Glendale College students who live not only in the Glendale community, but throughout Southern California, who have attended the college--taking a class to enrich their lives, or several general education classes in order to transfer to a four-year university. Dr. Davitt has always included everyone in the campus community, from students and faculty to administrators and staff, when faced with the decision-making process that affected the students. Dr. Davitt acted each day to bolster opportunities for the students. He was instrumental in obtaining funding for the new state-of-the-art science center and planetarium--a facility no other community college in the nation boasts. Through his devoted focus on quality academics, Dr. Davitt has propelled Glendale to the forefront of the community colleges. In 1968, Dr. Davitt introduced his unique and open management style to our community by taking the position of Administrative Dean of Personnel Services at Glendale Community College. In 1983, he was named Vice President of Instructional Services. Subsequently, in 1985 he became the college's Superintendent-President, transforming the campus into an innovative and productive center for learning. Dr. Davitt has devoted 38 years of dedicated service to the Glendale community. He is a remarkable man who is respected not only by the college's faculty, but by the student body as well. Dr. Davitt has managed to instill strong values of academics and workmanship while serving Glendale Community College, and these ideals are still gratified today. The Glendale community is indebted to Dr. Davitt for his countless achievements. I want to again congratulate John Davitt on a truly exemplary professional and public service career, and for his immense commitment to Glendale Community College and the students it serves.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, today is World Press Freedom Day, a time set aside to honor the work and sacrifice of journalists around the world. I believe that freedom of the press is vital to American national security and to our democracy here at home. Today, my colleague from Indiana, Mr. Pence, and Senators Chris Dodd and Richard Lugar joined me in launching a new bipartisan, bicameral caucus aimed at advancing press freedom around the world. The Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press creates a forum where the United States Congress can work to combat and condemn media censorship and the persecution of journalists around the world. The launch of this new caucus sends a strong message that Congress will defend democratic values and human rights wherever they are threatened. This evening, Mr. Pence and I hosted an event here in the Capitol to celebrate World Press Freedom Day. We were honored by the presence of Musa Klebnikov, the widow of murdered American journalist Paul Klebnikov, the editor of Forbes Russia who was gunned down on a Moscow street in July of 2004. A Moscow court is due to hand down a verdict against the alleged triggermen tomorrow, and Mrs. Klebnikov spoke movingly about continuing her late husband's work of helping the Russian people by working with them to build an independent press. In launching this new caucus, we have been encouraged by the wide range of organizations and individuals such as Reporters without Borders, Freedom House, and the Committee to Protect Journalists, which have all enthusiastically endorsed this effort. But I was most gratified to receive a letter of support this morning from Walter Cronkite, the longtime CBS News anchor who is not only an American icon but a living symbol of the positive force that journalists can have in shaping our lives. Freedom of the press is so central to our democracy that the Framers enshrined it in the first amendment of our Constitution. At the time, there was little in the way of journalistic ethics; and newspapers were filled with scurrilous allegations leveled at public figures. Even so, our Founders understood its importance to advancing our experiment in democracy. Throughout our history, journalists have jealously guarded their rights and American courts have, in the main, carved out broad protections for the press. In the United States, the press operates almost as a fourth branch of government, the Fourth Estate, as it is called, independent of the other three and positioned as watchdogs of our freedom. The United States, as the world's oldest democracy and its greatest champion, has a special obligation to defend the rights of journalists wherever and whenever they are threatened. A free press is one of the most powerful forces for advancing democracy, human rights, and economic development, so our commitment to these larger objectives requires active engagement in the protection and the promotion of this freedom. These are difficult and dangerous days for reporters around the world. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, 47 journalists were killed in 2005, most of whom were murdered to silence or punish them. While last year's death toll was lower than the 57 deaths in 2004, they were well above the yearly average over the last two decades. But too many have paid the ultimate price just for doing their jobs. Daniel Pearl was the Wall Street Journal's South Asia bureau chief and was on his way to an interview with a supposed terrorist leader when, on January 23, 2002, he was kidnapped by a militant group that claimed that he was a spy. For weeks, speculation persisted about his fate, until his decapitated body was found in a shallow grave outside Karachi in late February. In Algeria, Mr. Mohamed Boualem Benchicou, the former editor of Le Matin, was given a 2-year prison sentence for being too outspoken. He has been held in El Harrach prison for the past year as his health deteriorates and members of his newspaper staff are routinely subject to interrogation by Algerian authorities and also to judicial harassment. Raul Rivero Castaneda is one of Cuba's best known dissident journalists. Over the years, Mr. Rivero has paid dearly for his commitment to providing Cuban citizens with independent, unbiased information. In March 2003, Rivero was arrested and charged with ``acting against Cuban independence and attempting to divide Cuban territorial integrity,'' writing ``against the government,'' organizing ``subversive meetings,'' and collaborating with U.S. diplomats. Sentenced to 20 years in jail, he served 8 months before being allowed to seek asylum in Spain in April 2005. These are just some of the journalists that our caucus will highlight and profile to bring attention to those brave, committed members of the press around the world who are fighting for the freedom of all of us and to highlight those countries where press freedom is under attack. We welcome all of your membership in this caucus.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the gentleman from Washington for his great work.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, our most important duty as Members of Congress is to ensure our Nation's security. National security is the single-most essential purpose of government. All of the other blessings of our liberty flow from it, our strength and vitality as a people depend upon it and, our economy and our way of life are reinforced by it. A strong, bipartisan tradition has been at the core of America's national security policymaking for much of our history. A succession of American Presidents, from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Harry Truman to John F. Kennedy, guided this Nation through two world wars and some of the tensest days of the Cold War. Their leadership was based on asserting America's power in a way that advanced the ideals of our Founders and which made America a beacon to millions of people who were suffering under fascism and communism. Most importantly, these men knew the limits of any one nation's ability, and they saw the wisdom of marshalling our strengths with that of other freedom-loving people, and they listened to the counsel of these allies abroad and Members of both parties here at home. Harry Stimson, who served as Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of War throughout the Second World War, was a Republican. Harry Truman cooperated with a Republican Congress to pass the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine, which were instrumental in rebuilding postwar Europe and halting Soviet expansion. But unlike these giants of the 20th century, who put the Nation's security before chauvinism or partisanship, the current administration has too often believed that it had all the answers and did not need to pay attention to the ideas of others. This refusal to listen to other voices and excessively partisan and ideological approach has resulted in an America that is more isolated than it should be and less safe than it needs to be. Around the world, among nations that should be our strong allies, we are often seen less as a force for good in the world, and this has jeopardized the cooperation that we need in the war on terror. In Iraq, a stubborn refusal to commit enough troops to save the lives and pacify the country in the months after the invasion has led to a protracted fight against Baathists and Islamic insurgents and increasing sectarian violence that has claimed more than 2,300 American lives and wounded thousands more. At home we have wasted valuable time in making real strides to safeguard the Nation from terrorist attack. Most significantly, we have failed to reckon with the Achilles heel of our national security, our reliance on foreign oil to supply our energy needs. Clearly, Americans want and deserve change. Last month, Members of our party from both the House and the Senate unveiled a comprehensive blueprint to better protect America and to restore our Nation's position of international leadership. Our plan, the Democratic plan, is called Real Security. It was devised with the assistance of a broad range of experts, former military officers, retired diplomats, law enforcement personnel, homeland security experts and others, who helped identify key areas where current policies have failed and where new ones were needed. In a series of six Special Orders, my colleagues and I will share with the American people our vision for a more secure America. Two weeks ago, we discussed the plan as a whole and laid out the five pillars that make up that plan. I would like to go over some of these in summary before we turn to the pillar that we will discuss tonight. These five pillars of security are the creation of a 21st century military, the successful prosecution of the war on terror, a more successful strategy to provide real homeland security, a way forward in Iraq, and the securing of energy independence for the United States of America. One of the pillars of our Real Security plan focuses on the war on terror. It devises a strategy to destroy al Qaeda and finish the job in Afghanistan. It would have us double our special forces and improve our intelligence-gathering processes. It would eliminate terrorist breeding grounds. It would use preventive diplomacy and bring new international leadership, recognizing that we are strongest when we cause the world to join us in a cause. Secure loose nuclear materials by 2010, this is one of the greatest vulnerabilities we have. You might recall in the debate between Senator Kerry and President Bush both acknowledged that the number one threat facing the country was that of nuclear terrorism. In fact, when we had testimony in the Nonproliferation Subcommittee, I asked Jim Woolsey, former director of the CIA, what was the most likely suspect if a nuclear weapon went off tomorrow in New York, Los Angeles or Washington? He thought about it for a moment and then he said, ``al Qaeda.'' I said, ``I think that is exactly right. But if al Qaeda is the number one threat, then the most likely delivery vehicle is not a missile, it is a crate, and why are we not doing more to secure those materials that al Qaeda has said they want?'' Osama bin Laden, who has called it a religious duty of Muslims to obtain the bomb and use it against the United States, who wants an American Hiroshima, at the pace it is going it is going to take years, if not decades, to secure the nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, and this makes our Nation at risk of calamity. If you think the debates we have now over civil liberties and national security are difficult, imagine the world after a nuclear detonation here in this country or against our troops in the theater. All of that debate would be moot. This Nation would be a very different Nation. It would be one we would not recognize. It would certainly not be one we would want to live in. All efforts must be made to deal with this threat, and too little has been done. Precious little has been done, and time is not on our side. We must redouble our efforts to stop nuclear weapons development in Iran and North Korea. Too often the administration's policy in this area has been on-again off-again, as if we can only focus on Iran right now and we can take our focus off North Korea, where 6 months ago we could focus on North Korea to the exclusion of Iran, or we couldn't focus on either while we were focusing on Iraq. The reality is we must continually focus on all of the above, and we must marshal the international community to stop this weapons program in Iran and in North Korea. Only through sustained and vigorous and dedicated efforts to pressure Russia, to pressure China and to bring that world community together do we have a chance to stop that nuclear weapons development in Iran and North Korea. Let me turn to one of the other pillars of our Real Security plan dealing with homeland security. In the weeks to come, we will be going through the details of this pillar, which involves implementation of the 9/11 Commission recommendations. We support the immediate implementation of those recommendations. The 9/11 Commission, probably no other commission in the last half century has done a more valuable job, a more bipartisan job of analyzing the vulnerabilities of the United States and making good, strong and sound recommendations about what we can do to address them, many of which affect this body. In fact, it is an irony not lost to anyone here, or shouldn't be: those recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that affect how we organize our business in the Congress are the last to have been implemented. Most of them have not been implemented. But a great many of their recommendations are being ignored at our peril, and, indeed, what I was talking about a moment earlier, in terms of dealing with the loose nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, this was something that the 9/11 Commission paid great attention to and is one of the great deficiencies in our response to their recommendations. We should put those recommendations into effect now. Under the Real Security plan, that is exactly what we will do. Another pillar: part of this pillar of homeland security is screening all containers and cargo. Again, if the threat to this country comes in the near term, in the near term, in a crate and not on a missile, then why aren't we investing more in that portal technology to keep nuclear material out of this country, to keep a nuclear weapon out of this country, to keep a radiological weapon out of this country? Why is it in terms of cargo coming in through our airports that when you go to the airport to get on a flight and you have to take your shoes off and your belt off and you have to be wanded down, that at the same time in the cargo hold of that plane, where half of the cargo on most passenger jets is commercial, it is not your luggage, it is commercial cargo, 98 percent of that cargo or thereabouts is never screened for explosives? So you have to take off your shoes, yes; but you could ship a bomb the size of a small piano in a crate, and it may never be inspected for explosives. That doesn't make sense. That is a real deficiency that has to be addressed. We cannot afford to wait until there is a calamity. Terrorists don't need to fly planes into our buildings to destroy the economy of this country. It would be enough to destroy that plane in mid-flight. We simply cannot afford to take these risks, and we must screen all containers and cargo. The job at our ports is an even more difficult challenge, but it is one that can be met. It can be met through a homeland security plan that is tough, that is smart, and where the priorities match the nature of the risk. That is exactly what we have to do in homeland security. We have to prioritize, what are the greatest risks facing the country, and that is where we need to devote our greatest resources. We need to safeguard our nuclear and chemical plants, which still have not been adequately safeguarded. We can't outsource our security of our ports or airports or mass transit to other interests. We have to train and equip first responders. I had a group of first responders from my district in to visit with me today from the cities of Burbank and Glendale and other parts of Los Angeles to talk about their lack of interoperable communications equipment. They can't talk to each other across the cities. They are starting to be able to. They are patching this system together. But here we are, years after 9/11. Can it be that our emergency responders still can't talk with each other, don't have that capability? That is simply inexcusable. We saw on 9/11 the communication problems we had. The fact that we have not dealt with that problem still years later is beyond comprehension. Finally, we have to invest in public health to safeguard Americans. You might recall it was just a few weeks ago the burning issue in the Nation was the avian flu. It still ought to be a burning issue in the Nation. Yet we saw when this was at the top of the news how unprepared we are. We are still unprepared. That hasn't changed. The issue may have fallen out of the top of national news. It hasn't fallen out of the tomorrow of the national dangers facing this country. Those are not even man-made disasters. Terrorists purposely attempting to spread a biological pathogen, perhaps at multiple locations in the United States at the same time, imagine the havoc that would ensue. Are we prepared? We are not nearly as prepared as we must be. Let me turn to another pillar of the Real Security plan, that dealing with Iraq. The Real Security plan proposes that 2006 be a year of transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, that we have a responsible redeployment of U.S. forces, that we work harder to promote Iraqi political compromise to unite the country. We saw this week that we had a change in the position of prime minister, and that is hopeful and we all hope that leads to the formation of a unity government. But those hopes have too often been disappointed. We must ensure that within the next 30 days that government is stood up, and it is a government that is representative of Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites that the Iraqi people will defend. Ultimately, if the Iraqis choose civil war, if they choose to murder each other in large numbers, there is not much that we can do to stop it. But if they decide to be one country, if they decide as one country to take on the foreign jihadists and the terrorists, that is a fight they can win and a fight we can help them win. But if they are determined to squander this opportunity, if they don't form this unity government, then they have to understand that the patience of the American people is running out. We must encourage our allies and others to play a more constructive role in Iraq, and we must hold the Bush administration accountable. We had a hearing in the International Relations Committee on Iraq this week. It was one of the first hearings we have had in years on Iraq. I asked the panel, which included top level DOD, Department of Defense, and top level Department of State officials, I asked them, given the history of I think fairly well-recognized mistakes in the prosecution of the war, of course, the failure to find WMD, the standing down of the Iraqi Army, the failure to bring enough troops in to maintain order that allowed the insurgency to get out of hand, who has been held accountable? Who has been held accountable for these errors? And I ask my colleague, Mr. Inslee from Washington State, do you know what the answer to me was?

Mr. SCHIFF. Well, you pose an interesting question. How can the administration's policy, which is dubbed a ``reduce our dependence on foreign oil,'' be a policy which, if you actually play it out over the years, will increase our importation of foreign oil? I can only say, because this is Washington. This is the same place where 3 weeks ago the majority announced its deficit reduction package, which was, I don't know, $30- or $40 billion in spending cuts, and about $70- or $80 billion in tax cuts, which more than offset the spending cuts. So the net effect was increasing the national debt, and that was a deficit reduction plan? I guess if that is a deficit reduction plan, then the administration's energy plan is subject to the same logic.

Mr. SCHIFF. I have to take my hat off to my colleague from Washington, because no one has led more consistently and more strongly on this issue than you have. Before our caucus had a strategy jointly that we have put forward before the President came forward, Jay Inslee was there, and you have been just the most powerful advocate for years for an Apollo-like project to bring about energy independence. Let me touch on the first point you made, and then I want to go a little bit more into energy independence and talk about some of the other pillars, and then get to the pillar we are going to focus on this evening. You mentioned that the priority has to be placed on securing this nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. I agree with you exactly. When you look at what is preventing al Qaeda from detonating a nuclear weapon on our soil, you might look at the difficulty of getting the material in the country. Well, that is not very difficult. Unfortunately, as we have discussed, we don't have the portal technology engaged to the degree that we need it, and how would you get a nuclear weapon in the country? Well, I like to quote the chancellor of UCLA, Chancellor Carnesale, who says, well, you could smuggle it in a bail of marijuana. That is one way you could get it in. That is sort of the magnitude of the problem of keeping it out. That is a tough strategy at the border. Well, then, you might ask, what about the technology? Maybe it is tough to actually build the mechanics of the bomb. But that is not hard either. That is a 50-year-old technology. Cal Tech is in my district. I bet I could pick any two Cal Tech students and they could design a crude nuclear weapon for me using information on the Internet. What is the obstacle? Is it the will of al Qaeda? It is not the will, as Osama bin Laden has talked very plainly about the imperative to bring about an American Hiroshima. I think those writings and those speeches he has given are basically his own Mein Kampf, and we ignore that at our own peril. So if it is not lack of will or the lack of technological prowess or the lack of ability to get it into the country, the question is why hasn't al Qaeda brought this off? The answer is, it is hard to get the material. It is still hard to get the material. That is the only real prevention we have. You know something? It is just not hard enough. It is just not hard enough. As you point out, some of this material is secured with a chain link fence and a night watchman and a bike lock. Some of it is more secure. But much of it is in the form of highly enriched uranium at research reactors. Some are defunct or stockpiled. It is all too accessible. We cannot wait for a disaster. Turning to your second point, one of the pillars of the real security plan is the energy independence by 2020, which would eliminate our reliance on Middle East oil and all of the distortions that accompany our foreign policy as a result of that dependence. It would increase production of alternative fuels in America, promote hybrid and flex- fuel vehicle technology and manufacturing. It would enhance energy efficiency and conservation incentives. I believe exactly what you do. We are the American people. We are the best entrepreneurs and inventors anywhere in the world. This isn't like where we were in terms of putting a man on the Moon. It is not like we were when we had to embark on the Manhattan Project. We are so much farther along on this goal technologically. A lot of these technologies are already in existence. It is a question of making sure that they are made better and that they are made much more use of, would be a large part of the solution. It is not that we can imagine these technologies; they are out there, many of them. It is just the lack of will and the lack of leadership, and it is having a crippling effect on our economy now with gas prices at the pump, on our foreign policy, and I just want to thank you again for your tremendous leadership on this issue.

Mr. SCHIFF. If I can interrupt the gentleman, this has, I think, precisely been the problem. It has been a shared responsibility. There has been the failure of the executive to act promptly on the 9/11 Commission recommendations that have put us at risk, and most probably, I agree with you 100 percent, most prominently that risk is something coming in through our ports or on the back of a truck across the border that has nuclear material in it. That is, I think, the chief threat that we face. But it is a shared responsibility, because we here in Congress have done nothing about that. Because there has not been oversight of the executive; the majority has been allergic to doing oversight. I am on the investigations and oversight subcommittee of the International Relations Committee. We have had 6, 8, 10 hearings. The majority of them I believe have been on what, are they on overseeing problems within our own government? No. They have been on the United Nations. When you do not want to oversee what you are doing, what do you do, you oversee the United Nations. Now, admittedly the U.N. has got plenty of problems and is in desperate need of reform, but that cannot be the sole area of our oversight. We have had hearings in the subcommittee on Iraq, as our chairman recently pointed out. You know what it was on? How bad a man Saddam Hussein was. As I said at the outset of the hearing, I think we can stipulate that Saddam Hussein was a horrible man, was a tyrant, was a dictator, was guilty of crimes against humanity. That is not in dispute. But what we ought to be overseeing is whether we are implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations that make us safe; we ought to be investigating the Inspector General's analysis that $9 billion in reconstruction funds in Iraq is unaccounted for. We ought to be looking into, this is something that has really troubled me, I raised it with the Secretary of Defense during our briefings, how is it that we continue to have problems with equipment and material to protect our troops. How is that possible? I mentioned to the chairman of Armed Services that if this was a problem of production, my constituents would line up around the block to work on up-armoring vehicles, provide state-of-the- art body armor. There was no lack of will. But none of the country, other than those people in uniform and their families, have been asked to sacrifice at all. And we are desperate I think around the country to make a sacrifice to be part of the greater good and the greater effort protecting the country. We have not been asked to do it. The Congress has not asked. The President has not asked. We have not done the oversight to even ask the hard questions. And so we are a Nation at risk. A Nation that is not as well prepared as it should be, and as it really must be.

Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the gentleman. This was precisely the nature of the testimony in the committee. When I asked that question of the witnesses, who has been held accountable, it was really quite remarkable what happened. There was an incredible silence as the witnesses looked at me and then looked at each other, and then looked at me, and then looked at each other. And it seemed like an eternity before anyone could respond. And I said, your silence speaks volumes. To me, and I expressed this to the committee, the only one who has been held accountable was General Shinseki, and he was accountable for speaking the truth. Now you mentioned the Truman Commission, and I was thinking about just the same thing when I was mentioning just a few moments ago that as part of our homeland security pillar we intend to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. And probably not since that Truman Commission have we had a group of former Members and elected officials, experts on national security, come together and had such a credible work product that was so deserving of our respect, attention, and implementation as the 9/11 Commission, not since the Truman Commission. Would you agree?