|
Senator Joe Lieberman
Department of Homeland
Security
Business Meeting Statement
Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Welcome.
Before moving to the substance of the business meeting,
I want to say a few words about process, because we find
ourselves today in a somewhat unusual procedural posture.
As the Members of the Committee know, we already
ordered the National Homeland Security and Combating Terrorism
Act of 2002 –
S.2452 – reported with amendments on
May 22, 2002
, and that bill was placed on
the Senate calendar on June 24.
Subsequent to the Committee’s
May 22 business meeting, a very important event took place,
which was that the President announced a proposal similar to
the one the Committee reported, and a consensus developed in
the Congress that both Houses should expeditiously take up
legislation to create a Department of Homeland Security.
Because the President’s
proposal differs in some respects from the one reported in May
by the Committee, and because the President’s decision to
endorse the creation of this new Department has brought far
greater scrutiny of and interest in the proposal, I concluded
that this Committee ought to take a second look at the issue,
to make sure that when the full Senate begins to debate the
bill, it has before it the most up-to-date reflection of this
Committee’s views on the matter.
Under Senate procedure, the
Chairman of a Committee may on the floor modify or withdraw
Committee amendments to a bill if there is some manifestation
of the Committee’s intent to authorize that action.
Authorization may be given by a Majority of the
Committee, with or without a business meeting.
The purpose of today’s meeting is to obtain that
authorization. So,
to make a long story short, we are not today meeting to report
legislation, but instead to obtain the Committee’s
authorization to withdraw the amendments we ordered reported
in May and to agree instead to an amendment in the nature of a
substitute, which I will offer on the floor.
My proposed substitute amendment,
the text of which was circulated last Friday, will constitute
the base text we are considering today, and any amendments to
that text will be considered first degree amendments under
Committee procedures. Let
me also add that because the Committee is not reporting a
measure, matter or recommendation to the Senate, one-third of
the Committee’s membership – or six Members –
constitutes a quorum, as long as at least one member of the
Minority is present. For
the same reason, proxy voting will be allowed on all matters
today, including on the final vote to authorize the withdrawal
of the previously reported amendments and the offering of the
floor amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Now,
on to the substance. The
urgent purpose of this substitute amendment is to meet
America
’s unprecedented post-September 11th security
challenge by consolidating the many disparate federal
departments and offices that deal with homeland security a
single cabinet agency under a strong, accountable Secretary.
The mission of this department is to vigorously,
effectively, and efficiently protect the American people on
our home soil, while preserving the other missions of the
consolidated agencies and offices.
On
many fronts relevant to the war against terrorism, both
Congress and the President have made real progress since
September 11th: for example, leading a successful
military campaign in
Afghanistan
, creating the Office of Homeland Security, passing the
USA-Patriot Act, allocating emergency funding for the war
against terrorism, creating the Transportation Security
Administration, and beginning to reform the FBI.
That’s a lot of accomplishments since September 11th.
Federal workers are making a valiant effort, in
cooperation with the lead actors in this fight, our state and
local workers, to keep us safe.
But the gains that we’ve made since September 11th
have been despite the organizational system, not
because of it.
We
see that in the Byzantine organizational chart that lays out
our government’s domestic defense responsibilities.
We hear it in the perplexing anecdotes about structural
gaps, overlaps, and failures to share information.
We’re dividing our strengths when we desperately need
to be multiplying them—and, as the President himself
acknowledged on June 6, the Office for Homeland Security,
despite the best efforts of Governor Ridge—and they have
been his best efforts—just doesn’t have the power to get
the job done.
Some
have suggested the creation of a Department of a Homeland
Security is a hasty reaction to September 11.
But those critics who suggest we’re rushing should
understand that our legislation has been in development for
many months—and the idea behind it is years in the making.
From 1999 to 2001, former Senators Hart and Rudman
chaired the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st
Century, which warned the nation of the new terrorist threat
we faced and pressed for the creation of a new federal
department whose primary mission would be homeland defense.
Senator
Specter and I introduced our first version of this legislation
last October; this May, we merged it with a bill that had been
introduced in September by Senator Graham and others.
I’m proud that this Committee reported out S. 2452,
establishing a new Department of Homeland Security, on May 22.
And since President Bush came out with his own
proposal, we have been working very closely with the White
House, fellow members of the Committee, and the chairs and
ranking members of other Committees, to craft this substitute
amendment. And I
must say, there has been tremendous progress, as will be
evident at the markup today.
So
we’re not being hasty or haphazard here.
We are moving forward with an appropriate and justified
sense of urgency and purpose.
Given the ongoing threat to
America
, we’d be irresponsible to
do otherwise.
Now, let me describe the proposal.
It would be a Cabinet-level department led by a
Presidentially-appointed, Senate-approved Secretary and
comprised of six directorates.
Let me go through them with you:
q
First, Intelligence.
You can’t prevent attacks without first detecting
danger, so our legislation would establish a strong
intelligence division that would receive all terrorism-related
intelligence from federal, state and local authorities, human
and signal intelligence, open and closed source, and then fuse
it in a single place. This,
if established, would mean that all information related to
terrorist or other threats on American soil would for the
first time in our history be evaluated by the same eyes and
processed by the same analysts.
That is precisely what we need to prevent the
disastrous pre-September 11th disconnects from ever
happening again.
q
Second,
Critical Infrastructure. We
can expect terrorists to try to hurt us by attacking our
critical infrastructure, whether it be water system, our
energy grids, our information technology networks, or any
other aspect of our critical infrastructure—85 percent of
which, incidentally, is owned and operated by the private
sector. At the
federal level, responsibility for safeguarding our
infrastructure is currently spread throughout the bureaucracy.
This directorate would mesh and merge critical
infrastructure protection offices now residing in five
different federal agencies including the Department of Energy,
the Department of Commerce, and the General Services
Administration. It would assess vulnerabilities and then work
with the private sector to eliminate them.
q
Third,
Border and Transportation Protection.
Every source of danger that’s not already inside
our country must come in through our ports and airports, or
over our borders, or across cyberspace.
To interdict, interrupt, and intercept terrorists and
the weapons or materials they seek to smuggle in, this
directorate would bring together our Coast Guard, our Customs
Service, the border quarantine inspectors of the Animal Plant
Health Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, and the recently created Transportation Security
Administration.
q
Fourth,
Science and Technology.
Our enemies will try to turn chemistry, biology,
and technology against us, so we must marshal our unparalleled
talents in this regard to preempt them and protect ourselves.
This directorate would leverage
America
’s
enormous advantage on this front, creating a lean division to
conduct long-term homeland security research and spearhead
rapid technology development and deployment from within the
public sector and the private sector.
Among other things, it would bring together a number of
federal labs now spread across the government and, to harness
the talent of companies and universities, it would also create
a homeland security version of the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, which is probably the greatest public sector
engine of innovation in the history of American government.
q
Fifth, Emergency
Preparedness and Response.
After September 11, we have an obligation to think
about—and prepare for—the unthinkable, including and
especially attacks with chemical, biological, radiological,
and nuclear weapons. This
directorate, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency at
its core, will combine the strengths of half a dozen other
agencies and offices responsible for dispensing critical
vaccines and medicines, training local and state officials in
emergency response, and performing other critical functions.
q
Sixth, Immigration.
Immigration and immigrants are at the heart and
soul of our history and purpose.
That heritage must be honored and protected.
But at the same time, post-September 11th we
have to look with new and urgent scrutiny at illegal
immigration, as well as at how to screen those who come to
this country legally, how to track them, and how to make sure
they are not coming here to attack us ever again.
The
parallel reality is that INS has been a troubled agency and
would benefit from the accountability of being made a separate
directorate in the new department.
Our
proposal would bring the Immigration and Naturalization
Services into the Department of Homeland Security, and place
those functions in their own directorate.
Then, incorporating the INS reforms crafted by Senators
Kennedy and Brownback, we’ll split the new immigration
directorate into two distinct bureaus, to undo internal
conflicts in the agency and give each set of functions the
concerted attention it deserves:
a bureau of immigration services and adjudications, and
a bureau of enforcement and border affairs.
We
also require the Secretary to establish a border security
working group with the Under-Secretaries for Border and
Transportation Security and for Immigration Affairs, to assure
a strategic and coordinated approach to our borders.
Those
are the six core directorates.
Then, outside of this Department, within the White
House, the amendment would create another very important
entity—strongly supported and shaped by Senator Graham—a
National Office for Combating Terrorism (NOCT).
We must not fail to recognize that, even with a robust
new Department of Homeland Security, the fight against
terrorism is by definition much larger—involving our
military, intelligence communities, diplomatic services, and
law enforcement agencies.
It’s therefore still in need of a policy architect
and developer who can design and build the overarching
anti-terrorism structure for the President, and that’s what
the Director of this office would be charged with doing.
That’s
a brief overview of this Amendment.
There will of course be disagreements about the
composition of the Department.
But it’s clear to me that we are near-unified in this
most recent effort to provide for the common defense and form
a more perfect union.
Conclusion
We
Americans are blessed in so many ways.
In some countries, institutions shape the lives of
people. Here,
it’s the other way around.
People shape the institutions of government when they
need to, and there’s just such a need for us to do that now.
As
Alexander Hamilton wrote more than 225 years ago, in The
Federalist Paper No. 23,
“Whether there ought to be a federal government intrusted
with the care of the common defense, is a question in the
first instance, open for discussion; but the moment it is
decided in the affirmative, it will follow that that
government ought to be clothed with all the powers requisite
to complete execution of its trust.”
Today,
in the aftermath of the brutal, unprecedented attacks against
America
, our opportunity and responsibility is to clothe our
government of, by, and for the people with the powers it needs
to guard us and our children from the unprecedented dangers
that threaten us today and will continue to threaten us in the
years to come.
We
are the strongest government in the history of the world.
We should not consider another September 11th-type
attack to be inevitable—not if we marshal our strengths and
organize our capabilities effectively.
We must reorder our homeland defense capabilities to
meet this challenge, and that is what I hope we will do today.
Senator
Thompson? |