LIEBERMAN PLEASED BUSH PLAN
TRACKS HIS OWN
HOPES TO WORK WITH
PRESIDENT FOR RAPID PASSAGE OF LEGISLATION
June 6, 2002
WASHINGTON -
Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.,
expressed his pleasure Thursday at President Bush’s expected
announcement to create a cabinet-level Department of Homeland
Security, similar to a proposal offered by Lieberman last fall.
“The
president gave Governor Ridge the most difficult, and now most
important, job in the federal government but did not give him
the power to get that job done,” Lieberman said.
The
Lieberman bill, introduced with Senators Arlen Specter, R-Pa.,
and Bob Graham, D-Fla., and a bipartisan group of House members,
would combine the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, the Border
Patrol, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and a handful
of other, smaller programs into a full-fledged department, led
by a Senate-confirmed Secretary with budget authority over the
department agencies. The bill also creates a White House Office
of Combating Terrorism to coordinate anti-terrorism activities
government wide. The measure was reported out of the
Governmental Affairs Committee May 22 on a party line vote of
9-7.
“The
catastrophic events of last September 11 and the anthrax attacks
that followed showed that our government is not prepared to deal
adequately with the kinds of terrorist attacks that I fear we're
going to face again in the future,” Lieberman said. “That’s why
we introduced our bill.”
While the
details of the President’s proposal were still being fleshed
out, “it appears his plan tracks our legislation,” Lieberman
continued. “It sounds as if the administration will consolidate
some of the key border security operations. And the
administration is indicating the new department will be a focal
point for coordination and communication with state and local
officials and the private sector, just as we envisioned in our
legislation.”
“The battle
now begins. The good news is that this broad, bipartisan group
of us in Congress and the White House are on the same side as we
strengthen our guard to protect the American people at home
against the threat of terrorism.
“Make no
mistake about it, change is never easy, particularly for large
bureaucracies. And I expect that there will be opposition from
the bureaucracies that will be put in place under the new
secretary, and from members of Congress who are close to those
bureaucracies. But the hard fact is that we are living at a
time that demands peak performance and maximum cooperation among
every agency of the federal government that has to do with
homeland security. And it is only through the kinds of changes
that we have proposed, and that the president will propose
tonight, that that can happen. The status quo has simply not
worked. I'm looking forward to working with the president and
the administration to find and implement a better way.” |