Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016--Continued

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, just a very brief explanation on both of these amendments. Senator Mikulski's amendment simply allows the Secretary of Transportation to select the Federal appointees for the Washington metro system. That is done by the head of GSA right now, and obviously GSA is an agency with no transportation policy expertise, so this simply makes sense. It is noncontroversial and has already been passed out of the Senate committee of jurisdiction.

Senator Mikulski has been very concerned, as have many of us, about the safety and operational issues with Metro, and I believe this amendment is an excellent one, and I am proud to lend my support.

Senator McCain's amendment ensures that the Federal Aviation Administration reviews its procedures when there are complaints from a community about the noise of airplanes that are landing in a particular area and that they do a report.

I think both of these amendments make a great deal of sense, and I am pleased that we were able to clear them and get them adopted.

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Senator's amendment. All of us recognize that our first obligation as Americans is to ensure the security and well-being to the extent we can of our citizens. That is our first priority.

There are many flaws in the system for admitting people to this country. Those flaws go beyond the problem of people sneaking into our country illegally or overstaying their visas. They extend to the process we use under the Visa Waiver Program. Indeed, one of our colleagues Senator Coats has introduced a thoughtful bill to have us take a better look at that program and whether it is a way for citizens who have been radicalized to come from Western European countries into our country and to do us harm.

There are many ways we can improve the process. I am working with Senator Cantwell on a bill having to do with biometrics to make sure we have more information. I look at the Senator's amendment, and he lists 34 countries that would be affected by his prohibition--34 countries. They include countries such as Turkey. Turkey is a NATO ally. Turkey is absolutely vital in the war against ISIS. It includes our strong ally Jordan. If Jordan and Turkey and Lebanon, countries that have already taken in 4 million refugees who are fleeing from Syria, are destabilized, what does that mean for the stability of that entire region?

Mr. President, last month I went on an official trip with several of my colleagues to get a better understanding of the migrant crisis that is engulfing Europe. We traveled to the two countries that are the entry points for many of the refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria and who also are coming from Afghanistan and Iraq and some countries in Africa as well, such as Libya. So we went to Italy, and we went to Greece.

At that time, in the middle of last month, 710,000 individuals had come in through Greece and to Italy to go on to other countries in Western Europe and in Scandinavia. We talked to the officials there, and I was not happy with the responses I received from Greek, Italian, and U.N. officials about their screening of refugees. Even though it is evident that the vast majority of refugees were people who were fearing for their lives and seeking safety, I was worried that ISIS fighters would embed themselves in this flood of refugees.

What the Greeks and the Italians, with help from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, were doing was fingerprinting people, taking their photographs and then essentially sending them on their way. And I asked: Are we comparing these fingerprints, these photos, this other information with our--the American--watch list for terrorists? Are we matching them up against our no-fly list, our TIDE database, which is the larger terrorist watch list? The answer was no, and that needs to change.

I also traveled to a shelter in Athens that was run by Doctors of the World, an organization with which I was previously unfamiliar, and there I met a very young mother with her adorable little girl. They were from Eritrea, and they had been part of the flood of refugees. They pose no harm to our country or to any of the countries in which they might ultimately settle, yet they might need a little bit of assistance, a little bit of help, because the mother was so young and her daughter only about age 2.

I also met two young girls from Afghanistan who both said to me: Please don't take our pictures and put them on Facebook, because we fear for our relatives back in Afghanistan.

Look what has happened in Afghanistan, as the Taliban has regained strength and now is once again oppressing women and girls, denying them an education, forcing them into early marriages.

Another country on this list is Nigeria--certainly a country we have to be very careful about because this is the country where ISIS has a stronghold and where Boko Haram is located. But it is also the country where hundreds of girls were kidnapped for trying to get an education.

In other words, we can't just list 34 countries, some of which are essential to work with us in the war against terrorism, against ISIS, such as Jordan and Turkey. We can't just list all these countries and say they are off limits.

We can't just automatically say no to an Iraqi interpreter who has worked with our special forces and now is in danger of losing his life and having his family slaughtered because he helped to save Americans' lives in Iraq. Are we saying we will not let a single person from 34 countries into our country no matter how many American lives they have saved, no matter whether they pose a threat to us?

Now, I want to make very clear that I do not think our process for screening people to come into this country is good enough. It is not. If it were good enough, we would not have people who could cause us harm in this country. But, you know, perhaps we should be focusing on those Americans--yes, even Americans--who have become radicalized and have traveled to Syria and Iraq and been trained to plot attacks here in this country: lone-wolf attacks, such as Major Hasan at Fort Hood, an American citizen who was radicalized online by an extremist Islamic cleric.

We can't apply a one-size-fits-all to 34 countries that include a NATO ally and other allies that have been helpful in the war against terrorism or countries that include individuals who have helped the cause, who have saved American lives or who pose no threats to us, such as those two young Afghan girls I met at the shelter or the very young mother with her very young little girl.

We do need to tighten our process. We need to do more. You know, I would think that Members of this body who voted just months ago to weaken our ability, even under court orders, to provide surveillance of those who we suspect would do us harm would think again about what they have done in this time when the threats coming at us have never been greater.

But this is a meat ax approach. It is too broad, and it does not really address the problem that we face today. We do need to address that problem. Perhaps we need a pause to redo our processes. But this is not the answer.

Finally, as I read this language, the way it is written, it may apply to refugees who already have been legally admitted to this country. Do we want to do that? We need to think about this. We need to get this right, and Senator Paul's amendment is far too broad and is not the right answer to what is a real problem.

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, very shortly we are going to be adjourning for a very important briefing, but first I feel I should just briefly respond to my friend from New Jersey on a few of the points he raised. I recognize that he is not a member of the Appropriations Committee, and I doubt he was hanging on my every word when I described what was in the bill earlier today, but the fact is we have some very important truck safety provisions that are in the bill. For example, we require the Department to issue long-delayed regulations that deal with requiring speed governors that limit the speed at which trucks can travel. That rulemaking has been delayed an astonishing 22 times. We require the Department to proceed to issue those rules within 60 days of the enactment of this bill. That is a very important provision.

If my colleague is worried about truckdrivers exceeding the speed limit and causing an accident, he should be applauding this bill, which says to the Department, in no uncertain terms: Stop delaying. It is past time to issue this regulation.

Another very important safety provision that is in this bill has to do with requiring electronic logs. This is an important safety provision because it will prevent those few bad actors in the trucking industry from falsifying their paper logs. We will know for certain how long they were behind the wheel and on the road, and we will know whether they are complying with the hours of service provisions. Those are just two of the very important provisions my friend from New Jersey may not be aware of given that he does not serve on the committee and may not have heard my speech this morning.

The Senator from New Jersey also mentioned other issues, such as the insurance requirements. I want to make it very clear to my colleagues that our bill does not prohibit the Department from proceeding with a rulemaking that might increase the minimum insurance requirement, but what it says, in a very logical way, is it should assess the impact--the impact on the insurance market, the impact on the truckdrivers, and the impact on the insurance industry. The fact is that approximately only 1 percent of crashes that occur exceed what is now the minimum insurance requirement. I still think it is worth looking at because it has been many years since this issue has been reviewed. We don't block the rulemaking. We just make sure there is a report that assesses what the impact is before the Department imposes what could be a huge and unnecessary financial burden.

I did feel it was important to clarify those three points. There is much else I could say about this issue, but I recognize that undoubtedly the Presiding Officer and others are eager to get to the briefing.

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