Department Of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2006

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (Senate - July 11, 2005)

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[AMENDMENT NO. 1142]

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise today with my good friend, Senator Lieberman, to offer an amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations bill. Let me note at the outset my appreciation for the work that Senator Lieberman has done on this issue. He and I have worked together with members of the Homeland Security Subcommittee for the past 3 years on this authorization to develop an improved homeland security funding approach based on extensive hearings we have held, much consultation, and hard work by our committee.

We are pleased to be joined by several cosponsors, including Senators CARPER, COLEMAN, AKAKA, VOINOVICH, DEWINE, BINGAMAN, and SALAZAR.

The amendment we offer would for the first time authorize a framework for the billions of dollars the Department of Homeland Security allocates each year to assist first responders and State and local officials in helping to prevent terrorism and to prepare for an attack. That important point bears repeating. The more than $8 billion that Congress has appropriated for grants to States and localities for terrorism prevention and response since 9/11 has never been definitively authorized.

This is not a matter of an authorization having expired, which happens quite frequently around here, but rather of a multibillion-dollar program that has never been authorized. This is highly unusual. In fact, my staff checked with CRS, which went back a decade and could not find a single other grant program over $1 billion that has never been authorized. Sure the appropriators have borrowed a funding formula from the PATRIOT Act, although the bill before us does not use that formula, but in truth the appropriators have had to legislate the details of the Homeland Security Grant Program year after year. So, for example, the House-passed version of this year's Homeland Security appropriations bill determines the minimum allocation that each State is to receive, establishes a strict timeframe for applications to be submitted and for the Department to act on them, requires 80 percent of the grants to be passed on by States to local governments within 60 days, determines for what funds can and cannot be used, and requires grantees to submit reports on their use of funds. That is a lot of legislative language on the House-passed appropriations bills, and indeed the Senate version before us contains similar legislative provisions.

These are the kinds of programmatic decisions that Congress is supposed to determine through authorization bills, not each year anew on an appropriations bill. What Senator Lieberman and I are offering today is the specific, detailed authorization bill that this program has never had. Frankly, we would prefer not to do this, not to offer it to the appropriations bill. We believe our legislation, S. 21, which is the product of numerous legislative hearings, two markups, and input from countless interested parties and many homeland security experts, should be considered by the full Senate on its own. The House recently passed a companion measure. S. 21 is on the Senate calendar, having been reported by the Homeland Security Subcommittee without dissent on April 13. But there are no assurances that it will be brought to the Senate floor. So we are offering our authorization bill as an amendment to this appropriations measure.

Although Senate rule XVI generally prohibits authorizing on an appropriations bill, ironically there is an exception when the House has, in essence, opened the door by legislating on the matter in its own bill. That is what has happened here, so we believe that rule XVI is not implicated.

Mr. President, you may be saying, Why does this really matter? What is important about this bill that it should be brought up rather than allowing the situation to continue with slight tweaks and variations and new legislative language on the appropriations bill, year after year? Let me talk about the amendment, which is the text of S. 21 as reported, with a few changes.

The amendment establishes a new formula for distributing homeland security grant dollars. It determines how funds are to be allocated, sets criteria to ensure that the funds are spent in ways that help States and communities develop essential capabilities to prevent and respond to terrorism, and it holds grantees responsible for achieving results.

Perhaps the amendment's most important provisions are those that inject needed accountability measures into the grants process. We have all heard the horror stories about inappropriate spending of homeland security funds. This waste is intolerable, but particularly so when there are so many unmet needs that are scrambling for funds--needs where the funding simply is not available. Our amendment will put into place tough new standards to ensure that homeland security funds are spent wisely and in ways that will help us better prepare for, or respond to, or prevent a terrorist attack.

Let me refer to this chart which summarizes the accountability measures that are included in the Collins-Lieberman provisions. The first is tying spending to standards. This amendment requires that States distribute and spend homeland security funds only in ways that measurably help them meet preparedness standards and achieve essential capabilities to be determined by the Department of Homeland Security. In other words, no more spending homeland security dollars on leather jackets in the District of Columbia or air-conditioned garbage trucks in New Jersey. For that matter, even purchases of perfectly appropriate items such as hazmat suits must be tied to achieving essential capabilities set by the Department. This safeguard is designed to prevent a community from purchasing equipment that it has no reasonable expectation of needing. I know this is an issue with which the chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Gregg, has been particularly concerned.

The second accountability measure is a thorough annual audit by the General Accounting Office to ensure that funds are not being wasted and that the program is working as intended.

Third is greater coordination among the many grant programs that fund prevention and response efforts. Our amendment would create a Federal interagency committee to promote coordination of homeland security grants throughout the Federal Government. In particular, this committee would focus on eliminating redundant application, planning, and reporting requirements faced by States, local governments, and first responders in applying for and executing different Federal homeland security-related grants.

Fourth are robust reporting requirements. These are the means by which accountability can be enforced. The amendment requires grant recipients to submit annual reports on their specific uses of grant funds and their progress in achieving essential capabilities. These reports would be submitted to the Secretary. The Secretary, in turn, would be required to submit an annual report to Congress, providing an accounting of how grants to States and communities are spent and an evaluation of their progress.

Fifth are the remedies for noncompliance, what I call the enforcement mechanisms. The amendment empowers the Secretary to terminate or reduce grant payments if a State or locality fails to comply with all the requirements of the grant.

In addition to these tough new accountability measures, our amendment authorizes a funding amount that is adequate and a distribution formula that is fair. This legislation dramatically increases the funds that would be distributed based on threat, risk, and consequences. It also maintains a meaningful level of funding for each State. Much of the frontline responsibility for homeland security has fallen squarely on the shoulders of our State and local officials and our Nation's more than 9 million first responders. Communities across America have risen to this challenge and developed scores of innovative homeland security strategies. For these strategies to be implemented, however, all States must achieve a baseline level of essential capabilities. At the same time, we must direct resources toward locations and facilities that are at higher levels of risk and vulnerability.

Both of these goals--helping each and every State come up to a minimum level of preparedness and targeting funds to those areas and facilities at greatest risk--require an adequate, steady, and predictable stream of Federal funding. Absent that stream, we find ourselves in an escalating argument over whether these resources are being allocated and spent properly.

Unfortunately, this argument increasingly pits our urban centers against our rural regions. We believe the bill that we have carefully crafted strikes the right balance.

Let me acknowledge the hard work of Senators GREGG and BYRD in putting together this appropriations bill.

We share with them the goal of a fair formula for allocating funds to States while increasing the proportion of funds that would be distributed based on risk, but the problem is unpredictability. We ask States to prepare multiyear plans for improving their homeland security capabilities and yet each year we threaten to develop a new formula for distributing Homeland Security grant dollars. That is why in supporting our legislation, S 21, the National Governors Association underscored the need for the predictability that our amendment would provide.

On the chart behind me is a quotation from the Governor's letter. It reads as follows:

To effectively protect our states and territories from potential terrorists events, all sectors of government must be part of an integrated plan to prevent, deter, respond to and recover from a terrorist act. For the plan to work, it is essential that it be funded through a predictable and sustainable mechanism both during its development, and in its implementation. A minimum allocation to each state and multiyear authorization levels of funding will provide the predictability necessary to implement statewide plans that will assist governors in securing our nation.

This is, after all, a partnership with first responders, with local governments, and with State governments.

Our amendment would provide the predictability States need to protect our Nation. First, our amendment authorized a sufficient level to reverse the trend of declining Homeland Security funding by authorizing the program at the fiscal year 2004 level of $2.9 billion. As the chart behind me demonstrates, funding for first responders is on the decline by $900 million from 2004 to the level proposed in the President's budget. We were reminded just last week that the war against terrorism has not been won. The battle continues. It is our first responders who are on the front lines. Do we truly believe that now, during a period of heightened alert, is the time to scale back our efforts in preventing and responding to terrorist attacks? I think not.

Our amendment also incorporates a balanced formula. Each State would be guaranteed a minimum allocation of .55 percent of the total funds appropriated for State and urban area grants. The minimum, however, is scaled so that States with larger populations and higher population densities would receive additional funds. We call this a sliding scale baseline. It will promote a level of preparedness and provide predictability. The remainder of the total funds would be distributed to States and regions based on the Secretary's determination of risk and threat.

As this chart shows, the amendment makes a grant investment in threat-based funding. It increases the proportion of risk-based funding by more than 60 percent. Moreover, under our sliding scale distribution using factors the Department of Homeland Security employs now in its risk-based approach, another 10.7 percent of appropriated funds would be allocated only to the most populous and most densely populated States.

These are important steps toward bridging that urban-rural divide, and they balance the need for predictability for bringing each State up to a minimum level of preparedness with a heightened emphasis on allocating funds based on threat, risk, and consequences.

As the ranking member on our committee well knows, since he has joined with me in all of these investigations, the choice must not be between protecting skyscrapers or farms and feedlots that provide our food supply, or chemical plants and industrial zones versus the rural communities that trucks and trains carrying those hazardous chemicals pass through. All funds beyond those necessary to cover the baseline allocations, more than 60 percent of the total, would be distributed based on the relative threat, vulnerability, and consequences faced by an area from a terrorist attack. From this funding pool, the Secretary would make threat-based grants to both States and metropolitan regions.

My colleague from Connecticut feels strongly about taking a regional approach to homeland security. In allocating the risk-based formula, the Secretary would prioritize grants with consideration given to such factors as population, population density, critical infrastructure, coastlines, international borders, previous terrorist attacks, elevated threat levels higher than the rest of the Nation, as well as other factors he deems appropriate.

While allowing judgment on the part of the Secretary, we specifically delineated some of the critical factors--the ones I just read--that the Department must take into account. In doing so, we take some of the mystery out of the black box from which DHS now seems to generate some of its funding decisions, decisions that result, for example, in Minneapolis receiving funding but not St. Paul.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the urban-rural argument is the assertion often made that locations outside of our largest cities have no significant homeland security needs. This is demonstrably untrue. It ignores a great deal of expertise. It ignores our history.

A recent study conducted by the Harvard School for Public Health, with coleadership by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and participation by 26 States, shows that rural areas face unique and profound homeland security challenges. A great many power and water supplies as well as virtually our entire food supply are located outside of urban areas. Work our committee has done on agro-terrorism shows the potential threat to our food supply. In addition, rural areas have far less capacity to deal with a terrorist attack or a public health crisis.

In a letter describing its commercial equipment direct assistance program, the Department of Homeland Security itself wrote:

When they face the common threat of terrorism, the needs of smaller jurisdictions are very different from the needs of larger metropolitan areas. Smaller agencies confront threats to the transportation infrastructure, agriculture, water supplies, power grids and other critical items spread out over a wide geographic area.

I will highlight the next statement because the events preceding September 11 show it is so true:

Terrorists may live and train in rural communities. Targets such as pipelines and nuclear power plants are typically located in smaller jurisdictions.

Indeed, among the most striking aspects of the report of the 9/11 Commission is the extent to which the terrorists did live, organize, and train in America's smaller communities. The contacts they had with smaller law enforcement agencies before the September 11 attacks are striking, as well.

As the committee reconstituted the movements of the terrorists after they arrived in the United States, the trail led to such places as Venice and Coral Springs, FL, Norman, OK, Falls Church, VA, Lawrenceville and Stone Mountain, GA and, of course, most personal to me, Portland, ME. It was Portland, ME from which two of the hijackers, including the ringleader, began their journey of death and destruction on September 11. It is not just the large cities that attract those who would do us harm. Indeed, often they feel more secure in hiding in our smaller cities and communities.

As we seek to ensure that our communities, large and small, are prepared to respond to a terrorist attack, we must not lose sight of the need for prevention. Our amendment ensures that the prevention of terrorist attacks, not just response efforts, receives a significant share of Homeland Security funds. This is an area that law enforcement groups tell us over and over again has been neglected.

Our amendment ensures that the prevention of terrorist attacks receives significant funds. It would for the first time authorize the Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program which funds prevention activities by State and local law enforcement. Under the amendment, 25 percent of Homeland Security grant funding would be used for law enforcement terrorism prevention, including information sharing, target hardening, threat recognition, terrorist intervention activities, interoperable communication, and overtime expenses incurred in support of Federal homeland security efforts.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police recently released a report that put it very well. They warned:

In our national efforts to develop the capacity to respond to and recover from a terrorist attack we have failed to focus on the importance of building our capacity to prevent a terrorist attack in the first place.

We are never going to be able to protect every single target in this country. That is why we have to pay attention to the prevention, the detection, the law enforcement side, as well as the response side.

Because of our bill's emphasis on terrorism prevention, it has been endorsed by the National Association of Police Organizations, the International Association of Chiefs Of Police, the International Union of Police Associations, the National Troopers Coalition, the United Federation of Police Officers, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives among others.

NAPO is the strongest voice supporting law enforcement officers in the United States, representing more than 236,000 sworn law enforcement officers as well as retired officers, and 100,000 citizens who share a common dedication to fair and effective crime control and law enforcement. They, too, have pointed out in a letter to Senator Lieberman and me that we need to be sure State and local law enforcement are properly supported, trained, and equipped to prevent terrorism before it occurs.

I do not believe we can allocate Homeland Security dollars effectively and efficiently unless we listen to and learn from the advice of our law enforcement officers and other first responders. Guided by a task force of first responders, the Secretary would establish the essential capabilities I referred to earlier to ensure that first responders have the support they need.

Preventing and responding to terrorism is a national challenge, but preventing and responding to specific acts of terrorism in the urgency of the moment is a regional challenge.

We saw this after the September 11 attack on the Pentagon and in New York City when first responders from outlying communities rushed in to make invaluable and heroic contributions to the rescue operation.

We saw it again in simulation at the TOPOFF 3 exercise I observed earlier this year with Senator Lieberman. This incident was a simulated explosion and chemical attack at a waterfront festival in New London, CT. The contributions by first responders from the outlying smaller communities were enormous, but their efforts were hampered by a lack of interoperable communications equipment.

Senator Lieberman and I saw some first responders who were carrying as many as three emergency radios, which slowed the evacuation of those who were playing the injured parties to hospitals throughout the region. In a real attack, these delays--that incompatibility of equipment--would have had devastating consequences.

Regional planning and coordination are essential, and our amendment would shift the focus of local funding from individual cities to metropolitan regions. Unlike the current Urban Area Security Initiative under which DHS simply announces a list of cities it has selected to fund, our amendment would establish an application process for metropolitan region funding.

In applying for funding, communities would be given considerable flexibility in forming regions that would make the most sense locally. Our amendment provides that the regions within the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas would automatically be eligible to apply, with additional regions eligible under certain circumstances.

Our amendment would also allow for regional coalitions--even those spanning multiple States--to apply for grant funding together to address common needs. I think this would lead to real breakthroughs in strategy.

Let me give you a concrete example. Several Midwestern States are joining together to take steps to prevent and, if necessary, respond to acts of agroterrorism. That is exactly the kind of project that our amendment would provide for and fund. Under current law, these States could not seek funds as a group despite the common threats they face and the common solutions they seek. Our amendment breaks out of this rigid mold to allow States, counties, cities, tribes, and other governmental units to think regionally and creatively as they seek to prevent and prepare for terrorist attacks.

Our amendment would also put the State and local homeland security planning process where it belongs, on the front end. This legislation requires State and local jurisdictions to plan for how funds will be spent before the funds arrive. Currently, much of the deliberative planning on how funds will be spent is done on the back end, only after DHS has allocated grants to States and urban areas.

Moreover--and this actually is another safeguard--our bill would require States to spend money according to State plans approved by the Department of Homeland Security. More advanced funding means funds will be spent more quickly and according to a coherent strategy.

Whenever I meet with first responders, whether it is in my home State of Maine or elsewhere, I am always struck by the fact that very few of these brave, dedicated men and women first went into law enforcement, firefighting, or emergency medical services ever thinking they would end up on the front lines of a war against terrorism. They have been handed an unprecedented and unimaginable challenge, and they have accepted it bravely and willingly. They deserve the equipment, training, planning, input, accountability, and stability that our amendment would provide. They deserve to have this critical program that is so essential to the security of our Nation properly authorized, funded, and designed.

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