Making Appropriations for Science, the Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce, and Related Agencies for Fiscal Year 2006

MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FOR SCIENCE, THE DEPARTMENTS OF STATE, JUSTICE, AND COMMERCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006 -- (Senate - September 09, 2005)

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I wish to speak for a few minutes on the proposal for an independent commission to look into what has happened in the Gulf States. This issue has been spoken about, worked on so hard and so carefully by Senator Reid, Leader Pelosi, my colleague, Senator Clinton, and many others.

I speak from the experience of the devastation that occurred in New York after the terrorist attack almost 4 years ago. It will be 4 years this Sunday, and many of us will be at Ground Zero commemorating that.

I think of that every day to this moment, the people I knew who were lost--a guy I played basketball with in high school, a businessman who helped me on the way up, a firefighter from the community in which I was raised. I wear this flag. I put it on September 12, and I wear it every day and, God willing, will every day for the rest of my life in memory of those who were lost.

One of the main desires of the families of those who were killed in 9/11 was to get to the bottom of it. I believe it was a selfless desire, a desire to figure out what went wrong so it would not happen again.

Now we face a tragedy of similar consequence although of different origin, and that is the hurricane in the Gulf and the lack of an excellent response to it. Obviously, our first concern has to be rescuing those who are still in need of help, making immediate provision for the hundreds of thousands of individuals who were displaced and trying to deal with the immediate aftermath. Then we will have a longer term job of restoring the city of New Orleans.

I have talked with Senator Landrieu and Congressman Jefferson about what we learned in New York about bringing people back to an area that had become temporarily abandoned. That is what happened to downtown on 9/11. But another thing we are going to have to do is figure out what went wrong with the same positive motivation that motivated us after 9/11, and that is so we might reduce the chances of loss of life, loss of property in the aftermath of it happening again.

We learned one thing. We learned very simply that the best way to get to the bottom of this is have an impartial, nonpartisan commission not composed of politicians. The best way to get to the bottom of this, frankly, is to repeat the experience of the 9/11 Commission and have a group of people--many experts in different fields, some citizens with motivation to find out what went wrong--and give them the authority they need, the resources they need, the time they need, and let them get to the bottom of it.

Frankly, there has been a lot of discussion of how we should do this in the House and Senate. From what I understand, the majority leader is now considering simply having joint hearings with the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, joined with the House. I have no objection to that, but I will say this: When elected officials, when politicians are on a commission, generally it does not work out. Republicans will have a natural view to defend the administration. Democrats will have a natural view to attack the administration. Both are legitimate roles. But to assure the public that the truth will actually be found, a nonpartisan commission, not composed of elected officials, is the best way to go.

The calls for doing things in the House and Senate with our particular needs--appropriations, oversight of various Government agencies--is not a bad one, but only if it is not a substitute for an independent commission.

I hope my colleagues will rise to the call in the next few weeks and months. We do not have to constitute this commission immediately, but we should do it soon enough because, again, the only way to assure the public that we are getting to the bottom of this is to have a commission that is nonpartisan and not populated by politicians, each of whom has a legitimate ax to grind--a legitimate ax to grind, but it is an ax to grind nonetheless.

I wish to make one other point before I yield the floor. The initial calls for an independent commission after 9/11 were resisted. They were resisted by the administration, and they were resisted by many in the House and Senate. But it was the fortitude of the families of the victims, the survivors--Kristen Breitweiser and her colleagues from New Jersey, so many of the families I know from New York--who forced the Commission to occur.

My guess, my prediction is this: If we do not form that commission ourselves, on our own volition quickly, at some point the citizens of the Gulf States will demand that we do so in any case as we move past the tragedy and hopefully begin to rebuild for those who have been caught in this gulf catastrophe. Those who lost loved ones, at least some of them will do what was done in New York. They will band together and try to do everything they can to help a community they love.

And they will urge us and importune us, just as the families in New York did, to form such a commission. That is my guess. It is just how things are. And it is the right thing to do. So let us do it now. Again, it does not have to be done next week. It probably should not be done next week. Our main goal should be to focus on helping those who need help. But within the next month or two, without question, if we really want to get to the bottom of what went wrong to prevent it from happening again, we should form an independent commission, not composed of elected officials with an ax to grind but nonpartisan citizens of various expertise to figure out what went wrong and to give us guidance as to how to avoid it in the future.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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