Providing for Consideration of H.R. 4954, Security and Accountability for Every Port Act

PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 4954, SECURITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR EVERY PORT ACT -- (House of Representatives - May 03, 2006)

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, this rule does not make in order an amendment that was defeated 18-16 on a practically party-line vote and is the key difference, and it is why this rule ought to be defeated.

The gentleman from New York says a risk-based strategy. Why should we risk the lives of millions of people by assuming that we know which container will contain the atomic bomb or the radiological bomb? We don't know that. We can't know that.

The only safety we can have is to inspect 100 percent of the containers, not in New York but in Hong Kong, before they are put on a ship bound for the United States. That is the essence of the amendment, the Nadler-Markey amendment that the Republicans won't accept and won't permit us to debate on the floor.

They say the technology doesn't exist. The technology most certainly exists. It is done in Hong Kong today. Mr. Gingrey spoke about a company in his district that wants to sell the tamper-proof seals that will tell us if the container, once scanned, is tampered with. But the Department of Homeland Security is not interested.

This bill contains a study, an amendment by Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite that the Department of Homeland Security should study whether it is feasible to have 100 percent scanning. We passed that amendment on this floor 2 years ago. It was the Nadler amendment. It is in the law. It said they should report back in 90 days, 90 days from 2 years ago. They haven't bothered reporting back, because they are not interested in this. This is another waste of time.

The fact is, a risk-based strategy, they will simply put the atomic bomb or the radiological bomb in a low-risk container from Wal-Mart. The greatest risk we face is that a good company will have a container with sneakers in Indonesia on the way to the port, and the driver will stop for lunch, and while he is stopping for lunch, some terrorist will take out the sneakers and put in a bomb and the bill of lading will be fine.

The people who say we can't do this are the same people who told us 2 years ago we couldn't get a bill of lading for every container 24 hours in advance, and they told us we couldn't get every person searched before he got on an airplane.

If we really want to make this country safer, we must debate on this floor this amendment, the Nadler-Markey amendment, to say, before any container gets put on a ship bound for the United States, it must be scanned electronically to see what is in it; it should be sealed with a tamper-proof seal that will tell us if it has been tampered with; and the results of the scan should be transmitted electronically to people in the United States who will look at that seal.

It is being done now in Hong Kong, except that because no one in the Department of Homeland Security is interested, the results of those scans are on tapes that are stored there because no one in this country has time to read those tapes.

For shame.

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Mr. Nadler, Mr. Oberstar and I requested an amendment to be put in order, and the Republicans said no. In the former Soviet Union, there is deadly nuclear weapons material that is still unsecured that al Qaeda could purchase, bring to a port in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, put it on a ship and bring it into the port of the United States and detonate a nuclear weapon without ever having been inspected.

Now, the amendment which we asked the Republicans to put in order was one that required all containers coming into the United States to be screened overseas before they are put on ships to come into American ports so that we can identify which ship has the nuclear weapon.

In the Homeland Security Committee, our amendment lost 18-16. The Republican majority refuses to allow the coastal representatives to vote on this issue.

We should have learned something from the Dubai debacle, the threat to our container ships coming into our ports. Our amendment says no deadly uranium bombs allowed in, no Dubais. The Republican majority says, we are not going to screen any containers coming into the ports of the United States.

It is dangerous. The least that we should be able to say when that nuclear weapon goes off is that we tried, we really tried to prevent it from happening. The Republicans are not only not trying to stop it from happening; they are stopping us from having a debate on the floor of Congress on this issue.

This is the issue that is at the top of the al Qaeda terrorist target list, to bring a nuclear weapon into the port of an American city. And instead of allowing for this debate to take place, they are saying they cannot figure it out. They are going to study it for three more years. So that will mean we went from 2001 to 2009 studying this issue.

When the Soviet Union threatened the United States in 1961 with Sputnik, President Kennedy did not say, we are going to study it until 1969. He said, we will put a man on the Moon and bring him back to Earth; we will control the heavens, not the Communists.

What the Republicans with the Bush White House say is, they are going to study the issue of the greatest al Qaeda threat to our country, a nuclear bomb in a container in a port in the United States. They are going to study it for all 8 years, 2001 to 2009. President Kennedy said, rocket science, we will master it. The Republicans say, we cannot even figure out how to screen a container; we cannot even figure out how to put a tamper-proof seal on a container.

The price our country will pay will be too high a price. It will be the most horrendous event in the history of our Nation.

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