Security and Accountability for Every Port Act - Continued

SECURITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR EVERY PORT ACT--Continued -- (Senate - September 12, 2006)

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Mrs. MURRAY. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, we are here on the floor of the Senate this evening talking about the maritime cargo security bill. This is an extremely important piece of legislation. I have been working on this issue since September 11, 5 years ago, when I recognized, as did others, that we have an extreme vulnerability in our port cargo container system when it comes to our Nation's security.

We have been working since that time to put together legislation. I commend Senator Collins and her staff, Senator Inouye, Senator Stevens, the Finance Committee, and numerous Senators who have worked together to get us to this point.

As I said earlier on the floor of the Senate, this measure is extremely important. For the first time, when this bill is passed and it goes to the President's desk, we will assure that every cargo container coming into this country has a much higher level of security. We also will put in place what is called the GreenLane bill, which will allow an even higher point of security for companies that voluntarily opt to make sure that when their cargo containers are loaded overseas, they are secured, that we know what is in them, we know who is handling them, and we know if they have been diverted. They will be tracked across the ocean, and before they ever come into our ports we will know that they are safe.

Those cargo containers with that higher level of scrutiny will then move off of our ports in a much more efficient and quick manner, leaving behind those containers that will still need to have a higher degree of inspection.

Finally, our bill will make sure we have a way to resume cargo handling quickly and efficiently should a terrible incident ever occur at our ports.

This bill balances the need of making sure our ports and our containers and the people who live and work around those containers, as well as the cargo there, are secured. It balances that with the important economic activity that occurs at ports across our country.

When this bill was brought to the floor of the Senate earlier last week, it lacked one critical component, and that was a dedicated funding stream. As I shared with my colleagues, I was deeply concerned that if we did not fund this bill, we would leave an empty shell and an empty promise to the people of America that we were securing our ports.

That is why today I was very happy the Senate agreed to my amendment to have a funding stream and to put that into this bill to make sure, as it moves forward, we will have the personnel we need to make sure the regime we have put in place actually occurs, that we will have the infrastructure that will be needed to make sure we can assure a secure system of cargo containers this country relies on for its economic activity.

That amendment was adopted, and with that I believe this bill is one we can all be proud of. Within a few days, as we work through the rest of the amendments, I, for one, will finally be able to sleep at night knowing we have made a major move forward.

So there are still amendments to be brought forward to the Senate. I know we are going to work our will through them. But I commend all of our colleagues for stepping up to the plate on this important issue.

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