Expressing Sense of the House of Representatives on Fifth Anniversary of Terrorist Attacks Launched Against the United States on September 11, 2001
EXPRESSING SENSE OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ON FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF TERRORIST ATTACKS LAUNCHED AGAINST THE UNITED STATES ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 -- (House of Representatives - September 13, 2006)
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, the Republican Party has taken an opportunity to make a positive contribution to the commemoration of the 9/11 anniversary and turned it into a partisan ploy that divides our country and this Congress. What a huge missed opportunity and disservice to our Nation.
At the same time, they have undertaken a coordinated, cynical, political campaign to impugn the patriotism of any Democrat who dares to question, dares to criticize, dares to suggest that there may be a better, safer way of protecting our country.
The Republicans include in this resolution legislation that divides our country, not just Democrats and Republicans in Congress; but they include in this resolution the Republican border security bill, the PATRIOT Act, other bills that they know divide Democrats from Republicans and Americans from other Americans.
If they want to go down the path, there are other issues that divide Democrats from Republicans. Democrats want to implement all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. They want to make sure that every one of them is put on the books. The Republicans oppose implementing all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
In other areas they oppose having full security built around chemical plants in the United States. There are nightclubs in New York City that are harder to get into than chemical plants in our country.
Nuclear power plants, they oppose the hardening of the spent fuel facilities next to nuclear power plants in our country. They nickel and dime security for public transit. They refuse to support the requirement that hazardous materials, where possible, are shipped around densely populated areas instead of through them in our country.
In aviation they still oppose screening of the cargo which goes on to passenger planes in our country. Each one of us has to take off our shoes, has to put our bag through security, and then nearly 6 billion pounds of cargo are placed under the feet of passengers on planes across our country.
And then, unbelievably, rejecting the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, knowing that al Qaeda puts at the top of their terrorist target list putting a nuclear bomb on a cargo container in a ship and bringing it into port in the United States, the Republicans object to the requirement that all of these containers be screened in ports overseas before they are ever allowed to leave for the United States. They say it is too expensive. Well, the price we will pay in security for the Republicans objecting to the screening for a nuclear bomb is that when a nuclear bomb goes off in an American city, as Vice President Cheney said, more deaths will occur than all the lives that were lost in all the battles that the United States fought all the way back to the Revolutionary War. They refuse to impose this mandate for screening of nuclear bombs in cargo container ships. They want to screen it after it gets to a port in the United States. By then it is too late. The 9/11 Commission says screen for nuclear bombs as they are being put into containers overseas before they take off for the ports of the United States.
This resolution is just a complete and total undermining of the solidarity which we should have on this occasion of the fifth anniversary of that loss of life
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