Improving America's Security Act of 2007--Continued

IMPROVING AMERICA'S SECURITY ACT OF 2007--Continued -- (Senate - March 13, 2007)

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, the amendment offered by the senior Senator from Delaware is actually more under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee than the Homeland Security Committee. Nevertheless, in the absence of a member of the Commerce Committee on the Senate floor, I want to express my concern about the amendment.

As I understand it, the effect of the amendment would be to require that hazardous materials on rail cars be routed around high-threat areas, with some exceptions.

The problem is that the Commerce Committee title on rail security already has a section that addresses hazardous materials by requiring a mitigation plan that can include rerouting but only when the homeland security advisory system is at a high or severe level of threat or when specific intelligence indicates that there is a specific or imminent threat.

I think this amendment, while well-intentioned, creates all sorts of practical problems. The Chamber of Commerce, which is rating this as a key vote, lists some of those that I want to read from a letter that we received from the Chamber today. The letter reads:

The Biden amendment, which would require mandatory rerouting of shipments of hazardous materials around high threat corridors, would not reduce risk to homeland security. It would only reallocate risk among population centers. In fact, the amendment would actually increase risk by either eliminating routes that provide optimal overall safety and security, or by adding hundreds of miles and additional days to the journeys of shipments of hazardous materials via less direct routes.

In other words, if we are causing this hazardous material to be on its journey far longer because it is not going by the more direct route, that could in fact increase the problems or the chances of the hazardous material being attacked. The letter goes on to point out that the railroads have been working with the Federal Government, with chemical manufacturers, and with consumers to explore the use of coordinated routing arrangements to reduce mileage and time in the transit of highly hazardous materials.

This amendment seems to be going in the opposite direction. Another one of my colleagues has raised the issue of chlorine shipments to wastewater treatment plants. Those shipments need to be made. It raises a lot of practical questions about how to move this material. Another colleague raised the issue to me of whether this would result in more trucks on our highways carrying hazardous materials.

So I think that while I agree with the overall intent of the amendment, I am much more comfortable with the approach taken by the Commerce Committee--a committee which, unfortunately, I don't serve on, so I don't have the level of expertise that its members have in talking about this issue. I do expect some members of the Commerce Committee to come to the floor and debate this issue.

I do want my colleagues to know that the distinguished Senator's amendment is controversial, that it may have unintended consequences. Based on my knowledge of the issue, I hope it will be defeated.

Thank you.

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I do expect additional Members on my side of the aisle to come and debate this issue.

I wish to clarify that the language, as I read it, in the Senator's amendment, is not discretionary, it is mandatory. It does allow for some certain significant exceptions for the Department to make findings on, but it clearly says:

The regulations issued under this section shall--

(1) except as provided in--

The subsections part--

provide that any rail shipment containing high hazard materials be rerouted around any high threat corridor.

So I don't see it as giving the Department great discretion if that determination is made because of the word ``shall,' which is not permissive, it is mandatory. There are some exceptions later which the Senator has referred to, such as the origination point or point of destination being within the high-threat corridor. But as I read the amendment, it pretty clearly calls for rerouting.

I wanted to clarify that issue. Maybe I misunderstood the Senator from Delaware, but I thought he was saying it did not require rerouting.

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Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I first want to thank our colleagues for their cooperation in moving forward this very important piece of legislation. When the 9/11 Commission completed its report and made its findings to Congress, the Homeland Security Committee, which I chaired at the time, worked very hard to produce a major overhaul of our intelligence community--in fact, the most sweeping changes in more than 50 years.

That legislation, for example, created the Director of National Intelligence and also established the National Counterterrorism Center, which brings together analysts from the 15 agencies involved in intelligence gathering and analysis. We took a major step forward.

Now we are on the verge of finishing the job. I salute the chairman of the committee, Senator Lieberman, for making this legislation the top priority of our committee under his chairmanship. The legislation is going to help implement the unfinished recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. As I said, most of the recommendations were included in the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. But there were some significant ones that were not completed. Thus, this legislation improves intelligence and information sharing, and it authorizes the Homeland Security Grant Program, which has been so important in improving the capabilities of our communities and States which are, after all, our partners in improving homeland security.

We worked very hard, the chairman and I and the rest of the committee members, to devise a formula that would be fair to all States, that would allocate the majority of the funding based on an analysis of risk, vulnerability, and consequences but also ensure that each and every State receive a predictable, steady level of funding so that each State can be improved and have a basic preparedness level.

I think we struck the right balance in that area. This bill would authorize a bit over $3 billion for each of the next 3 years for this new Homeland Security Grant Program. Included in that program is an emphasis on prevention. We all are very focused on recovery and response in the event of a terrorist attack, but we believe it is very important to also focus on preventing attacks from happening in the first place. Our legislation would do that by providing that at least 25 percent of the overall funding for the urban areas and State Homeland Security Grant Programs must be used for law enforcement terrorism prevention activities.

Another important section of this bill creates a program to deal with communications equipment interoperability. We know that lives were lost on 9/11 because the various first responders could not communicate with one another. As a result, firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical personnel lost their lives and suffered injuries. Much to our dismay, we also found as part of our investigation into the failed response to Hurricane Katrina that exactly those same interoperability problems were occurring in Louisiana, in particular. We simply must tackle this problem. It is too big a problem and too expensive a problem for States and communities to do on their own. That is why we have a partnership, a grant program that would be administered by FEMA and dedicated to improving the survivability and the interoperability of communications equipment used by our courageous first responders and emergency managers.

Again, that program would authorize $3.3 billion over the next 5 years.

The bill also makes a number of important improvements to prevent terrorists from traveling to our country; to strengthen the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board; to improve private sector preparedness, since we know that 85 percent of critical infrastructure is in the private sector; and to improve transportation security planning and overall security of our transportation system.

It has been a great pleasure to work with the chairman and the members of our committee, as well as the Commerce Committee and other Members who have been interested, to bring this bill to the floor, and I believe it will help make our Nation safer.

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