Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008--Continued -- (House of Representatives - June 14, 2007)
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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Like the chairman, I am sympathetic with the gentleman's concern about funding for REAL ID. It is a mandate that we put on the States that we need to match money for. And we've done that. As the chairman indicated, there's $50 million in this bill which was unrequested by the administration. In addition to that, there's $40 million that was put in this program in '06 and most of that is unobligated. So there will be around $90 million that REAL ID has. So there's plenty of money, I think, in the REAL ID program. The gentleman, I think, should be pleased with that.
But at the same time, I must say that we can't afford to take more money out of the Deepwater program. This subcommittee has maintained aggressive oversight of that program. But this bill also makes, as the chairman said, substantial cuts already of almost $200 million to Deepwater that will, in effect, slow down the program's acquisition schedule and delay the much-needed modernization of the Coast Guard's ships and aircraft.
Specifically, the bill cuts $60 million from the National Security Cutter, $70 million from the Maritime Patrol Aircraft, and over $50 million from the Fast Response Cutter. Now, those reductions are made in the name of good oversight, but I fear that the security of shores will be further delayed by these sizable reductions, and may unnecessarily prolong the operation of antiquated systems, some dating back to World War II.
We're confident the Coast Guard is putting in place the right managerial tools and controls and organizational improvements to get Deepwater heading in the right direction. But let me be clear. Mr. Chairman, no one has been harder on Deepwater than this Member. Too much of our national security is at stake for the Coast Guard to continue to struggle with inadequate managerial and budgetary controls. I think the commandant of the Coast Guard now has seized control of this program, and I am convinced that he is on the right track and will have the capability to make it work.
And so while we're cutting Deepwater in this bill and putting controls on how they spend their money, they still need this money, and this amendment would cut too much from the Deepwater program for a REAL ID program that is flush with money already.
So I oppose the amendment reluctantly and congratulate the gentleman for his thoughtful but misplaced amendment.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
I want to first thank the chairman for including $20 million in this program when it was zeroed out in the budget request and also to congratulate my colleague from Kentucky (Mr. Davis) for this amendment which I strongly support.
It increases the funds for this CEDAP program by $30 million to get it back up to the historic funding level of $50 million. That's what we've always had in this program. In fact, Mr. Chairman, this program was created by this subcommittee in fiscal year 2005, and the reason was we found that a lot of small towns and small communities were not being able to get grants out of their State allocations or these other grant programs because the moneys were being consumed by the larger cities. And this was the only way we could find to get money directly to those smaller communities.
These are not grants that go to the State. These grants go directly from here to the local community, designed to target those areas that may not directly benefit from the large amounts of grant funding because of competing priorities within the States or larger urban areas. It gets basic first responder equipment into all first responder hands.
And it's been one of the most successful programs DHS has run. It made close to 4,000 awards in fiscal 2005 and 2006, another 2,000 awards for fiscal 2007.
There is some report language in the bill that changes how the program is run from a direct assistance program to a grant program. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I think it is very important to get the level of funding back to the 2007 level of $50 million.
Listen to what some of the local communities say about this program: ``Your program is one of the absolutely best run and organized programs I have ever seen in the rescue service. The equipment you offer to emergency responders for homeland security is right on target for our needs in the field.''
Another one says: ``The CEDAP program has allowed us to obtain, train with, and deploy an essential fire fighting tool that we would have otherwise not have had available to us.''
Another one says: ``This award represents a purchase that would have not been possible for my agency. Thank you for giving us this ability.''
So, Mr. Chairman, this is a popular program. It is effective. It helps communities that otherwise are not getting help and there's no other place for them to turn. So I urge our colleagues to support the gentleman's amendment and restore funding for this worthwhile program to the previous year's level and the level it was set at in 2005 and every year since.
And I want to congratulate Mr. Davis for bringing this amendment forward. It's thoughtful, it is needed, and it fits the bill; and I congratulate the gentleman and support his amendment.
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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against the amendment because it proposes to change existing law and constitutes legislation in an appropriation bill and therefore violates clause 2 of rule XXI, which states, in pertinent part: An amendment to a general appropriations bill shall not be in order if changing existing law.
I ask for a ruling from the Chair.
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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, this is a simple amendment.
It would restore to the bill the traditional historic 45,000-person cap on the number of screeners that the TSA can employ.
The reason for this is simple. This screener cap has been in place since before there was a Department of Homeland Security.
When we first created the Transportation Security Administration in 2001, I think it was, or 2002, TSA was in the Department of Transportation. At the time, I chaired the subcommittee that funded that Department.
When we first began to place federally employed screeners in the airports, TSA came to us and said we need 35,000 screeners. We said, okay, here is the money, hire them.
They came back a few days later, a few months later, and said no, we're going to need 40,000. Then they came back a few months later and said no, we have to have 45,000. Then it was 50,000 and 60,000, and then finally they said we need to have 70,000. We said, wait a minute, time out. We can't afford this many. Where are you going to stop?
What they did at the outset, TSA was poorly managed, poorly run, and was not operating properly. They made up for their difference, their shortcomings, by hiring more people. I remember going to an airport in the South, a moderate-sized airport. The lobby was full of the trace detection machines where they swab your briefcase and then run it through the machine, very time-consuming, very labor-intensive, and not very accurate.
And the lobby was full, passengers having trouble getting through the doorway to get to the boarding gates. And I called over the Federal director, security director for that airport and I said, when are you going to apply for an x-ray machine to more efficiently and more securely search people as they go to board the airplane? They said, oh, we don't need, we don't want an x-ray machine to replace these trace detection machines in the lobby. I said, why not? The person said, our people are perfectly happy. I said, you mean the passengers? No, the screeners. Of course they were perfectly happy. One machine, Mr. Chairman, would have taken the place of all of those trace detection machines in that lobby.
And so we came up with a screener cap mainly to force TSA to bring technology to bear on the detection of explosive devices in briefcases and baggage of passengers. The 45,000 screener limit works. TSA now is placing the machines in airports.
This committee, this subcommittee, has now appropriated many hundreds of millions of dollars in this bill, along with others, to buy more machinery.
But the cap on screeners needs to be kept in place. It's been there since we first began TSA 5 years ago. You take that screener cap off, as this bill does, and TSA will go back to their old ways. I guarantee it. They'll go back to their old ways of hiring screeners to run trace detection machines, very unreliable, insecure, and disruptive, actually, of people trying to get on the airplane.
So I urge our colleagues to keep in place, put back in place the 45,000 screener limit that's been in the bill ever since we've had a Department of Transportation, TSA in the Department of Transportation and now Homeland Security.
I know the bill contains funds only for some 44,000 screeners, and the argument can be made that we can control the number of screeners by the amount of money we appropriate. And this bill starts us along that line.
But we all know that these agencies can come back to the Appropriations Committee and request a reprogramming of funds from one account to the next, and the pressure would be great if they came to us to assign that reappropriation of monies. But the limit works. Keep the limit.
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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman for the amendment. This is a horse of a different color that you have brought up here. And I think it is a humane thing to do, and I congratulate the gentleman. And being from horse country, I doubly appreciate it.
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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is simple. It strikes the Davis-Bacon section in the bill. That section has consequences that I'm not sure the majority has thoroughly thought through.
Requiring all DHS contract and grant funds to comply with Davis-Bacon could unfairly disadvantage communities that are unfortunate enough to be struck by a disaster. It could reduce funds available for their recovery. It could slow the pace of assistance and significantly increase non-Federal cost-share requirements. This section would likely cost already cash-strapped States and localities additional funds.
The Congressional Budget Office says that Davis-Bacon will cost taxpayers more than $9.5 billion from 2002 to 2011. This expansion would only greater the burden on taxpayers.
This expansion further disadvantages small, emerging and minority businesses new to the complex, inefficient wage and work restrictions which make it nearly impossible for them to compete with better capitalized corporations, disadvantaging the very companies we often seek to help following a disaster.
And so I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and strike this onerous restriction on the Nation's communities.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, this is the final amendment, and it is the fiscal responsibility amendment. This amendment would implement an across-the-board cut in the bill of 5.7 percent, thereby limiting the increase of this bill to 7.2 percent over the current year, the amount the President requested, instead of the current 13.6 percent in the current bill.
Let me emphasize that point again. This amendment does not cut anything. It provides a more than generous and responsible 7.2 percent increase in Homeland Security funding over the current year. It's a small downpayment on fiscal discipline, an issue we heard a lot about last November.
The national debt is burgeoning, the public is demanding that we gain control of Federal spending. Despite the President's overall budget request of $933 billion for fiscal year 2008, and an already generous $63 billion over the current year's level, the majority plans to add another $20 billion on top of that at the minimum. Where will it stop?
This year's $20 billion could become $40 billion next year and on and on and on. The only thing this does is ensure our children and their children will be paying for this generations to come.
The Homeland Security bill before us today represents 10 percent of that $20 billion increase in spending, more than $2 billion above the President's request. Nobody on this side is proposing that we cut Homeland Security, not our President, not this Member, certainly not this amendment.
I agree with the funding level requested by the administration. It's a responsible 7.2 percent increase from the base 2007 level, a rate that is already over double the rate of inflation.
As I said before, the public is demanding accountability and fiscal responsibility. I don't think we can exclude any Federal agency, even Homeland Security, from fiscal discipline. Otherwise, there will be no discipline at all.
I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment, a fiscally disciplined amendment still providing a 7.2 percent increase in Homeland Security security.
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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I urge an ``aye'' vote on the amendment.
Before yielding back, I want to thank the Chair for being a very responsible and fair-minded chair tonight. We thank you for that service. I want to congratulate the chairman of the subcommittee, who has been easy to work with and understanding of issues on this side of the aisle, and he has been very forthcoming and cooperative, but, at the same time, disciplined in his own approach, and to the staff on both sides of the aisle. This has been a long week for them, as well as a long several months now. I want to thank the staff for the great work that they have done.
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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I thank the chairman, and I am glad that he is continuing the tradition of this subcommittee in being a bipartisan, strong oversight subcommittee to see this new Department to a success one of these days, we hope.
Mr. Chairman, I urge an ``aye'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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