Transportation Security Administration Authorization Act

Floor Speech

TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION AUTHORIZATION ACT -- (House of Representatives - June 04, 2009)

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Ms. CASTOR of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to offer an amendment that promotes economic growth and fairness.

My amendment eliminates redundant and expensive additional background checks that are making the Transportation Worker ID Card less effective and keeping qualified verified workers from jobs at our ports.

The Transportation Worker ID Card was designed to ensure that people working at our ports are not security risks. We now verify that port workers have not been involved in activities related to terrorism or other serious criminal activity.

The TWIC harmonizes port security across the Nation, so that any port authority in the country can be secure in the knowledge that job applicants have been examined by the TSA and deemed qualified and safe to access our ports.

While the Transportation Worker ID Card has standardized port security for the vast majority of States, in Florida a worker who holds that national TWIC card is still not allowed to access ports without additional background checks and additional fees under a parallel and duplicative State-run system. That's not fair.

A trucker delivering a load to a port in Georgia or South Carolina can simply present the TWIC card and make his or her delivery, as Congress intended when the TWIC program was designed. However, the same trucker in Florida will have to pay additional fees because the State refuses to recognize the TWIC as a sufficient security credential.

Florida is the only State in the country to require two security clearances to enter public seaports. These duplicative clearances not only defeat the purpose of having a Federal port security credential, but they put Florida's seaports, tenants, trucking companies and workers at a competitive disadvantage, and this is hurting Florida's economy. It's a terrible burden on business.

Now, in 2007, this Congress directed TSA to work with Florida to come to a mutually agreeable solution that would allow the TWIC to serve its purpose, but the ensuing years of negotiations led Florida to reaffirm this spring that it would not accept the national standard for port security but would continue to require expensive duplicative and unnecessary extra background checks.

The criminal background checks are almost identical. Both screen for crimes such as trafficking and narcotics, robbery and assault. Both agencies also have the ability to issue waivers to applicants when offenses are judged to represent no threat to port commerce or national security.

The price of the DHS TWIC port credential 5-year card is $132.50. And if you're in Florida, you have to pay an additional $100 to $130 for the Florida clearance for the same 5-year period. This additional financial and bureaucratic burden on Florida port businesses and workers is unnecessary.

The amendment I'm offering will restore a reasonable, rational, and cost-efficient maritime business environment. Duplicative and unnecessary costs erode the efforts to stimulate and grow Florida's economy and decrease the effectiveness of national standards put in place by Congress through the TWIC program.

Now, for those that might be concerned, if Florida can justify additional background checks with legitimate homeland security concerns, this amendment gives them the opportunity to do so, and the parallel program could be maintained. But if the duplicative and expensive background checks required by Florida are not making our ports safer, workers should not have to pay for them.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to adopt the amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. CASTOR of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to thank the chair of the committee, Mr. Thompson from Mississippi, for his leadership on this issue and the professional Homeland Security staff who are the committee supportive of the amendment.

I'd also submit, for the Record, letters of support from the Transportation Trades Department, the Florida Ports Council, Port Everglades, Port Manatee, Port of Miami, the Tampa Port Authority, and the Passenger Vessel Association.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment and come down on the side of economic growth in a time of economic disaster; to come down on the side of the hardworking folks at our ports, to say that it's not fair in America that just because you live in one State, that you're going to be subjected to additional bureaucratic barriers to get to your job. I urge approval of the amendment.

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