Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2005

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005-RESUMED

Mr. SCHUMER. I thank my colleague from Nevada. I would be happy to set a time limit and then have a vote on the amendment.

Mr. REID. Could the Senator give us an idea about how much time it might take? Senator Cochran usually likes to work under time agreements. Could we have a general idea?

Mr. SCHUMER. That is fine with me. Maybe we could have a few minutes for the majority and a few minutes for the minority.

Mr. REID. We have a general idea about how much time it would take. If we could have a vote sometime before 5 o'clock?

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, before we start agreeing on times for votes, that is above my pay grade. We have a distinguished majority leader, and we will have to consult with him and other Senators.

Mr. REID. I did mention that, but to give Members an idea of when there might be a vote, Senator Schumer is ready to offer his amendment.

Mr. COCHRAN. It depends on what his amendment is. We may all rejoice and vote for it. Who knows? Again, we may not.

Mr. SCHUMER. If my colleague will yield, I can assure him it is a good one.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.

Mr. SCHUMER. Thank you, Mr. President. I will be offering an amendment on nuclear security in a few minutes. But first I would in general address this bill.

Let me first say at the outset I am glad we are doing this bill now. As you know, many of us on this side of the aisle asked that this bill come up much sooner. But to do it right here as our first order of business when we return from the summer break after the two conventions I think is very good. I am glad we are on this bill.

The second point I would make is this: I don't think anyone on this side-certainly not the senior Senator from New York-wants
to obstruct or not have this bill pass. We want it to move forward. So there is no intention to delay. As my good friend from Mississippi has seen by my asking for a short period to debate this amendment, having spent 18 years in the House of Representatives, 45 minutes is a lifetime there, but here in the Senate it is a relatively short amount of time. There is no intention for dilatory tactics or anything of that sort.

I believe, being head of our Democratic Task Force on Homeland Security, and having talked to many of my colleagues about further amendments, my friend, our chairman of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security Appropriations, will find similarly short time limits are being called for. That is all the good news. The bad news is many of us think this amendment being brought before us is woefully inadequate. I would like to discuss that in general.

I have been quite hawkish on the war on terrorism, having supported the President's request to go into Iraq. I supported the $87 billion and I believe we need a strong and muscular foreign policy overseas. Mistakes are often made. We should do a lot better in terms of those mistakes. But inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.

I am for fighting a vigorous war on terror overseas. I believe what our President said-former President Bill Clinton-is exactly right.
To have strength and intelligence-that is exactly what he said, something to that effect-are not mutually exclusive categories when fighting a war on terror. If we are fighting a strong war on terror overseas, we are certainly not doing it here at home.

If I had to choose perhaps the greatest weakness of this administration in its war on terror, it would be the inadequacy of what we are doing here at home. The bottom line is this: We get a lot of rhetoric. We don't get the focus, the thoughtfulness, or the resources, the dollars to do what we need to do. Sure, if you think this is a 20-year plan, maybe we are doing enough. But we sure don't think it is a 20-year plan when we go overseas, nor should we. It is not a 20-year plan here.

Let me say this. This is my own view. We have a window in this global war on terror. In other words, my view is that this war on terrorism we face can be described in a single sentence; that is, the very technology which has blessed our lives and accounted for so much of the prosperity we have seen over the last two decades here at home has an evil underside, and that is that small groups of bad people can get hold of that technology and use it for terrible purposes. You can be in a cave in Afghanistan, and as long as you have a wireless connection to the Internet you can learn as much about America as any of us knows. If you took 500 random people anywhere on the globe from the most highly intelligent and well-read and studied to maybe the guy who sweeps the floors at night and injected them all with an evil virus so that they all decide to spend the next 5 years figuring out how to do terrible damage to the United States and then implement it, the odds are too high they can succeed.

This is not simply a war against al-Qaida. Al-Qaida is the first group who learned how to use this technology to cause the terrible events in the city from which I hail and which I so love. Al-Qaida is on the run. We have not done enough maybe in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but clearly al-Qaida is weaker today than it was then. But it is only a matter of time before new groups-maybe the Chechens, maybe the East Timorese, maybe even the skinheads in western Montana-figure out they can use this technology and do terrible damage. So we have a window. It may be 2 years, it may be 4 years, it may be 6 years, but it sure as heck ain't 10 or 20 where we can tighten up our defenses, because even though we have to fight the war on terror overseas we also have to prepare a defense at home.

If 500 people can do such terrible things, the odds we will be able to catch all of them before any of them implement the first strike against us is rather small.

Like anyone who follows sports knows, to win a game you need a good defense and a good offense. Whether you agree with this administration or disagree, you can't take away that they are focused on that offense. When it comes to defense, they are not home. They would be ranked as one of the worst defenses around. I have tried to figure out why this is, why we are doing so little on homeland security at home; why when it comes to our ports or our trucks or our rails or our borders, we are making such slow and halting progress, almost grudging progress, if you will.

I am not a person inside the brain of the President or his chief advisers, but having talked to people who have worked there and left-some of them in disgust-I can tell you that part of it is a lack of desire to spend the dollars necessary. Spend whatever it takes overseas, fine; spend whatever it takes here to make us secure, the money is not there.

There is also the mistrust of Government, a sort of antigovernment view that Government is not a good thing, that Government is not going to do it right, that Government should be the place of last resort. Unfortunately, when it comes to the war on terror, it is only the Government that can do it, whether it be overseas or here at home.

But as a result, this administration, in my judgment, whatever grade you give them in fighting the war overseas, would get a D or an F in most areas in terms of fighting the war here at home.

Let me give some general places where we are not close to doing enough. Regarding the air, we have done a good job making sure another September 11 does not happen specifically in the way it did; in other words, simply bolting the cockpits of all our planes greatly cuts down the average of a plane being hijacked. Putting air marshals on the planes makes a great deal of sense. We have made progress inspecting baggage and luggage. In fact, I think the TSA has done a good job and is an example that Government can do a good job. They are doing better than the private sector did when they were hiring people at minimum wage who hardly spoke English. However, even in the air we are vulnerable to terrorists using shoulder-held missiles and taking down our planes. We can stop that.

There will be an amendment offered here either by me or by somebody else that will push us to do more, much more quickly. Are we doing nothing in these areas? Absolutely not. We are doing a little bit. Again, if you believe that we can take 20 years to tighten our defenses before, God forbid, terrorists strike again, that is fine. If you believe we have a window that may be 3 or 4 or 5 years, it is a dereliction of duty. It is a dereliction of responsibility, the same as not protecting our troops overseas.

Take the rails. We learned in Madrid that terrorists may want to hurt people by blowing up trains and railway stations. The best way they do that, the most efficacious way, is by using regular explosives. We have the technology to develop devices that can be like smoke detectors. They can be put on every railroad car, in every railway or subway station. If someone walks in with nitrates, they will be detected. We do this, of course, on airplanes. We have sniffing devices which are now used in a few airplanes. I went through one of the devices in Rochester. It works well. That does not work for crowded trains and commuter rails and subways. We can increase the technology and it can be like a smoke detector. Place it on the ceiling, and it goes off if somebody carries explosives, thereby thwarting a blowing up of a train or a railroad station. We are not doing that.

Nor are we protecting the egress and ingress at most of our train stations in case, God forbid, something blows up. Penn Station, the busiest rail station in the country, still has tunnels a mile and a half long without ventilation and without escape routes. Two or three years ago we allocated $500 million to improve that. Only $100 million has been spent.

My colleague from California, Senator Boxer, will have an amendment on rail security that will address some of these concerns.
She and I will be talking about that.

What about the ports? We are still only inspecting, at best, 5 percent of all incoming containers. I was speaking to a few people who run the container operations in parts of New York. They say it is more like 1 percent that we are inspecting. Who knows what is in the containers? Shoulder-held missiles, nuclear weapons, terrorists themselves. They caught someone actually in a container trying to smuggle himself into Toronto. We do not inspect these containers. Almost anything can be in them. Again, the technology is there to do more, quicker, and better inspections, to detect explosives or biological or radiological compounds and to put a lock on the container so it cannot be opened again and something be placed in it. My colleague from Washington will be offering an amendment on port security.

How about trucks? We have learned al-Qaida is now using truck bombs as a weapon of choice. This is what our intelligence picked up when we had the last scare that said something might occur during the political season, either at the conventions-which, thank God, it didn't-or maybe closer to the political season. There were indications that truck bombs might be used.
There are things that can be done, things that are technologically available and feasible to deal with truck bombs. We can, for instance, require any truck that carries hazardous material have a GPS system so we know exactly where they are going. If they go off course, we will know. If they are stolen, we will know. A truck was stolen in Pennshauken, NJ, my neighboring state, that contained hazardous material. It is missing. It has been missing for 3 months. Who knows who has it. The odds are it was robbery, but it is always possible someone for far more evil purpose was stealing that truck.

In Brazil, a country hardly as technologically advanced as we, every truck has a GPS system. When they go off course, it cuts off so the truck cannot run any further if they are worried. Brazilian truck companies did this to prevent theft. Why aren't we requiring it here? The cost is minimal. Put a GPS system in your new Cadillac, it costs a couple hundred bucks more. We can do the same thing for trucks.

We can have some controls on how ammonium nitrate is sold, which is used in truck bombs. We cannot stop it or limit it; our farmers need it. But certainly when someone buys a lot we could require they identify themselves and call an 800 number to make sure they are not on a terrorist watch list or a previously convicted felon.

We can put taggants in the explosions. With nanotechnology, the marking devices are very tiny and do not interfere with
either the cost or the effectiveness of the explosive. That way, we can find out who tried to buy certain materials. It serves as a deterrent, as well. We are doing virtually none of that.

By the way, there will be an amendment on truck security.

Are our chemical plants secure? Absolutely not. My colleague from New Jersey, Senator Corzine, has been the leader on this issue. His State is one of the leading chemical producing States in the country. A terrorist can easily scout out a chemical plant and make plans to blow it up, creating huge damage. All these areas are not areas where we do not know what to do. We know what to do. They are not areas where the technology is not yet able to be developed. It is able to be developed.

I have talked to experts in all of these areas until I am blue in the face. We do not have the urgency coming from this administration when, time and time and time again the Senator from West Virginia, who has been such a leader on this issue, Senator Byrd, or any who have been focused on this area, have brought amendments to the Senate to provide the dollars to make these things feasible, we have been told we do not have enough money.

I ask, would most Americans rather see these things being done and have maybe half a percent less cut on the top tax rate? In other words, say we go, instead of from 39 to 35.5 percent, that would give us enough money to do all of these things. This is not a political choice. This is hardly pork. This is protecting our homeland every bit as much as providing our soldiers overseas with the weaponry, the backup, that they need. Yet no one is home. There is some rhetoric, but every time the dollars aren't there, there is not the focus, there is not the alarm, the sense of urgency some Members feel.

As we debate this bill, many Members will offer a series of amendments on each of the areas I have talked about and then some others.

These amendments are not intended for any political purpose. They are intended out of a sense of urgency, out of a sense of anxiety, out of a sense of even anguish that we are just not doing enough. I will be here making sure we vote on every one of these amendments. It will probably take us a day to debate them all, a full day, and if others say we do not have that kind of time, I would argue we do. If the majority leader thinks we have to work late to consider these amendments, so be it. But we are just not doing the job.

One final issue which I will be bringing up is our first responders. Our hospitals, our police departments, our fire departments-Senator Mikulski will have an amendment on the fire grants-are stretched. They have done a great job in their respective areas. Our police do a great job on the war on crime. Our fire departments keep us safe. Our hospitals are more and more advanced. But each of them has been asked to do special things since 9/11. Each of them has new burdens placed upon them and we are not giving them the dollars they need to do it.

Now, you may say, well, let the localities pay for it. But the hospitals in the localities are not paying. With Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements what they are, with the HMOs being more and more efficient, they do not have the money on their own. So if we do not do it, no one will.

With police and fire, it is not much different. We all know how our localities' budgets are strapped. We all know that the property taxes are a huge burden on people. To ask them to raise the property tax burden to do this means it either will not be done or will not be done in the full way that it should. Yet we are not helping our first responders: our police, our firefighters, our hospitals.

So there will be another amendment, I neglected to mention, which I will offer to increase funding overall for first responders. Senator Mikulski will have an amendment on the fire grants. But the bottom line is this: There is, as I said, a dereliction of duty, a dereliction of responsibility on homeland security. This administration almost has a disconnect. Dollars do not matter when it comes to fighting the war overseas, when it comes to defending our soldiers. Dollars cannot because their lives are precious.
But dollars almost are the end-all and be-all when it comes to homeland security, and we do not do close to what we should be doing.

So in terms of my general remarks, I look forward to debating this bill. I hope some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will join us in supporting these amendments.

The bottom line is very simple: No one knows how the war on terror is going to twist and turn over the next generation. That is why I tend to like proactive policies both abroad and at home. But no one is a genius. There are a few geniuses, but not enough of them. No one can foresee the future, so we do not know what is in store for us. We certainly want to cut down the odds of a terrible, terrible incident occurring again the way one did on 9/11 in my city.

I wear this flag in memory of those who we lost. I put it on September 12, and I wear this very flag every day. I knew some of the people. I was friends with a firefighter who died, a guy who I played basketball with in school who died, a businessman who helped me as I was on my way up politically. So it is sort of personal. But the anguish I feel is maybe one-tenth the anguish, one-one-hundredth the anguish, one-one-thousandth the anguish of the families who live with this every day. But they would want us to do everything we can, and we are not.

It is my hope this debate will, at the very least, elucidate places where we are not doing what we should, and maybe even provide the kind of dollars, resources, and focus that have been so sorely lacking thus far.

AMENDMENT NO. 3580

With that, Mr. President, I now send an amendment to the desk to address the critical issue of nuclear security in our ports in terms of research and development.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.

The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from New York [Mr. SCHUMER] proposes an amendment numbered 3580.

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, a point of order. I have no objection to the dispensing of the reading of the amendment, but a point of order. Is there already an amendment pending from the Senator at the desk? Is this the second amendment or is this a different amendment?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are no other amendments pending.

Mr. COCHRAN. Fine.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The reading will be dispensed with and the amendment will be considered as read.

The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To appropriate an additional $150,000,000 for port security research and development grants)

On page 19, strike "$2,845,081,000" and all that follows through "grants;" on page 20, line 11, and insert the following: "$2,995,081,000, which shall be allocated as follows:

"(1) $970,000,000 for formula-based grants and $400,000,000 for law enforcement terrorism prevention grants pursuant to section 1014 of the USA PATRIOT ACT (42 U.S.C. 3714): Provided, That the application for grants shall be made available to states within 45 days after enactment of this Act; that States shall submit applications within 45 days after the grant announcement; and that the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness shall act within 15 days after receipt of an application: Provided further, That each State shall obligate not less than 80 percent of the total amount of the grant to local governments within 60 days after the grant award; and

"(2) $1,550,000,000 for discretionary grants for use in high-threat, high-density urban areas, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security: Provided, That $300,000,000 shall be for port security grants;".

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York is recognized.

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, this amendment deals with, to me at least, the greatest nightmare that-how much time does our side have, Mr. President?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no pending order for time.

Mr. SCHUMER. Oh, we did not have a time agreement? Thank you, Mr. President. I only intend to take another 10 to 15 minutes on my own, and then maybe if my colleague from Mississippi speaks in favor of the amendment I will not even speak further. But if he speaks against it, I will try to answer what he has to say.

Mr. President, if you think of all the terrible things that terrorists could do to us-and there are so many you almost run out of mental space thinking about them-perhaps the worst that I can imagine is that a nuclear weapon, and I am not talking about a dirty bomb, which would be bad enough, but a real nuclear weapon would be smuggled into this country and exploded anywhere in the country, but particularly in one of our large cities.

The damage would be unimaginable. It is guessed if it were even a 10-kiloton device-smaller than the devices that were
exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki-that over 100,000 people would die immediately, hundreds of thousands more in the next month, and then perhaps even millions over the years from the radiation. The economic loss would be incredible, not just in the city where it was exploded but wherever the wind currents blew in terms of where the radiation blew. It would probably, in many ways, change the way of life that we cherish for every American, no matter in what part of the country you lived.

So it seems to me we should be doing everything we can to prevent a nuclear weapon from being exploded here. Part of that, of course, is to try to buy up the nuclear weapons we know parts of the former Soviet Union have had and a few other countries have had. We should be funding Nunn-Lugar. But the amendment does not go to that. The other is to prevent them from being smuggled in.

There is good news and bad news about nuclear material. The good news is, in terms of detection, every one of them emits something called gamma rays which can be seen and detected through metal, through anything but lead. Lead is very heavy, so it is hard to detect a device totally surrounded by lead. And then you can detect lead anyway.

The bad news is, right now the detection devices we have are not very proficient. They still have to detect the nuclear material at relatively close range. A Geiger counter needs 3 feet. Some of the other ones that have been developed need a little bit more space.

They are not foolproof, to say the least. I have talked to scientists in my State at Brookhaven National Laboratory and to scientists in many other States, and devices could be developed that, No. 1, detect any kind of nuclear materials from 70 or 80 feet away and detect them in a far more foolproof way than the present devices.

Now, the only way a nuclear device can be smuggled into this country very easily-the only remaining way-is in large containers that come into our ports by the tens of thousands every day or in a truck that goes over the Mexican or Canadian border.

It is very easy to imagine that we could place these detection devices on every crane that loads a container coming to our country. You may say: Well, there are thousands of cranes all over the world. That is true, but already we only allow containers to come into this country that are loaded from 15 ports. I do not have the list of them, but it is Antwerp, Singapore, places such as that. You do not want to detect them here because then they could be exploded while the ship approaches our shores and is not yet here. It could be placed on every toll booth. We would basically prevent any nuclear weapon from being smuggled into the country. But the devices that really work well and can detect radiation far enough away and do it well and sensitively are not yet developed.

Scientists say that with a couple of years of research they can do it. They right now detect small amounts of nuclear material in cyclotrons and atom smashers at a great distance, but those devices are too large and delicate. They can't be bounced around very much to work.

All it takes is spending some dollars, maybe $150 million, maybe $250 million-it sounds like a lot, but it is not in terms of the $1.7 trillion budget-and then installing them in the ways that I have stated.

I have tried for 3 years to get this body to do it. A few years ago we accepted an amendment that would have at least put in $150 million for these devices. But when it came back from conference, only $35 million was left. Guess what. That was in the 2003 budget. They still haven't spent it. Is that amazing? It is $35 million to start on this research, and Homeland Security still has not let the contracts.

What is going on here? This is a huge catastrophe that could, God forbid, happen, and we are just asleep at the switch.

This amendment seeks to rectify that. This amendment will provide all of the necessary funding to develop the devices and then install them in places we need them. My guess is the whole process would take 2 to 3 years, if we really put the energy and the muscle into it. It is true that there are a few places where we are doing this with rudimentary, more primitive types of detection devices. Yes, one of them is in my harbor, Howland Hook on Staten Island. I have visited. I see how it works. It is better than nothing. But it isn't close to good enough. That is one container port, and there are 40 or 50 in New York alone.

We all know the terrorists have access to the Internet, and they know exactly where nuclear devices are being detected, the few ports that they are, and the huge number where they are not. They also know that the detection devices could be a lot bigger.

What we really want to do is develop a super Geiger counter, one that can detect nuclear materials from a distance and one that is more accurate. Again, you put it on every crane that loads a container bound for the U.S., on every toll booth that has a truck that will go into the U.S., you have dramatically reduced the odds of this type of catastrophe occurring.

Is there anyone who doesn't believe we should do that? Is there anyone who thinks the funding we are asking here, which is an additional $150 million, isn't worth the cost? Yet my guess is that when we have this rollcall vote in a short while, people will just march up to the podium and vote no, and there is no good answer.

I hope my colleagues will not do that. One hundred fifty million dollars is not going to break this bank. It is quite broken already. It is not going to break it much further, and it will do a world of good.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I hope, if we are going to support the amendment, that we will see it through in conference and not do what happened a couple of years ago where it was knocked out in conference and a much smaller amount of money was provided for and then that money was not spent.

I am ready to sit down. I know my colleague from Mississippi wants to move the bill forward. I do not disagree with that. I think the argument is pretty clear and pretty succinct. I hope we will be off to a good start on this bill by supporting this amendment and by not ignoring homeland security, particularly a catastrophe that could occur if a nuclear weapon were smuggled into this country.

AMENDMENT NO. 3580, AS MODIFIED

Mr. President, I have a modification of my amendment at the desk, and I ask unanimous consent that it be so modified. It is just changing one number.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cornyn). The Senator has that right. The amendment is so modified.

The amendment, as modified, is as follows:

On page 19, strike "$2,845,081,000" and all that follows through "grants;" on page 20, line 11, and insert the following:
"$2,995,081,000, which shall be allocated as follows:

"(1) $970,000,000 for formula-based grants and $400,000,000 for law enforcement terrorism prevention grants pursuant to section 1014 of the USA PATRIOT ACT (42 U.S.C. 3714): Provided, That the application for grants shall be made available to states within 45 days after enactment of this Act; that States shall submit applications within 45 days after the grant announcement; and that the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness shall act within 15 days after receipt of an application: Provided further, That each State shall obligate not less than 80 percent of the total amount of the grant to local governments within 60 days after the grant award; and

"(2) $1,350,000,000 for discretionary grants for use in high-threat, high-density urban areas, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security: Provided, That $300,000,000 shall be for port security grants;".

Mr. SCHUMER. It is actually a reduction in the amount of money by $50 million.

I urge my colleagues to support this deeply significant but, in terms of dollars, modest amendment so we can cut down the odds of a nuclear weapon being smuggled into this country and, God forbid, creating a catastrophe.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum be dispensed with so I might answer my friend from Mississippi.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I make this point. We were here 2 years ago, and a year ago, and my good friend from Mississippi, with the same eloquence, made the same argument: The amount of money is the amount of money we have; yes, we could double it, but let's leave it up to the wisdom of the Department and the committee.

We did that, and in the last year, we have had no money spent on developing better nuclear detection devices. That is a cheap shot? In all due respect to my colleague from Mississippi, and I would say in all due respect this could happen in New York and it could happen in Houston, TX, and blow over to Mississippi-this could happen anywhere in the country, and I am sure just as I would want to protect the citizens of every other State, so would my colleague from Mississippi.

This is hardly an urban issue. Chernobyl did not occur in an urban-it may have been in an urban setting, but it ruined millions of acres of farmland, which I know my colleague cares a great deal about, as do I.

We are asking not for $33 billion, although maybe that would be spent. If I were the President, I would spend a lot of time figuring out what we needed and then spend it. I would not just ask for extra money. This is a small amount of money, $150 million, specifically directed to nuclear security, when in the past we have not done it. And my colleague argues we have enough money and leave it to the wisdom of the Department to do.

By my good friend's logic, we should not have a Congress. Let's have one broad allocation for homeland security and let them do what they want. And let's not even look, if they do not do something we all think is necessary, and come back and say let them do it again.

This is not a typical request. This is not something that just benefits one specific area or one specific company. This is dealing with one of the greatest dangers America faces, and spending a small amount of money after we have learned that Homeland Security will not do it themselves seems to me to be a reasonable request.

I greatly understand my colleague's nose-in-the-tent argument: If I am for this, well, I have to be for it for so many other things. But I ask him to look at the substance of this amendment and its cost, and I cannot think of an argument against it.

Yes, there is $1.2 billion for all kinds of threats. This is the greatest threat we face, perhaps, and there is no specific money that says we have to do this. In the past, when we have had these broad categories, again Homeland Security has done virtually nothing. Why, I don't know. I have asked them. They say: Yes, we are working on it, just as my good friend from Mississippi has said, but nothing happens.

So we wait another year and another year. I hope we do not have to wait until something terrible happens. That is not what anybody wants. To say that Congress should not be modifying what the administration has done says we should not have a Congress, and to say that this amendment is either frivolous or regional or unnecessary does not make any sense to me.

If my colleague could assure me that the Homeland Security Department would do this out of the existing allocation, I would say, sure, but we had that kind of assurance 2 years ago. My friend, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Stevens, said to me: You are right. Let us make sure we get this done.

Well, it has not been done. So I would simply say, I know the committee has labored under what the administration has sent them on the issue, for instance, of rail security. Where the Rail Association says we need $6 billion to thoroughly protect our rails, the administration asked for zero, and the committee comes up with $150 million. That is a lot better than zero but is not close to what we need.

I say to my friend from Mississippi, the bottom line is, my premise is we are not doing enough, we are not spending enough dollars, and we should have a significant increase.

When we came and found we needed $25 billion more for the war in Iraq, nobody said, well, we could double the number, let's not. Nor should they have. Well, it is the same thing when it comes to homeland security. The difference is, it is not a day-to-day issue. Nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens, thank God, and then something terrible happens and we say, why did we not do it?

I am trying to prevent that scenario. I am trying to prevent it for my city and my State and the Senators' cities and the Senators' States, and everybody.

So I ask that my colleagues look at this amendment. Do not be swayed by the logic, well, if we double this one we will have to double every one. Let us look at every one and see what we need. Certainly this one, which is $150 million more, aimed at a specific program that no one could object to, makes a great deal of sense. I hope it will pass. I urge my colleagues to vote for it.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I indicated earlier that the Senate Appropriations Committee met earlier this afternoon to
approve the subcommittee funding allocations. The allocations approved are the same as those provided earlier by the full committee, for this subcommittee's information. For Homeland Security appropriations, the approved fiscal year 2005 discretionary spending allocation is $32 billion in budget authority and $29.873 billion in outlays. The bill reported by the committee is at the $32 billion discretionary budget authority allocation and $144 million below the outlay allocation. The allocations for this bill are $897 million in budget authority and $730 million in outlay above the President's request, showing the priority the committee has placed on Homeland Security accounts and its appropriations.

This is a fiscally responsible allocation and Members will be required to provide offsets for any additional spending proposed by amendments to be added to this bill, or the amendment will be subject to a 60-vote Budget Act point of order, I am advised. Therefore, I make a point of order against the Schumer amendment under section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act that the amendment provides spending in excess of the subcommittee's 302(b) allocation.

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: My friend from Mississippi said the outlays were still $144 million below what had been allocated by the committee. If I were to ask unanimous consent to make this amendment instead of $150 million, $144 million, within the outlays, would a point of order still lie?

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I think the Senator asked for a parliamentary inquiry. I don't have standing to rule on parliamentary inquiries. That is the responsibility of the Chair.

Mr. SCHUMER. I ask the Chair. Given the Budget Act, if this amendment were to be modified instead of $150 million of new money, given what we just heard, if the outlays were below $144 million, below the full committee allocation to the subcommittee, would a point of order still lie?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair is advised that depends on whether it would affect the change in outlays as well as budget authority. It is the understanding of the Chair that there is no room with regard to budget authority.

Mr. SCHUMER. Continuing my parliamentary inquiry, that would mean a point of order would lie even if we were within the outlays?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.

Mr. SCHUMER. Just one further parliamentary inquiry: If we said zero budget authority but $144 million in outlays, would that be in order?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair would have to check with the Budget Committee on the specific numbers.

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I imagine it is not. So pursuant to section 904 of the Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive the applicable section of that act for purposes of the pending amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?

There is a sufficient second.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate vote on the motion to waive in relation to the pending Schumer amendment at 4:45 p.m. today, with the debate until that time equally divided in the usual form.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered.

Who yields time?

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.