Homeland Security Spending

Homeland security spending

Joining us now from her office here in Washington, DC, is Senator Patty Murray from the state of Washington. She's the ranking Democrat on the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee. Good to have you on TALK OF THE NATION.

Senator PATTY MURRAY (Democrat, Washington): Neal, nice to talk to you.

CONAN: You developed the Port Security Initiative. Why did you focus on ports?

Sen. MURRAY: Well, several bipartisan commissions have told us that one of the places we are very vulnerable in this country to a terrorist attack is in our ports. We have millions of tons of cargo. In fact, we have more than six million containers that come into our ports in this country every year, and right now, we know very little about what's in them. They are loaded in ports in dozens of cities around the world, some of them in countries that have very little control over what's loaded in them or who's loading them or what kind of protections are put in place. So this is a point of vulnerability that we can and should do something about. That's why I developed the Operation Safe Commerce initiative that would provide funds to begin to put in places systems in our ports so that we know what is coming in and we know that they are secure.

CONAN: And the vast bulk of that material comes inside sealed cargo containers that nobody can look in right now.

Sen. MURRAY: That's correct. And we all know from watching what happened at our airports when we began to slow down and look at every passenger and their suitcase, how long that took and what kind of economic impact it had. It would be far more devastating with containers that come into our country, come into our ports, and then are shipped everywhere that people are counting on. If we had to stop every container and look inside it or even stop every container and X-ray it, we would absolutely stop commerce in this country and cost our country billions of dollars in commerce.

CONAN: So what kind of program did you want to see in place?

Sen. MURRAY: Well, I wrote into my transportation bill an initiative called Operation Safe Commerce that will give grants to our three largest container ports in the country, money to begin to put in place technologies like electronic seals and electronic tracking devices, so that we know what is in those containers, where they are loaded anywhere in the world, and follow them, so when they go into our ports, we know that they are secure before they get here and we can track them with INS and Customs, so that they can be loaded and moved through quickly, and we can basically reduce the number of containers that may be ones that are vulnerable.

CONAN: Would one of those ports, the three largest ports in the country—I have to ask the cynical question—be in the state of Washington?

Sen. MURRAY: There's no doubt. Washington hosts the third largest container port in the nation, Seattle-Tacoma. We have tons of commerce that come in from ports from many Pacific Rim countries, and we know that often, we have containers coming from terminals that may not be very safe. So absolutely, it's part of it.

CONAN: Senator Murray, we have to take a short break. Can you stay with us for a minute or so?

Sen. MURRAY: Yes, I can.

CONAN: OK. Senator Patty Murray is with us from her office in Washington, DC. When we come back from a short break, we'll continue to talk with her and take more of your questions about the spending on homeland security and about whether you see already any benefits from spending that's already under way at borders, in ports or at airports; (800) 989-8255.

I'm Neal Conan. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

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CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

With us on the line from her office here in Washington is Democrat Patty Murray, a senator from the state of Washington. We're talking about spending on homeland security.

And, Senator Murray, I wanted to read you an e-mail that we received from—I'm going to pronounce this improperly, I'm sure—but Murdowd(ph) from Emeryville, California, who writes, 'It would have been unthinkable for us not to conduct the massive and careful investigation that we have been conducting for the shuttle Columbia tragedy, because without finding the root causes, how can we guard against similar tragedies in the future? Without knowing the true sources of terrorism against us, how can we know, for example, that the very things we're doing to combat terrorism today are not inviting more and more people to pick up arms against us? If we're going to spend 400 billion,' he writes—and that must be a typo, 40 billion—'on homeland security, I'd like to know what percentage of that will be devoted to funding an independent and comprehensive research on the sources of terrorism against America.'

Sen. MURRAY: Well, certainly, that is a part of the effort that was put in place into this country after September 11th, and no doubt, he's right. But the other part of it is, we have worked very hard. I just talked a few minutes ago about the Operation Safe Commerce initiative that I put into place, and we funded $28 million that was signed into law last July. We just put $30 million into the appropriations bill today. But you know what? So far, the administration hasn't put one dollar of that out to the ports. They have been fighting amongst themselves about who's going to oversee it rather than getting money to the places where we can use it to begin to put in place some of these security measures. And to me, that is a huge frustration.

CONAN: Well, as you know, the charges of politics have been made both ways, that some Republicans say Democrats are trumpeting this issue and, you know, just trying to make the administration look bad.

Sen. MURRAY: Well, I'm not talking about the funding itself. Congress passed this funding. This is one of the areas where we actually have put money into homeland security. There are other places where people are charging that the administration isn't putting enough. This isn't about that at all. This is the fact that Congress, on a bipartisan basis, put the money in. The president has signed this, but they have not released any of the money. They are simply sitting on it, and I think this is up to Ridge, now that he is in charge, to crack the whip and tell people, 'Let's get this money out there. Let's start making our ports more secure.' That's what I'm concerned about today.

CONAN: And would seaports, among all of the priorities that we have to worry about, including in your state, of course, border control—but the seaports, do you think, are the most important thing right now?

Sen. MURRAY: I think there's a number of areas that we need to be concerned about. But certainly, when you have six million containers coming into our country every day, that come from countries like Indonesia, that come from countries where we may not have as much control on them, that is the place where we not only should be making a difference, but where we can be making a difference. These are issues we can get our hands around, but it's a matter of getting the money out there right now, not stalling it and making sure that those containers are secure when they come in.

CONAN: Senator Murray, thanks very much. I know you're extremely busy. We appreciate your time.

Sen. MURRAY: Thank you.