The Committee has taken the first step to provide the funds and guidance to improve our ability to provide military commanders and national policymakers with timely, accurate information on threats to our security. We accomplished this in a fiscally responsible manner, in recognition of budgetary constraints. This is a bill that the Congress and the President should support. The process has been difficult but necessary. If we continue to insist on doing so, we almost certainly will seriously undermine our Intelligence Community and the critical role it plays in safe-guarding the Nation's security.
Further delay is simply unacceptable.
We have identified critical Intelligence Community weaknesses. The challenge now is to effectively address them. This bill does that by establishing funding priorities and channeling additional resources into those areas that will most effectively contribute to our security. Failure to invest in the infrastructure and organizational changes required to keep pace with revolutionary developments in the global telecommunications arena have undermined the NSA's ability to provide America's leaders with vital signals intelligence. As a result, the NSA enters the 21st Century lacking the tools necessary to maintain the status quo, much less meet emerging challenges.