I
107TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
H. R. 1292
To require the President to develop and implement a strategy for homeland
security.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MARCH 29, 2001
Mr. SKELTON introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Com-
mittee on Armed Services, and in addition to the Committees on Trans-
portation and Infrastructure, the Judiciary, and Intelligence (Permanent
Select), for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in
each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdic-
tion of the committee concerned
A BILL
To require the President to develop and implement a strategy
for homeland security.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Homeland Security
Strategy Act of 2001’’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) The United States needs to enhance activi-
ties to improve homeland security for its citizens and
territory in providing protection from the threat of
terrorist or strategic attacks, including cyber attacks
and attacks involving the use of chemical, biological,
radiological, or nuclear weapons.
(2) The two key aspects of homeland security
are—
(A) antiterrorism activities, including ac-
tivities relating to force protection, prevention
and detection of attack, law enforcement, public
health, reporting, and other activities that pre-
cede a domestic attack against the United
States; and
(B) consequence management, including
activities carried out by government entities
that are designed to respond to and mitigate
the effects of a domestic attack against the
United States.
(3) There is currently no well-publicized, widely
understood, comprehensive, governmentwide strategy
concerning the role of the United States Government
in homeland security crisis and consequence man-
agement.
(4) Development and implementation of a
homeland security strategy will necessarily involve
several executive departments and agencies and will
only succeed if the heads of those departments and
agencies agree to fully support implementation of
the strategy within and across those departments
and agencies, including implementation of all aspects
of the strategy relating to resourcing and funding of
personnel and equipment.
(5) The United States Government does not
currently have an adequate strategic sense of the un-
conventional threats to the United States. Due to
the significant conventional military superiority of
the United States, future adversaries are unlikely to
risk a direct head-to-head military confrontation
with the United States, but rather are likely to seek
to exploit weaknesses in the domestic preparedness
and counterterrorism preparedness of the United
States.
(6) A United States homeland security strategy
should reflect a layered approach to homeland secu-
rity that provides for activities relating to each of
the following: prevention of an attack, protection
from an attack, and response to an attack.
(7) The Department of Defense has assets that
could be used to provide and enhance homeland se-
curity, but those assets should only be used for that
purpose in appropriate circumstances.
SEC. 3. REQUIREMENT TO DEVELOP HOMELAND SECURITY
STRATEGY.
(a) REQUIREMENT TO DEVELOP STRATEGY.—The
President shall develop a comprehensive strategy for
homeland security under which Federal, State, and local
government organizations coordinate and cooperate to
meet homeland security objectives.
(b) COMPONENTS OF STRATEGY.—The homeland se-
curity strategy required to be developed under subsection
(a) shall include the following components:
(1) Identification of specific homeland security
threats based upon the results of the assessment
under subsection (c).
(2) Development of a specific strategy with re-
spect to antiterrorism activities and consequence
management that includes specific, measurable ob-
jectives by which the efficacy of the execution of the
strategy may be determined.
(3) Identification of the Federal executive de-
partments, agencies, and other organizations that
should play a role in protecting homeland security