Date: 2007-05-09
Speaker: GINNY BROWN-WAITE (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Flor

ida. Mr. Chairman. I reluctantly rise today to speak against H.R. 1684. the Department of Homeland Security Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 08. I say reluctantly because even though I was" cynical about the campaign promises made by the other side to implement the remaining 9/11 Commission reforms. I never dreamed that the American people would be betrayed the way I believe they are today. Mr. Chairman. the majority of members on our committee rolled over and played dead. letting their other committee counterparts in the House pick this bill clean of many good security measures in a managers amendment that will strip them out and gut the bill. Yet the majority has the audacity to come to the floor with this skeleton and call it a good bill. My constituents will be horrified when I tell them that a provision that was worked out in the Homeland Security Committee. to include in the base bill was stripped out. That language would have required employers at critical infrastructure sites to verify Social Security numbers of their employees before hiring them. Do you know why constituents all around the Nation should be outraged? Because 2 years ago. a power plant in Florida unknowingly had a painting contractor who hired illegal aliens. Several of them had pending criminal charges and had been deported multiple times These workers had access in and around the nuclear power plant. Let me repeat that. A nuclear power plant had illegal aliens with criminal records wandering around in them. Does that not scare you? It scared me. and thats why we added this amendment to fix it. I wonder if the majority thought of the residents near any nuclear facility and the sheer devastation a criminal or terrorist act in that facility might cause. Were they thinking of the children and the Working families. the people who trust us to keep them safe? Or were they thinking of just backroom deals with other committee Chairs? I say to the people bent on stripping this bill of the security provisions: Stand up for this bill. Stand up for the good we are doing to safeguard the American people. Do not offer the managers amendment to strip these provisions out and leave the Nation vulnerable in many areas. There is no way that thig House can possibly justify passing an amendment to this bill that will take out provisions like: Denying alien smugglers access to maritime routes. Tough postemployment lobbying restrictions on Department of Homeland Security officials. a Democrat provision being stripped. Implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendation for- a single committee overseeing the Department of Homeland Security. Or authorizing better information sharing among Federal. State and local law enforcement partners. These provisions were all stripped from the bill. There is no way that we could support this unless we want to water down homeland security. We should all be concerned about the things that are not in this bill. We could fix the loophole today by giving authorization and leaving the bill the same as it was when it left the committee. Thats an important procedure that would protect Americas homeland.