(Washington, DC) - "Thank you Mr. Chairman for calling today’s hearing to address a problem that from the beginning was utterly foreseeable and entirely avoidable:  utterly foreseeable because the State Department knows that millions of Americans travel to the Western Hemisphere for vacation or business every year, and entirely avoidable because the State Department also knew that millions more Americans would apply for passports to fulfill the new travel requirements.

            In fact, the Administration has known this problem was coming since December of 2004 when the President signed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.  They knew that by January 1, 2008 the Departments of Homeland Security and State would be required to implement a plan to use passports or other documents or combinations of documents for all travel into the United States.  But even with three years lead time, the Administration that brought you the response to Katrina have now managed to ruin your summer vacation.

            It’s not as though Congress required new documents or changed the requirements for passport applications.  All of that remained the same.  All that changed was that more Americans applied.  Lot’s more.  But the Administration, true to form, failed to plan for what everyone else could foresee.  They failed to marshal the resources necessary to resolve a simple process problem.
Instead, every Congressional office is now preoccupied with the task of digging constituent passport requests out of mountains of paper in New Hampshire.  My office and I’m sure every other office has multiple stories of last minute interventions to save a long awaited vacation, a crucial business trip, or an eagerly anticipated student exchange.

            This failure has resulted in the Department postponing the deadline to fully implement the law, developing “work-arounds” to allow Americans to travel and only belatedly hiring staff, redeploying existing staff and asking retirees to come back and help out.  Why the Department didn’t hire enough staff three years ago is beyond me.  I hope we get an answer to that question as well as a plan to get Americans their passports in something that looks like a timely fashion.

            Thank you, Mr. Chairman."

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