Congresswoman Nancy PelosiWashington, D.C. -- House Democratic Whip Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the Select Committee on Homeland Security, issued the following statement tonight as debate ended on H.R. 5005, the Homeland Security Act.
"My colleagues, we are gathered here today to honor a compact that our government has with the American people. That compact is to provide for the common defense. In the preamble to the Constitution, wherein our civil liberties are enshrined, our Founding Fathers knew we could do both: protect and defend our country and protect and defend our civil liberties.
And that is what we set upon to do in this legislation. On September 11th, our country was attacked in a way that was unimaginable up until that time and is unforgettable from then on. Anyone who has visited Ground Zero in New York, the Pentagon, or the crash site in Pennsylvania knows they have walked on hallowed ground. We have a solemn obligation to those heroes who died as martyrs to respond in a way that reflects the greatness of our country and that defends our country and our civil liberties in the best possible way.
By that standard, Mr. Chairman, I am sad to report that I do not think the legislation before us does that. We have tried to find our common ground and where we found agreement, we resolved some differences. But on some issues that were fundamental to us, on both sides, we could not find agreement.
I had hoped that we could present to the American people a Department of Homeland Security that was lean and of the future, not a monstrous bureaucracy of the 1950s that would have been obsolete even then.
I had hoped that this new lean department would, instead of size, have capitalized on the technological revolution in order to increase communication and coordination. I had hoped that the Secretary of Homeland Security could coordinate, rather than have to manage and administer staff.
Indeed, the very size is alarming. It will have by low estimate 170,000 employees, and the Government Accounting Office says that it may even have 200,00. Mr. Chairman, there are 85,000 jurisdictions in the United States -- cities, towns municipalities and state governments -- and only 120 of the cities in our country have a larger population than the Department of Homeland Security. Salt Lake City, Providence, Rhode Island, Portsmouth, Maine, and Reno, Nevada, to name a few, are all smaller in population than the Department of Homeland Security will be.
And in that large bureaucracy, I am afraid that we do not see the respect for the civil service that I think this Homeland Security Department legislation should contain. There is a serious reason why we have a civil service. It came into existence to eliminate corruption and favoritism. Instead we have here a diminishing of the rights of our workforce, rather than an enhancement of our civil service.
We sing the praises of our first responders of our public employees who stand as the first line of defense in protecting America and yet in this new department we want to diminish their rights.
I am also concerned about the safety issues. It took my breath away in committee when the Chairman’s mark had in it the elimination of a deadline for putting detection devices in place to detect explosives in baggage. This is not how to protect the American people best.
And I am concerned about the liability provisions, the total immunity given to business -- even those guilty of fraud and wrongdoing. We had a good alternative that the business community agreed to that was offered by Mr. Turner of Texas, which lost by one vote on the House floor.
I put it to my colleagues: Is it your judgment that a bloated bureaucracy that undermines the civil service that gives unlimited immunity even to wrongdoers is the best way to protect the American people?
As you know, our tragedy started at the airports, Mr. Chairman. And in this legislation there is protection for the very kind of security companies that were a part of the problem to begin with. Not only are we not trying to improve that situation, we are protecting the wrongdoers very specifically.
So as you can see, I have some concerns about the bill. It does not mean I have some concerns about the idea. We all want a Department of Homeland Security. We all hope that in working together in the legislative process, we can come closer to something that will do the job.
What we have now is a department the General Accounting Office says will take five to 10 years to be up and running, and that it will cost $4.5 billion dollars to set up. We will spend any amount of money to protect the American people - but is that four and half billion dollars spent in the best way to protect the American people.
After all is said and done, it comes back to the families. I have had them
say to me that a plane flying overhead is a source of terror to them. We owe
it to them to reduce risk, to bring life as close to normal as possible for
them."
