Floor Speech Regarding Homeland Security Appropriations Bill
June 12, 2007
U.S. House of Representatives
I do thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding me this time, and I want to say, first of all, that I want to commend the gentleman from Florida and also the gentlewoman from New York, the chairwoman of the Rules Committee, two of the Members in this Congress for whom I have the greatest admiration and respect, and I appreciate the fact that they are bringing this legislation to the floor under an open rule.
But as both the gentleman from Florida and the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) just expressed, there are still some concerns about this bill, number one of which is the fact that this bill is $2.1 billion over the President's request and a 13.6 percent increase over fiscal year 2007. That is more than four times the rate of inflation. With an almost $9 trillion national debt and over $50 trillion in unfunded future pension liabilities, we just can't keep giving every department and agency that wants one or four or five times increase over the rate of inflation. As the ranking member, Mr. Rogers, said a few days ago, even the Department of Homeland Security should be subject to some fiscal discipline.
A few weeks after 9/11 when we had renamed the farm bill that year by adding the word ``security'' to the title, the Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial in October of 2001 and said: ``Any bill with the word `security' in it should get double the public scrutiny, and maybe four times the normal wait, lest all kinds of bad legislation become law.''
And a few months ago, Secretary Chertoff, the Secretary of Homeland Security, testified before the Senate in a way perhaps no other Cabinet member ever had. He essentially said we are spending too much on security and we should not let over-exaggerated threats of terrorism, quote, drive us crazy, into bankruptcy, trying to defend against every conceivable threat.
He went on to say, quote, we do have limits and we do have choices to make. We don't want to break the very systems we're trying to protect. We don't want to destroy our way of life trying to save it. We don't want to undercut our economy trying to protect our economy, and we don't want to destroy our civil liberties and our freedoms in order to make ourselves safer.
That is the Secretary of Homeland Security. I think, Mr. Speaker, we need to take some of those words into consideration. In a short time, later today, we are going to have several amendments to the bill that I think are worthy of consideration by all of our Members and I think should be passed. We just shouldn't blindly pass a bill and pass everything that anybody wants because they attach the word ``security'' to it.
