Mitch Landrieu: “as we consider many important amendments to this underlying bill, I will take just a moment to speak about this…”

“as we consider many important amendments to this underlying bill, I will take just a moment to speak about this amendment which I offer that will call the attention of my colleagues to the important investments that we should be making in interoperability and communications. As my colleagues know, we have had a very recent disaster along the gulf coast that has made quite apparent the lack of a communications system that is adequate to handle natural disasters of this magnitude and even manmade disasters that we could contemplate. So this is quite serious. I know there are many committees of the Senate and the House that are working very hard on this issue right now. Since Katrina and Rita and even before these terrible hurricanes and the subsequent flooding of this region, which has been devastating, we have known for some time that we have to get a better system of communication. Our military has some interesting and very promising initiatives underway that could truly help us at this time. That is basically what this $30 million amendment will do, is dedicate or allocate $30 million to U.S. Northern Command for the purposes of implementing IMT-2000 3G Communications Capabilities. The IMT-2000 3G Standards will be used for the Gulf States and key entities within the Northern Command Area of Responsibility, AOR. We have many needs that have shown themselves out of this storm and out of the subsequent disaster.…”