Barbara Boxer: “here are some of the things on which we received bad grades: We are not providing adequate radio spectrum for first…”

“here are some of the things on which we received bad grades: We are not providing adequate radio spectrum for first responders. We are not establishing a unified incident command system. We are not allocating homeland security funds based on risk. We are not protecting the critical infrastructure. We don't have a private sector that is prepared. We don't have a national strategy for transportation security. We are not prescreening passengers like we should be. We don't have screening checkpoints detecting explosives. We are still not screening the cargo that goes into passenger planes, even though they are taking away our lip gloss. I don't care about giving up my lip gloss, believe me. I would give up my lip gloss and everything else, but how about protecting the cargo that goes underneath that passenger plane? How about making sure it is safe, making sure it won't explode? I have an amendment that I will offer to this bill--unless the majority shuts me down--to say that until we are screening all of the cargo, let's make sure there is a blast-resistant container on these aircrafts. That is a recommendation of the 9/11 Commission that has not been followed. So when you have a suspect piece of cargo and you are not sure about it, put it into the blast-resistant cargo container. We pushed this in the Commerce Committee. TSA tested it and we know it works. But it is not happening.…”