Barbara Boxer: “I am very disappointed. We have looked through this bill and we have seen an amendment that we believe gives Senators…”

“I am very disappointed. We have looked through this bill and we have seen an amendment that we believe gives Senators the opening to offer this. It was coming from the other side. It was the Burns amendment that dealt with an issue close to this. I will not argue that. What I say to my colleagues today is this: We are very fortunate we have a homeland defense bill before the Senate. We are very fortunate Senators Collins and Murray work in a bipartisan way on a homeland security bill that deals with port security. We are further blessed that Senators have the guts to step up and offer amendments dealing with rail security and transit security. They were agreed to, thereby broadening the scope of this bill. However, it is amazing to me that after we have observed and marked the fifth anniversary of September 11 we would turn away from a simple amendment that I am offering, which costs as much money as it takes for the war in Iraq in 5 hours--5 hours of the war in Iraq. We could take that amount of funding and make sure that on every passenger plane in this country that carries cargo there would be at least one blast- resistant cargo container. Everyone lauded the 9/11 Commission. Let's see what they said about this. The TSA should require that every passenger aircraft carrying cargo must deploy at least one hardened container to carry any suspect cargo. That is the 9/11 Commission Report. That is dated July 22, 2004.…”