Henry Waxman: “Mr. Speaker, I agree we need homeland security legislation. It is clear that the Federal Departments are not working…”

“Mr. Speaker, I agree we need homeland security legislation. It is clear that the Federal Departments are not working together as they should to protect our Nation. Unfortunately, the bill that we are considering today has serious flaws. In fact, I think it may cause more problems than it solves. I want to show two charts to this body. Here is how our homeland security agencies are organized today. This one right here. You can see all the different Departments. And the next chart over here is how they will be organized after the new Department is created. We are getting more bureaucracy. We are doing so at a tremendous cost to the taxpayer. According to the Congressional Budget Office, just creating and managing the new Department will cost $4.5 billion, and this does not include any additional spending to make our Nation more secure against terrorist attacks. This bill gives the new Department a vast array of responsibilities that have nothing to do with homeland security, such as administering the national flood insurance program and cleaning up oil spills. This bloats the size of the bureaucracy and dilutes the Department's counterterrorism mission. At the same time, the bill has no effective mechanism to coordinate the activities of the new Department with those of the FBI and the CIA and the other agencies that continue to have major homeland security functions.”