Sam Farr: “this is an issue that came up when our committee traveled to the border and had discussions with the Border Patrol. And…”

“this is an issue that came up when our committee traveled to the border and had discussions with the Border Patrol. And what you are talking about here is striking language that gives some ability for comparing the expenditure of costs on one piece of intelligence equipment versus the other. And what the gentleman didn't tell you is that of all the assets on the border, this is the most expensive, $10 million, $8 to $10 million per unmanned vehicle. The other assets that are on the border, which everybody agreed was much more effective, is the new radar system, which costs about $700,000, that are portable. We have others. We have balloons. We have helicopters. We have as many assets looking at the border as there are in Iraq. And what the language in the bill says is that before you go out and just buy more Predators at 8 million bucks, there is already $50 million in the account and we want to know before you spend that whether it is cost-effective compared to other issues that you have to do. You have on the border not only the Customs and Border Patrol, and I would submit that the arrests were not made by that unmanned vehicle, and I don't think that was the only system they used to discover that. It was just one. It happened to be a very, very expensive one. The radar systems are the most effective. The most effective.…”