Gary Hart: “we have listened to a lot of comments about additional measures people would like to see in this antiterrorism…”

“we have listened to a lot of comments about additional measures people would like to see in this antiterrorism initiative. I believe that further discussions on this initiative and ways to crack down on terrorism will be constructive. We are certainly most interested in making our Nation safer. But as a member of the Committee on the Judiciary, I believe that we cannot delay the bill simply because it is not everything to everyone. To delay the bill is to fail to move forward, to fail to move forward on critical reforms, including giving local, State, and Federal law enforcement badly needed tools to fight terrorism and protect Americans. It would be a failure to move forward on updating our wiretap and surveillance laws to recollect the advances in technology that have changed how terrorists communicate and giving them an advantage. It would be a failure to move forward on allowing the sharing of criminal information within the intelligence community, coordinating our resources, and making it harder for terrorists to bury their tracks in bureaucratic red tape. It would also prevent us from making the simple but critical change that makes harboring terrorists a crime. Mr. Speaker, failure to support this bill today is to ignore these critical and urgently needed changes. I commend the chairman of the committee, and I commend my colleagues to support them.”