Chris Dodd: “I know my colleague from Hawaii is in the Chamber, but I want to respond to comments made by my friend from New…”

“I know my colleague from Hawaii is in the Chamber, but I want to respond to comments made by my friend from New Hampshire. He gave a good response to this amendment. It is a good bureaucratic response. As I said during my remarks, I apologize for offering an amendment of this magnitude. The Senator from New Hampshire is absolutely correct, the entire budget we are talking about for homeland security is around $31 billion. This amendment is 50 percent of that budget. I was fully aware, when I came to the floor to offer this amendment, of the reaction it would receive, but I also happen to believe the Rudman report, written by a group of people who are serious about these matters, has laid out for us very clearly what needs to be done. Whether our domestic security is funded by reducing millionaire tax cuts or by some other mechanism, I am willing to listen. I just tried to offer one idea of where these resources could come from. Obviously, when an amendment like this is offered, I do not have the right to offer necessarily an offset so large. Tax cuts provided to the most affluent Americans was simply a suggestion as to where the resources could come from. The underlying point needs to be made that we are not doing enough in the areas where we are terribly vulnerable. I will state how we are spending this money and lay it out. First, we are spending actually less this year than we have in the previous 2 years.…”