Chris Dodd: “I thank our colleague from Maryland for her leadership on this issue and the tremendous support she has provided in the…”

“I thank our colleague from Maryland for her leadership on this issue and the tremendous support she has provided in the Appropriations Committee for trying to fund this program. I appreciate very much her typical graciousness in referring to the fact that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio and I, back in 1999, authored the Fire Act. We introduced the legislation almost 4 years ago. We thank, as well, Senator Warner and Senator Levin. When we had the authorization bill, we were trying to get an opportunity to bring this matter to the floor and we were not given any time to bring up the Fire Act. We were trying to make the case 2 years before September 11, 2001, of the importance of the volunteer combination paid departments, the 33,000 departments across the United States, the needs they had out there. It was as a result of the efforts of Senator Warner and Senator Levin that included the Fire Act in the Department of Defense authorization bill in the year 2000 which allowed us to get the first authorizations approved that led to the appropriations that came thereafter. To give an idea of the pent-up demand existing across the country among fire departments, well over $3 billion worth of requests came in under the grant program. We allocated something like $100 million the very first year of this program.”