Joe Lieberman: “I rise, with a lot of respect for the Senator from Utah and the Senator from Vermont, to oppose this amendment. I do so…”

“I rise, with a lot of respect for the Senator from Utah and the Senator from Vermont, to oppose this amendment. I do so because it continues the stripping away of jurisdiction from the newly designated committee on homeland security over more and more of what constitutes the Homeland Security Department. The recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to improve congressional oversight of homeland security and to allow the leadership of the Homeland Security Department to spend more time protecting our homeland and less time running from committee to committee here in Congress was to create one committee on homeland security with jurisdiction over all aspects of the Homeland Security Department. The Homeland Security Department includes 175,807 employees. Now, employees are not the only measure of jurisdiction, but let's start with that number and then say that the bill brought before us by the working group immediately took out 45,000 from the Coast Guard, now under the Homeland Security Department, and 51,000 from the Transportation Security Administration.”