Bill Nelson: “I want to echo the assistant majority leader's comments about the right man who rises to the top for the times. Just to…”

“I want to echo the assistant majority leader's comments about the right man who rises to the top for the times. Just to give an example in addition to the one the Senator from Nevada has already given about our former Governor having that unique experience because of his experience in State government, he understands now, uniquely, the vulnerability of the 300 deep-water ports that we have in this Nation because Florida itself has 14 deep-water ports. We have passed out of our Commerce Committee a port security bill. It is coming to the floor, hopefully, very soon. Senator Graham and I and Senator Hollings will be offering an amendment to significantly increase the Federal grants for security and loan guarantees to the tune of some several hundreds of millions of dollars of grants, and to the tune, over a 5-year period, of some $3.3 billion in loan guarantees. To do what? To try to make those ports more secure through badging, through sophisticated detection devices, through fencing, through guards, through gates, in addition to what the Coast Guard is already doing.”