Cliff Stearns: “tonight we vote on the final version of the Intelligence Reform bill. It's appropriate that we do so today, December…”

“tonight we vote on the final version of the Intelligence Reform bill. It's appropriate that we do so today, December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. We hope that this legislation will help prevent future attacks on our homeland. I will vote for final passage, because this bill contains much needed reform of our intelligence community. But more can be done to protect America. This conference report is supposed to codify the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and insofar as intelligence is concerned, it does. But the 9/11 Commission's charter required it to create a full account of the circumstances of the 9/11 attacks and formulate recommendations for guarding against future terrorist threats. This includes immigration and asylum reform, border protection and identification security. The Commission's recommendations and staff report contained repeated and explicit references to immigration, border, asylum and identification problems of which the 9/11 hijackers took advantage and which need to be solved. I thought that the House version of the Commission's recommendations, H.R. 10, properly attempted to meet these goals. Yet here we are today, debating a conference report that contains hardly any of the strong Title III measures that were passed by the People's House. This is incredibly disappointing.”