Cord Byrd: “to the credit of the administration and the Congress, a scant 3 days after the assault on New York, a $40 billion…”

“to the credit of the administration and the Congress, a scant 3 days after the assault on New York, a $40 billion emergency supplemental spending package was approved. My colleague, Mr. Stevens, has called attention to that. At that time we could not fathom the anthrax-laced letters that were to disrupt the U.S. mail, cause the Hart Senate Office Building to close, taint letters up and down the east coast, and cause death and illness to postal workers and several other citizens who simply were unfortunate enough to open their mail. At that point we did not know the extent of bin Laden's terror network in the United States and in 59 other countries. In the early days after the tragedy, we did not fully understand what the impacts would be on our Federal law enforcement entity. We were only just beginning to come to grips with the holes in our border security, the inadequacies of our customs inspection procedure, the potential for misuse of our largely unprotected nuclear facilities, food supplies, water supplies, and networks of communications and transportation. We had not fully come to grips with our deficit of small pox vaccines or the stretched-thin capacity of the CDC and local public health facilities and hospitals. We had no idea of the loss of life and financial devastation that had actually occurred in New York. We knew there was a deep hole in Lower Manhattan; that deep hole is still there today.”