Austin Scott: “It is about accountability, and it is also about our budget. For example, if you remember, after 2001 Congress…”

“It is about accountability, and it is also about our budget. For example, if you remember, after 2001 Congress appropriated a total of $765 million for port security programs, including $173 million for FY 2006, to help our seaports adopt important security enhancements. The Coast Guard came and told us they needed more like $6 billion. Yet, like last year, the President's budget once again proposed terminating funding dedicated to port security, and then turned right around and takes that $6 billion and says let's give it over here to a company that is owned by a country that has direct financial ties to terrorist organizations. How do you figure this, that the President's budget would propose terminating that funding that our Coast Guard, the one main element we have checking our ports, asked for, advocate terminating it, and then turn right around and okay a deal that he says he did not even know about? Now, the truth is plain here, and we owe it to the American people. There are some of us in Congress who are willing to stand up and tell the truth and deal with this, because our financial security is vital, is extraordinarily important. I want to just touch upon one additional thing. I want to talk about just for a moment, as my good friend from Tennessee pointed to, this budget and the meanness of these cuts, but where they hurt the most are with our military families, are with our veterans.…”