Mark Souder: “I appreciate the difficulty that the subcommittee chair and the full committee chair have with the moneys; I know these…”

“I appreciate the difficulty that the subcommittee chair and the full committee chair have with the moneys; I know these things are very difficult to balance, but it is clear we have an emergency in the Coast Guard. We have had to divert the Coast Guard to antiterrorism protection in New York Harbor, Boston Harbor, in Puget Sound, in the Great Lakes. We have pulled them off of their other resources in order to guard the nuclear power plants and other chemical facilities on the water. What it has done is it has pulled many of them out of the Caribbean where they were in the forefront of our antidrug effort, temporarily. They are moving back and forth. We have a shortage. We cannot do both things. Similarly on the California coast and in the Pacific, we have fisheries questions, we have safety questions, we have increasing immigration, water interception things coming through the Pacific Ocean. It is clear that we have an emergency as well. I encourage you strongly as we move towards the supplemental to address this. I understand that your budget is extremely tight, there is general sympathy for the difficulty, but we have to have more for the Coast Guard, our most neglected service, because they are being asked to do double and triple and quadruple duty. The events of September 11, 2001 have changed this Nation forever.”