Timothy Roemer: “I could not be more proud to serve in this Chamber and with the people that have put this intelligence budget together…”

“I could not be more proud to serve in this Chamber and with the people that have put this intelligence budget together: our chairman, the gentleman from the State of Florida (Mr. Goss), who it is a pleasure to work with; the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), who provides such strong leadership; the other members of the committee, who do such honorable work; and the bright and dedicated staff that we serve with and who serve us so well. Mr. Chairman, we have debated many bills this year. I am not sure we will debate a more important one for the security and the strength of our Nation. I want to thank the intelligence community for the hard work they do, the work on U.S. goals, U.S. programs, U.S. policies, and U.S. interests. Every day they make us a little bit more secure. I want to say, too, Mr. Chairman, that the events of 9-11 may not have been absolutely preventable; but mistakes were made, failures were made, there were gaps and cracks that the snakes crawled through on 9-11, and we intend to fix them and to close those gaps.”