Ed Markey: “I thank the gentleman. Mr. Nadler, Mr. Oberstar and I requested an amendment to be put in order, and the Republicans…”

“I thank the gentleman. Mr. Nadler, Mr. Oberstar and I requested an amendment to be put in order, and the Republicans said no. In the former Soviet Union, there is deadly nuclear weapons material that is still unsecured that al Qaeda could purchase, bring to a port in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, put it on a ship and bring it into the port of the United States and detonate a nuclear weapon without ever having been inspected. Now, the amendment which we asked the Republicans to put in order was one that required all containers coming into the United States to be screened overseas before they are put on ships to come into American ports so that we can identify which ship has the nuclear weapon. In the Homeland Security Committee, our amendment lost 18-16. The Republican majority refuses to allow the coastal representatives to vote on this issue. We should have learned something from the Dubai debacle, the threat to our container ships coming into our ports. Our amendment says no deadly uranium bombs allowed in, no Dubais. The Republican majority says, we are not going to screen any containers coming into the ports of the United States. It is dangerous. The least that we should be able to say when that nuclear weapon goes off is that we tried, we really tried to prevent it from happening. The Republicans are not only not trying to stop it from happening; they are stopping us from having a debate on the floor of Congress on this issue.…”