The Public Record
Susan Margaret Collins is a United States Senator from Maine, serving since January 7, 1997. A member of the Republican Party, Collins is known for her moderate stance on various issues, often working across party lines. Throughout her tenure, she has focused on a range of topics including healthcare, national security, and economic policy. Collins has been recognized for her independent approach to governance, often emphasizing the importance of bipartisanship in her legislative efforts.
I truly do not understand, in light of DHS's own assessment that the terrorist threat is higher from the Northern Border and that there is significant criminal activity and smuggling of drugs, people, and weapons, why the Administration…
Can you assure us today that the Department has reviewed the files of every Iraqi national who was admitted under that program to ensure that there was proper vetting, including matching fingerprints with databases in possession of the…
The strategy produced by the White House does not clearly assign the responsibility to an individual who we can hold accountable.
So getting information to the public before disaster strikes helps to save lives, reduce property damage, and prepare people for what is coming.
Terrorists clearly are going to constantly probe our defenses and constantly innovate.
Neither President Bush nor President Obama has fully valued the DNI as the principal adviser to the President the way we intended in the law.
But earlier today you and Under Secretary Beers indicated that there are still some problems with databases and their capacity to interrelate.
that another aspect of the Abdulmutallab case that was most disturbing to me was that the derogatory information about Abdulmutallab from his father to our embassy officials did not trigger the revocation of his visa
Not only did the 9/11 attacks represent a 'failure of imagination,' as the 9/11 Commission found, they also revealed the inadequacy of communications equipment, technology, and systems.
Has it made us safer as a Nation? Was it a good idea to bring all 22 agencies together in terms of improving our security?
I think you want more people on the alert. I think you want the average citizen watching for suspicious activity.
I continue to have deep concerns that this Administration refuses to acknowledge that violent Islamist extremism is the ideology that fuels such attacks.
I continue to believe that as we expand information sharing, which I think is absolutely critical, that this board is an important check on the process.
I think that is often forgotten when some of our colleagues argue that all of the homeland security money should go to just large urban areas.
Senator Lieberman and I, in my view, improved the bill by expanding it beyond the Department of Homeland Security to cover all Executive Branch agencies.
However, I do not want to slight the importance of warning the public prior to a disaster striking.
If the President does not empower the DNI, we can write all the language in the world, and the DNI is not going to truly be in charge.
If disaster strikes, you do not want people meeting each other for the first time and exchanging business cards in the middle of it.
For reasons that are not clear to me yet--and we have to talk to him and his staff--that is $4 billion less than the Rockefeller-Hutchison bill and Senator McCain and my bill.
Politicians like Susan Collins
