Angie Craig: “this morning I want to speak to a couple of issues that I think are important to this body and certainly to the citizens…”

“this morning I want to speak to a couple of issues that I think are important to this body and certainly to the citizens of our country. First and foremost, I want to speak of a meeting that occurred at the White House yesterday that I had the good fortune to be a part of, a meeting of the President and the joint leadership, Democrat and Republican, of the House and Senate. We met with President Bush, the Vice President, and Governor Ridge to talk about the President's decision to create a new Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security and his decision to send to the Congress a proposal that would allow us to work with him in the shaping of legislation to ultimately create that agency. I saw the current Presiding Officer on television the other night speaking to this issue. I was pleased that he, too, like I, agree that a time has come in our country that we need to recognize the extraordinary global terrorism threat that has been brought to our doorstep and to the doorstep of most American citizens, and the need to recognize that the mechanisms of our Government to combat this threat have in part failed--or certainly the mechanisms are not in tune with the current threat in a way that they can effectively connect all of the dots to draw the necessary conclusions of the magnitude of the threat by those who bring it to our doorstep.”