David Price: “Here we have another amendment dealing with FEMA grants. And once again, we've come to appreciate the need for more…”

“Here we have another amendment dealing with FEMA grants. And once again, we've come to appreciate the need for more robust support for urban area grants, for State and local grants, for transit and port grants, rail grants, the kind of protective efforts that our communities require. We are reminded again that those grants have been cut very drastically in recent years, and in this bill we are only beginning to bring them back to the levels required. So I want to commend our colleague for this amendment, which proposes $58 million, I believe, in increased funding for these grants. This is money that could be well spent, wisely spent, prudently spent by our States and local communities. Again, I simply call attention to the problems posed by the offset. Members will have to make their own judgments about this. The money is taken out of the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security, taken out of the labs accounts, as I understand it, which does include the NBAF item discussed earlier, but isn't limited to NBAF. I just remind colleagues that science and technology research activities have been cut 60 percent over the last 2 years. And so there's an increase in this bill. We fought our way back in this area, too, in this bill, restoring some of these cuts against the baseline that was way too low. And so these science and technology--this is not free money.…”