Bill Pascrell: “to all of those on both sides of the aisle who made it possible for the reauthorization bill to come to the floor today…”

“to all of those on both sides of the aisle who made it possible for the reauthorization bill to come to the floor today, I say thank you, and all the services. The U.S. Fire Administration, through FEMA, provides the leadership, the coordination, and support services for fire prevention and control, which is critical. I mean, we still lose 100 firefighters, on average, every year. That certainly is unacceptable to any of us on this floor. And we need to work even harder to make sure that our firefighters have the resources and the wherewithal to do the job we ask them to do. If you remember the Fire Act we passed before 9/11, this was a response to the very basic needs of the 32,000 fire departments throughout the United States and the one million firefighters. That legislation broke ground because it was a response to needs that we've neglected. We can't expect that every local community in this country has the resources to supply and provide the training and the state-of-the-art equipment to the fire departments throughout America, and so that Fire Act has been so successful. There is literally $3.5 billion in applications in the Fire Act, and a tremendous amount of applications for SAFER every year.”