Bill Pascrell: “I want to congratulate not only the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) from my own side, but the gentleman from…”

“I want to congratulate not only the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) from my own side, but the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox). They have done a great job in homeland security. We can be fiscally responsible and still protect the country. That is possible if we are smart, if we put our house in order, if we understand what our priorities are. I want everybody in these Chambers to go home this weekend, regardless of where they sit, and go to your fire chief and go to your police chief, and you explain how you cut their budget and you expect them to protect the people in their cities and their towns and in the rural areas. How dare you pat them on the back and then pull the rug right out from under them? The most successful program, 285 cosponsors, was the FIRE Act. They cut it one-third. They say that this is fiscally responsible. The most successful part of the public safety equation, the COPS program, that put more cops on the streets in the cities, in the small and large towns of this great Nation, brought the crime rate down. How dare they cut that program? They zeroed it out. The most important problem with fire departments is interoperability, one department cannot communicate with another department. They have got zero in the budget.”