Rob Andrews: “The underlying bill represents a squandered opportunity to advance a consensus of the 9/11 Commission's report. The…”

“The underlying bill represents a squandered opportunity to advance a consensus of the 9/11 Commission's report. The Menendez substitute represents that consensus, and it ought to be adopted. The 9/11 Commission said that one of the flaws that led up to the 9/11 attack was that our intelligence agencies did not have incentives to share information with each other. The Menendez substitute provides those incentives. The underlying bill does not. The 9/11 Commission acknowledged the fact that terrorists will strike a variety of targets. It acknowledged the fact that 90 percent of the critical infrastructure of this country is in private lands, nuclear power plants, chemical plants and other such facilities. The Menendez substitute picks up the 9/11 Commission's report and requires an analytical toughening of our defenses of that critical infrastructure. The underlying bill ignores that problem. The 9/11 Commission report pointed out the travesty that on 9/11 police officers and fire fighters in New York City literally could not talk to each other because of the problem of the interoperability lacking among first responders.”