Steve Pearce: “I appreciate our colleague's efforts to secure the Nation. We join in that effort. Protecting our homeland requires…”

“I appreciate our colleague's efforts to secure the Nation. We join in that effort. Protecting our homeland requires diligence, resolve and common sense, and I salute my colleagues who drafted the bill. However, since we had no process in committee to discuss or amend the bill, we are simply left with asking rhetorical questions here on the floor. We were told earlier that for $30 to $40 per container we were going to secure America. I hold in front of me my passport. I am about to get that renewed. Every 10 years we do that, and it is going to cost $82. I will tell you that we had secure communications, secure briefings in homeland security, how they cannot secure even our passports for $82, yet we are going to secure containers that are coming from the Middle East full of oil; we are going to secure containers full of vegetables; and we are not going to interrupt commerce. We cannot even count on some of our friends to protect the intellectual property rights on compact discs, and yet we are going to trust them to offer the security of this Nation. These are the questions that should have come up in committee. These are the questions that should come up today. These are the questions that are being ignored, and we are being asked to look the other way and declare the Nation safer. I join with my colleagues in saying it is awfully important for us to make the Nation safe.”