Anthony Weiner: “Mr. Chairman, I rise today, first of all, to express my gratitude to the chairman for crafting a bill which tries to do…”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise today, first of all, to express my gratitude to the chairman for crafting a bill which tries to do what we want to do, which is to take seriously the admonition by former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge that homeland security starts in our hometowns, and tried to officially get homeland security funds to our neighborhoods. Congressman Cantor and I were going to be offering an amendment on the floor to address a program that has been funded in the last couple of years, albeit inefficiently, by the Department of Homeland Security, to deal with the problem that local neighborhood nonprofit organizations, churches, synagogues, civic institutions, are being visited by local law enforcement all the time saying, here are the things you need to do to make your institution more hardened for the challenge of homeland security. Yet, with all the things they are being told to do, unlike a business that can pass along its expenses to stockholders, or unlike a government entity that can raise taxes or make choices on what they want to allocate, these nonprofit organizations really have no way to find the funds for things like security cameras, for emergency escape hatches, for communication devices within their facilities. The nonprofit Homeland Security grants have done that. They have done it in a relatively efficient way.”