Anthony Weiner: “on September 11, like so many institutions of the Federal Government, everything came to a halt, including all the…”

“on September 11, like so many institutions of the Federal Government, everything came to a halt, including all the facilities of the national parks. Almost immediately thereafter, we began a process to reopen them. We reopened them literally but we also reopened them symbolically to say, in the words of Secretary Norton from September 12 of that year, ``Even though atrocities such as those of September 11 can affect us, they cannot close us down.'' She said that while standing above Hoover Dam on September 12, 2001. Today, after a period of a couple of months after September 11, all of the facilities of the national parks were reopened. Today these many years later, all of them are reopened except one, perhaps the most symbolic national park that there is, the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty is still not reopened. Why? Well, it is not for lack of money. We in Congress have allocated more than $19 million to do security upgrades, to do improvements to the facility. In fact, there has been over $6 million that was raised privately. We all remember the Statue of Liberty Foundation, major companies lined up, people sent in their coffee tins. Boys and girls from around the country collected pennies and dimes and nickles to help reopen the Statue of Liberty. So it is not for lack of funding. Frankly, the reason that the Statue of Liberty is still closed is the lack of imagination and will on the part of the Park Service.…”