Political Quotes

“I rise in support of H.R. 556, the National Security FIRST Act. I would like to thank the Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Frank, for his efforts in making this legislation one of the committee's first priorities. I would also like to commend my colleague from New York, Mrs. Maloney, for sponsoring this important legislation. Mr. Chairman, it's been a year since the Bush administration thought it would be a good idea to hand over commercial operations of six of our nation's ports to the government of Dubai--a country that the 9/11 Commission report named as a source of terrorist financing and which two of the 9/11 hijackers called home. We have since learned that, during the review process undertaken by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, administration officials did not perform a required thorough investigation of the deal to a satisfactory level and chose not to require Dubai Ports World to follow certain security conditions at some of the busiest ports in the country--over 4 years after 9/11. Mr. Chairman, the Dubai Ports World debacle was a paragon of bureaucratic ineptitude and the shining example of why this legislation is needed. Even those who believe that DPW should currently be administering our nation's ports must concede that the process is broken.”