Yvette Clarke: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the ranking member who has done a yeoman's job in helping alongside our colleagues…”

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the ranking member who has done a yeoman's job in helping alongside our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to move this forward. Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Homeland Security has a great stake and a long history of trying to help the troubled Chemical Facility Anti- Terrorism Standards, or CFATS, program succeed. Consideration of H.R. 4007 today is our latest effort. While I feel that it would have been better to bring this bill before the full House under a rule, so that Members could offer amendments, I want to commend my counterpart on the Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies Subcommittee, Mr. Meehan, for his diligence and commitment to moving the legislation through regular order in committee. Upon introduction of this bill, I had a number of concerns with the bill. Amazingly, the original legislation had a requirement that required CFATS to terminate after 2 years. It also did not provide an authorization of appropriations or codify the critical infrastructure protection program within the Homeland Security Act. This was corrected by Democratic amendments, many of which I offered, that were accepted in committee. A major impetus for action to authorize the CFATS program was certainly the explosion last April in West, Texas, at a fertilizer facility containing a huge amount of ammonium nitrate. As we later learned, the facility was willfully off the regulatory grid and unknown to DHS.…”