Don Nickles: “We have to decide, are we going to have individual Senators come here and say we know best, we ought to give the…”

“We have to decide, are we going to have individual Senators come here and say we know best, we ought to give the Secretary--this is a new Secretary, a new Department, where the funding for these items has more than doubled in the last 2 years--a very significant increase. The increase we have this year over last year is 18.4 percent. In addition to that, when we vote on the Cochran amendment, we will be increasing funds for this function for fiscal year 2003, the year we are in, an additional $3.5 billion. That is more than enough to make up for any deficiencies in first responders and also gives additional money for other necessary items in homeland security. I urge our colleagues to vote no on the Schumer amendment.”