Political Quotes

“Today I voted against H.R. 1892. Despite of the progress we've made in reforming our intelligence community in size, scope and accountability, today's authorization does not go nearly far enough. On the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, there is still nothing more important than the security of our people. Unfortunate, there is a clear lack of progress in getting a handle on the sprawling intelligence bureaucracy. There are 856,000 people with top-secret security clearances in the United States. That's nearly the population of the entire state of Delaware and more than the entire population of San Francisco. In over 10,000 locations scattered across the U.S., there are around 1,200 government organizations and 1,900 private companies that focus on intelligence gathering and on homeland security. In the wake of 9/11, we opened the funding floodgates to our intelligence community. It has now grown so large and so secretive that we have no idea how much it costs or how many people it employs, let alone understand how much of this work is duplicative. While improvements have been made, Congress needs to not just take a closer look, but reverse this dangerous trend. With the inability for anyone to really know exactly what's going on, the surge of information isn't always a source of protection, but a potential vulnerability. We can have too much information to use effectively.…”