W. Weldon: “I have been in this body for eight terms, Mr. Speaker, and during those eight terms, my number one priority has been to…”

“I have been in this body for eight terms, Mr. Speaker, and during those eight terms, my number one priority has been to focus on emergency response locally. I have been to every disaster the country has had in the last 16 years: Loma Prieta, Northridge, Hurricane Andrew, Hugo, the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center in 1993, and I was at Ground Zero on September 13. I went there to try to get lessons that we could learn from the needs that we have to respond to both natural and manmade incidents of disaster. Those needs are, in fact, addressed by this bill, except perhaps in one case. The number one overriding need is coordination of intelligence. Five years ago we proposed in our defense bill the creation of a national data fusion center. Unfortunately, while this agency calls for one focus on coordinated intelligence, it does not give the teeth necessary to force the FBI and the CIA to become totally involved, and it is going to require additional work. But intelligence is in fact an overriding priority for us to detect emerging threats.”