Kevin Brady: “my message today is to our State Department in Houston. We have a problem, a serious passport problem that reached a…”

“my message today is to our State Department in Houston. We have a problem, a serious passport problem that reached a crisis stage. We have families who applied in February for their passports that have not received them yet. We have wives that can't meet their soldier husbands on leave from Iraq. We have families who aren't able to go to experimental surgery out of this country, families leaving for the last time before college together who are simply denied the opportunity to travel. Our passport offices are overwhelmed. Our people wait in line for hours, if not days, getting there at 4 o'clock in the morning. We appreciate the 20 additional staff the State Department sent. They are overwhelmed. We appreciate the 1-800 number. It is a middle man and causing more problems. We need more staff. We need more information call lines manned 24/7. We need more resources. It is wrong. As our constituents tell us, they feel like they are in a third-world country. We think they deserve better treatment than that; and this deserves immediate attention, immediate, absolute action by the State Department.”