Sylvester Turner: “I do agree we are doing more than we were. The question is are we doing enough to protect America? When we look at what…”

“I do agree we are doing more than we were. The question is are we doing enough to protect America? When we look at what we are doing to protect our borders, we have yet to meet the levels that we mandated in the PATRIOT Act for border security guards, and we clearly do not know today who comes into this country and who leaves this country, and that is without dispute. We also know that we have got 12 incompatible terrorist watch lists, and it has been 2 years since we all knew that we had to have a common single watch list to be sure that all agencies of government knew who was on the terrorist watch list. We know the Coast Guard struggles with outdated equipment, equipment that needs to be upgraded. The list could go on and on and on. The Council on Foreign Relations issued a report just about a month ago entitled Emergency Responders Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared, a bipartisan report issued by a bipartisan group chaired by Warren Rudman, former Republican Senator. There seems to be no question, Mr. Speaker, that we must do more to protect the security of America, and when we look at it in the context of the priorities, what we see is the increase in the Homeland Security budget provided by this conference report is only 22 percent above what it was last year.”