Do-It-Yourself Impeachment – this is another one of those quirks that’s still left in our rapidly disappearing government rights that, if carried out in just exactly the right way, by enough people, just might work… it’s worth a try. nothing else has helped… 8/
Opponents say $648 million proposal too expensive
June 8, 2006
By KRISTEN MILLARES BOLT
Nearly $650 million to increase scrutiny of containers shipping into Seattle and every other U.S. port was stripped out of a national security funding package moving through Congress this week in a move critics say makes the country more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Opponents of the $648 million for port security said it was too expensive and needed to be cut to satisfy President Bush’s request that the supplemental budget for things such as the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina reconstruction be brought under control.
Though the action by Congress was not unexpected, port safety advocates such as Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Port of Seattle Chief Executive Mic Dinsmore were dismayed.
“We are not going to have the money we need for screening machines, customs inspectors, Coast Guard inspectors, radiation monitors, gates, fences and more,” Murray said. “The administration keeps talking a good game, but words do not provide security.”
The decision came on the heels of the House passage Tuesday of a separate Department of Homeland Security spending bill. Absent in that bill was a controversial provision requiring that all U.S.-bound containers be scanned at overseas ports, which Democrats had tried to push through after the national uproar over the Dubai Ports World deal this spring.
Currently, about 5 percent of U.S.-bound containers are inspected.
The $648 million in port security funding was supported by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Homeland Security panel. It would have paid for inspectors to be added at 50 foreign ports, additional Coast Guard inspectors to oversee security abroad and domestically, and 60 cargo container imaging machines.
Byrd’s amendment passed in the Senate but was not included in the House version. Though the final version of the funding package still needs to be voted on by the Senate and the House, the committee that eliminated the amendment early Wednesday took further measures to ensure that it could not be reinstated this year.
“Like many people who have been strong advocates of getting this national security issue right, I am disappointed,” Port of Seattle chief Dinsmore said. “We have not determined what kind of negative impact it will have, but if it takes money away from projects we need, it is going to hurt Seattle, as well as Tacoma and Everett.”
The American Association of Port Authorities said the move was especially inopportune, given the additional costs incurred by ports implementing the government mandate for standardized federal identification for port workers.
Those rules, announced last month, create a national standardized identification procedure for all who have unescorted access to ports: longshore workers, truck drivers, port staff and contractors, and vessel and rail operators. Making that happen could cost from $299 million to $325 million, according to the Department of Homeland Security figures cited by the port association. However, the Homeland Security bill passed by the House contains only $40 million specifically designated for that.
“It’s a grave disappointment that’s not putting money into real port security,” said Herald Ugles, president of Local 19 International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
“They paid money to inspect American workers, but should be spending it more wisely on inspecting cargo.”
Ugles said the government, as part of a nationwide effort, asked for and received a list of the names and birthdates of all Local 19 longshoremen. Their information, he said, will be checked against the terrorist watch list.
“We understand that it has to be done, but they need to be inspecting the containers,” Ugles said.
The Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill passed by the House does include $4.2 billion for port, container and cargo security, but Murray said those funds are “not enough, that is why we asked for more.”
Murray said that ports need the kind of hardened security now present at the airports, and that the cost of doing so far exceeds the bill’s budget for it. The bill will go onto a committee that will resolve the differences between the Senate and the House versions, then pass through a final vote.
It includes $2.1 billion for the Coast Guard port security operations, $1.7 billion for Customs and Border Protection cargo inspection and trade operation, $139 million for a Container Security Initiative, $178 million for radiation portal monitors, $70.1 million for a Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, and $200 million in port security grants.
“You’re talking less then bare bones with those numbers,” said Murray, calling the emergency security funding package “the smallest budget number we’ve seen in a long time.” She is co-writing legislation that would “push the borders back” and have containers inspected in foreign ports, among other things.
The White House had urged Congress to keep to its limit, or risk veto of the emergency funding bill that will send much-needed cash to Iraq and areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
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