Speech #1090114229

Not only has a lot been done. but we are still doing more. In the last budget from Homeland Security. we dramatically increased port security funding for this type of a grant program that the Senator from New Jersey has proposed. In this budget. we propose $2 billion of new spending for border security. which can be used for port security in the underlying budget over what the President asked for. and then we proposed another $2 billion of border security which can be used for port issues in the supplemental budget. which runs parallel to this basic budget. So that is $4 billion of new funds which are going to flow into border security. of which a fair amount will go into the ports. So the commitment has been significant and continues to be significant. and it is hard to claim that we arent actually starting to get results from what we are buying. A lot of this port grant money. on the other hand. which goes to the port that is in place. that goes to the facility on American soil. is ending up. unfortunatelymaybe not so much going toit is going to security needs. but it is going to security needs which traditionally would have been paid for by the managers of these ports.