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“PROVIDING SAFETY IN THE SKIES” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H6898-H6902 on Oct. 16, 2001.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
PROVIDING SAFETY IN THE SKIES
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simmons). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is recognized until midnight.
Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I have been fascinated by the previous remarks. I think it was excellent, and I commend the gentlewoman from California. I think it highlights the issue overall, and that is not just the abuse that the Taliban throws upon women in their society, but the abuse they throw upon their society as a whole.
For them to represent that they somehow speak for the religion of Islam, that they somehow speak for the Muslims of the world, is an insult. Obviously the Muslim world does not believe in the kind of abuses that the Taliban throws upon its women, nor does the religion of Islam. In fact the religion of Islam respects women, and that certainly is not something that you see in any kind of fashion whatsoever. In no fashion whatsoever do you see women given respect that they are entitled to or to the privileges, the equal rights or the access that they should have. Obviously that is not given when you talk about Afghanistan.
There are a couple issues, Mr. Speaker, I want to visit about that I think are very important. First of all, I listened to some of the previous speakers on the airport security bill. Obviously the airport security we have in this country has to be tightened dramatically. It has been tightened dramatically right now with the temporary use of the military. We have taken some very dramatic steps.
As you know, it was a pretty incredible event on September 11, that the Department of Transportation, upon order of the President of the United States, was able to take 2,600 or 3,000 commercial aircraft and bring every one of those aircraft down to a safe landing within about a 2 hour period of time. There were a lot of things that went wrong on September 11, but there were a lot of things in response to that horrible tragedy of September 11 that went right.
For example, the military alert, the high alert that went out to our military throughout the world. Just picture yourself as a skipper of a carrier group out in the Pacific somewhere, or out in the Persian Gulf, and you are scrambled a message that the United States of America has just been attacked, that structures have been taken down in New York City, that the Pentagon itself has been struck.
Our military was immediately upon order of the President taken to probably the highest alert that they have been in in decades, and we did not have one misfire. Not one misfire. Not one officer who acted out of what the rule book says they should act. It was a good, solid response and it shows you that in time of emergency, there are a lot of things that can be done right.
We saw it, as I said, with the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, NORAD, which was contacted within minutes of the hijack knowledge and was able to try and track some of these commercial aircraft that were being used as weapons by the hijackers.
There were a lot of things in our system that worked. But one of the things that failed us was airport security across this country, and I do not know any of my colleagues that do not think that we do not need to increase airport security. Obviously we have got to improve the airport security in every airport in this country. Whether it is in Grand Junction, Colorado, or whether it is at LaGuardia, or whether it is at National Airport or Denver International Airport, we have got to improve security.
But the question is, how do you get the biggest bang for your buck for security? What kind of approach should we use to enhance that security, that we can be ensured that a year from now or 2 years from now or 3 years from now that the system is working?
Now, some have suggested that the only way to do it is to quickly act and for the Federal Government to create a new bureaucracy and hire tens of thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, as Federal employees, and put them in these positions of airport security.
To me, that makes about as much sense as the Federal Aviation Administration hiring all the pilots. Clearly and absolutely there is a role for the Federal Government to oversee security at these airports. They have to put down very tough and stringent guidelines as to what will be allowed and what will not be allowed; what training is required for the people that work in that security, what people will be allowed there, what kind of clearances they have, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But before any of my colleagues, and some have, obviously, but before you sign on that the only way to answer this is to create a new Federal bureaucracy, think of the problems that we have.
Some inherently disagree with me. Some out here like a bigger Federal Government. Some think that the only people that can get things done correctly is the government. I am saying, I do not think so. I think the government should oversee it.
But take a look at what happens if you hire these people. Take a look under our Civil Service regulations, where you cannot hardly fire a Federal employee if we have misbehavior. You cannot hardly move a Federal employee. To take an example, look at what happened in Denver and some of the other areas when we required Federal Aviation Administration personnel to move 50 miles or something like that. Take a look at what a racket that ended up being.
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We lose lots of flexibility when, in a very short period of time, we put tens and tens and tens of thousands of people in the Federal payroll and create them permanently as Federal employees. It is not going to work. That is not the efficient way to provide the maximum amount of security that we want for our airports in this country.
Now, President Bush recognized this. President Bush's approach to this, which I think, by the way, is the correct approach, is number one, we all agree we need tougher airport security, we all agree that the status quo is not working, but as the President says, there should be Federal oversight, but it does not have to mean a new huge Federal bureaucracy for airport security any more than as I said earlier the Federal Aviation Administration should all of a sudden be required to hire all of the pilots in this country.
Clearly, the Federal Aviation Administration has a strong role in pilot qualifications, in how many hours the pilots fly, in the type of training that they need for particular aircraft and the type of training that they need for approached airports, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So the Federal Government has a strong role to play, it is just we should not take it across that line and, in a few weeks, end up hiring tens and tens and tens of thousands of people to become full-
time, permanent, Federal employees.
So I am asking my colleagues to take a careful look at that. We do not need to have that many more new employees. What we need to do is review these procedures and make our airports safer. I look with disgust upon any of my colleagues that suggest that because some of us say we do not need a new Federal bureaucracy, that they make the suggestion that we do not care about airport security. I do not know one Member in this House, I do not know one Member in this House that does not want improved airport security. Not one. Not from the left, way over on the left to clear over on the right. We do not see it. Everybody in these Chambers wants better airport security. But the question is, how do we most effectively get there? Take a look at the track record. Frankly, the track record of the Federal Government on previous attempts at things like this has not been very good. I want the best airport security that we can get out there.
I want to move on to another subject, and I want to talk a little bit about what I sense in the national media. I do want to visit this evening about the different types of weapons of mass destruction and our kind of a threefold strategy that I think we have to utilize which would also include a missile defense, information defense, and defense against domestic terrorism; for example, a truck bomb or things like that.
But I noted with interest, and let me say it this way. I am kind of a fan of 60 Minutes. I have watched 60 Minutes, as many of my colleagues have here, for a long time, for decades, in fact. I think 60 Minutes overall has done a very good job. But I have to tell my colleagues that I was very, very disappointed when I saw 60 Minutes last weekend. Do we know what they did? They spent the first 25 minutes or so of their show pointing out to the world, pointing out to the world the weaknesses of our nuclear generating facilities in this country and how various types of attacks on these may very well be successful and the catastrophe that they could create.
Now, I think it is great that 60 Minutes went out and uncovered this weakness, although I would not give them that much credit. Other people have complained about the lack of security. But my question is I think that the media has a responsibility to play post-September 11 disaster as well, and that responsibility would have been much better exercised by 60 Minutes by simply taking their information over to the Pentagon or over to the Nuclear Regulatory Administration or over to the White House or to the Congress and say, look what we have discovered out there. We have some weaknesses in these nuclear facilities, and we need to be aware of it.
Mr. Speaker, 60 Minutes chose not to do that. 60 Minutes instead thought it was much better to broadcast to the world the weaknesses that currently exist in our nuclear reactors. I mean some of these terrorists must just be sitting back in their caves or in their places of abode just smiling and saying, what a great society these people are in America. They provide us with our next target and they give us all kinds of information. We get good ideas by reading the American media.
I think all of us have a responsibility here and it includes the media, and that responsibility is, hey, maybe we ought to figure out that what is being read by what we publish out there, what is being seen by what we televise, or what is being heard by what we put over the radio, maybe we should screen a little of that information. Now, some of the media, frankly, has been pretty darn responsible. Bob Woodward not too long ago, 2 or 3 weeks ago, unfortunately, on the Senate side, there was a leak of information, as my colleagues know. The President got very upset about it.
It is my understanding from a source in the media that Bob Woodward did the responsible thing. He got ahold of some information that he himself questioned whether it should be published, and he contacted the appropriate government officials, which I would guess would be the White House and said, should I be putting this kind of information out? They asked him not to, and Bob Woodward respected that. That is responsible journalism.
I do not think it is responsible journalism to go out and spend 20 minutes televising to the world where the weaknesses are in America's nuclear generation facilities and how a strike against these nuclear facilities, and they even describe on 60 Minutes about how if the plane hit it at this angle or this happened or that happened, what the consequences of that would be. That is like going down and saying, guys, let me tell you where the weakness is in the local bank alarm system.
I will bet my colleagues that 60 Minutes, Dan Rather, the whole crew there at 60 Minutes, I bet they never televised the weakness in their home alarm system: if you come to my house at this time, that is the weakness in my home alarm system, or I do not have this window taped so you could get access there and you could cause a lot of harm to my house because I keep a lot of material in there.
The point being to me it is incumbent upon all of us to talk to our friends in the media and say, look, we all have to be more responsible. The world changed on September 11. The days of being absolutely politically correct, the days of Harvard not allowing the U.S. military, the ROTC on their campus, those days are gone. Our society has to adapt to some realities out there and the realities are that there is a cancer out there, there is a horrible cancer out there. Bin Laden happens to be a key cell in that cancer, but he is not the only cell of cancer we have out there. If we do not act aggressively to eradicate that cancer, it will kill us. It will eat us alive.
I noted with interest tonight, going back to Harvard University, I noticed with interest tonight that at Fox News Network, they claim that one of the people, one of their guests, it was not Fox News, but it was one of their guests said that Harvard actually accepts money from the bin Laden family, takes money from the bin Laden family, either in the form of scholarships or grants, but refuses to take any money from the United States military to pay for or allow an ROTC recruiting officer on Harvard University or ROTC training. Give me a break. Come on. After September 11, we all have to put more weight on our shoulders; we all have to accept more responsibility of being an American. Being an American is not too bad a deal. It is the greatest country in the history of the world. Do not let people start to apologize for America.
I think I am beginning to sense some sympathy towards this bin Laden. I noticed today, all they talked about today is the fact that we have collateral damage hitting a Red Cross warehouse. I am sorry. I feel badly about that. We do not intend to target innocent civilians, but the fact is, we are engaged in a war. We have very sophisticated weapons, but we do not have weapons that can go out and paint a red laser cross across bin Laden so that we go in and we take out bin Laden and nobody else gets impacted. Obviously we have to be careful. I am not suggesting intentional civilian deaths. But I am saying that there is a point in our society where we have to accept the fact that we are going to suffer some casualties.
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There are going to be civilian casualties. But let me tell the Members, when the news media starts talking all day long about the fact that one of our bombs hit a Red Cross facility by mistake, I might add, do not forget, that score starts at 6,000 to nothing. Six thousand innocent citizens lost their lives in New York City, and that is a statistic that ought to come in over and over and over and over again.
That does not justify going and taking 6,000 Aghan citizens, but do not come down on the United States military in such a way that we think we are going to be able to go in and find and eradicate this cancer without taking or hitting a few healthy cells on the way in. I do not know how else we can do it.
We have gotten through several decades of being able to engage in military actions without a lot of U.S. casualties. Our weapons have become much more precise, and thank goodness they have, because if we take a look at conflict after conflict, our collateral damage is being lowered and lowered and lowered; in other words, there is less and less and less collateral damage because our weapons are becoming more and more and more sophisticated.
But this is not the time to start to sympathize with bin Laden, to start to criticize the United States military, because I think they are doing a pretty darned good job out there. When we get into or when we are engaged in a war, we are going to have mistakes.
It is just like the State patrol of a State. Over a period of time, some State patrolman is going to have a car accident. We regret the fact that that happens, we try and avoid that from happening; but that does not mean we sympathize with the crooks more because a State patrolman may goof up and have an accident.
I think these points are very important, because I would not want us, as we get further and further away from September 11, I do not want our memories to begin to fade about what a horrible thing that cancer did to us. Do Members know what? That cancer still exists out there. It will take a very dedicated effort.
Thank goodness we have the President that we do. Thank goodness we have the team that we do, whether it is Vice President Cheney, whether it is Condoleezza Rice, who, by the way, did an excellent job on ``60 Minutes'' the other night, or whether it is Don Rumsfeld, we have the right kind of team dedicated to go in and do the surgical procedure that is necessary to eradicate most of that cancer.
But we have to give them a break and give them our support. So far this country has been very solid behind our President. I think the average mainstream American out there does not want people like ``60 Minutes'' talking about the weaknesses of our nuclear generating facilities. Instead, I think the average American out there wants this President and this Government to do what is necessary to make the security of this Nation safe for all future generations.
That requires some pretty nasty stuff. War is nasty. But as Winston Churchill said, ``The only thing worse than war is losing the war.'' It is the same thing here. The only thing worse than eradicating terrorism, and I assure the Members, there will be collateral damage, the only thing worse than that is losing to bin Laden; losing to the fact that America would have to live under the threat of fear from this point on; that America would have to live and tolerate what the Taliban does to its own people, as reflected in the earlier comments by the gentlewoman from California regarding the rights of women in Afghanistan, and what bin Laden and the Taliban have done, what they have done to the women in Afghanistan.
So I think it is very important for us to understand that there is nothing wrong with being patriotic, that there is nothing wrong for the United States of America to do what it is doing. I think sometimes when we find out that there has been a mistake, a regrettable mistake, that a bomb is dropped on a Red Cross warehouse, that we tend to forget what has gone right.
Take a look at the military targets that day after day, night after night, our military has successfully hit without collateral damage. Take a look at how well executed this military mission has been. There is a lot to be proud of here. Our military has an incredible machine. Our military has very sophisticated command centers. Our military has the most sophisticated weapons ever known in the history of man. These are weapons that try and minimize collateral damage.
So I am a little concerned when I start to see sympathy actually heading to the Taliban, when I start to see some kind of justification for what the Taliban has done. We do not see it directly yet, but we are headed that way.
Kudos, by the way, to the Mayor of New York City, who had a $10 million check in his hand but gave it back because he said nothing can justify the horrible actions of these evil people. What they have done is evil. They are evil. There is only one answer with evil, we have to eradicate it. We cannot love it away, we cannot hope it away, we cannot go and hold the hands of the Taliban and say, We would like you to adapt yourself more to Western behavior. We would like you to commit to us that you are going to give women rights in your country.
That is not going to happen. These Taliban leaders and bin Laden and his outfit, they are cancerous. It is a deadly, horrible cancer. We have tasted some of it. It hit us hard in New York City, and it is going to hit us again if we do not pursue the eradication of it in a relentless fashion. That is our obligation as Congressmen. That is an inherent requirement of the Government, that is, to provide homeland security for the people of America and for our allies.
One of the things that I think we need to improve on, I talked to airport security. Clearly, we have to improve immediately airport security, and we have. Obviously, the Federal Aviation Administration and others, the security has been stepped up significantly.
But on a long-term basis we have to make dramatic changes in our airport security. As I said earlier, I think we can do that without creating a Federal bureaucracy of tens of thousands of new Federal employees. So we need to have airport security.
We also need to do a couple of other things. We need to tighten up our borders. I know that is not politically correct, to say that, look, if you are a guest in the United States, we are going to check into your background. If you are coming to visit the United States, if you want to immigrate to the United States, we have some certain rights as the United States to see who we are letting into this country.
We were getting to a point in our society where it seemed to be politically incorrect, where it would be wrong for Members to go to a student whose visa expired, and by the way, of the terrorists, the Wall Street Journal today had an excellent article. Three or four of those terrorists were on expired student visas.
The student visa program in this country has gone awry. It is out of control. We have, I think, 2.5 million people, and I can look that up, but I think there are 2\1/2\ million people in this country today that are on expired student visas; and we are not doing much to get them out of here.
When people come to visit the United States, that is a privilege. This country has to start to enforce our borders. That is not to say at all, not in any way, that this great country should shut its borders. I do not believe in that. Unless one is truly Native American, we all have been the beneficiary of America's policy on immigration. It has built a great country.
But having open borders does not mean we have to have uncontrolled borders. We should be having open borders that are controlled and managed and worked to the benefit of everybody. It works for the protection of the people even coming into this country. So our borders have to be tightened.
I will tell Members something else we have to deploy at our borders. We have to put in those face-scanning computers that are able to determine if one is wanted or if one is a terrorist anywhere in the world, or find out just exactly who it is that is coming across, are they using false IDs, et cetera. We have to use other high-tech equipment at these borders.
Some people, they jump up, and I have already heard this as a result of our antiterrorism bill, and say, Invasion of privacy. Do not invade privacy. Let me tell the Members something, I have not seen a proposal yet that has been on this floor that is unconstitutional, an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.
It is not the intent of anybody in this House to invade or violate the Constitution. After all, we take oaths to stand up and protect the Constitution. We do not take some kind of assigned mission to violate the Constitution.
So it is not that we are violating the Constitution with, for example, face-scanning computers and other technical equipment. The fact is, life is going to be a little more inconvenient. When we go to the airport, we are going to have to open our suitcases two or three times. They are going to have a right to look through our loose clothes, to look through our purse or wallet, which we may consider private.
But the fact is in our society we have to take some affirmative steps to provide homeland security for our Nation. What is wrong at the borders with having computer-scanning equipment and data like that that can give us the kind of information we need?
A lot of this is a game of quick information. We cannot sit there and detain or stop the borders while we spend 3 or 4 hours questioning everybody who wants to come across. We have to depend on quick information. We have to depend on an informational system that could quickly give us that kind of information. That is the computer-
technical equipment.
In Britain, take a look at Britain, the United Kingdom, who have been wonderful allies. Boy, have they stood with us through this from day one. From hour one, from the moment that Tony Blair and his government found out that the United States had been attacked, they stood tall, as did many of our other colleagues. But I want to talk about Great Britain right now.
They have suffered terror for years. They have had terrorists blow up bombs in London and places like that. They have put pretty good security equipment in London and throughout their country. They have those face-scanning cameras. They do not come out and stick a camera in your face. They are on light poles, or they are on the sides of buildings.
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They have lots of security cameras almost on every city block in London figuring out exactly what is going on. They scan the city. It has not brought down a violation of privacy in the United Kingdom. In fact, it has made the United Kingdom a lot safer. It is kind of like putting a guard in the bank.
I can remember as a young man, when I used to go into the bank, there were never police officers standing in the lobby of a bank; and well, then bank robberies kept happening and happening. Guess what happened when we put a police officer in the lobby of the bank? It did not violate anybody's privacy on banking laws. What it did was lower the crime in that bank, made it safer for everybody.
That is exactly what we need to do at our borders and athletic events that what we need to do, where it is otherwise feasible, is provide the kind of security, the TV cameras and things like that we can do without intrusion into the Constitution. So I have not seen any, any movement that violates the Constitution of the United States.
Clearly, the point I am making here, we have to, and I would like to point out on this border, is that we have got to do something very quickly. Just as important as our airport security is our border security. We have got to tighten up the border between, for example, the United States and Canada. For the most part, that border seems to be unsecured. We have cooperation from our neighbors to the north. Canada is a wonderful country. They are great allies. I do not think one could ask for two better neighbors than we have. Mexico on one side on the south and Canada on the north.
In fact, just for my colleagues' information, we have had recruiters that have told us that down in the South they have gotten calls from Mexican citizens who want to come up and join the United States military because they want to fight for the United States against this terrible cancer that we suffered on September 11 and we are now trying to eradicate.
So we have got cooperation to tighten those borders, but let me give you some statistics, and this is off of Senator Feinstein. She put out a press release. She identified weaknesses of the U.S. visa system. I think this is an excellent piece of work. I want to just give a few statistics.
An unregulated visa waiver program in which 23 million people arrived in this country in fiscal year 2000 from 29 different countries, almost no scrutiny. An unmonitored nonimmigrant visa system in which 7.1 million tourists, business visitors, foreign students, and temporary workers arrived. To date, the INS does not have a reliable tracking system to determine how many of these visitors left when they were supposed to leave. The INS cannot track it.
Among those 7.1 million nonimmigrants, 500,000 foreign nationals entered on foreign student visas. The foreign student visa system is one of the most underregulated systems we have today.
So there are a couple of things that I want to bring up, just review very quickly. One, we have got to increase airport security, but we do not need to create a new Federal bureaucracy to do it. We clearly have no Federal oversight on it.
Two, we have to tighten our borders, and let me just talk about the third thing I think whose time has come.
This is the third thing I wanted to visit with, and that is the new strategic setting. This is a three-pronged threat as I have got on this poster. I will go in reverse.
Information warfare. Clearly what does the United States have to do to protect, as we know, everything in our lives today is focused very, very heavily on computer and information. How do we protect that information? How do we protect homeland security to our information warfare?
Terrorist threat. Clearly it was demonstrated to the United States that we had some huge gaps in our security system, our homeland security to provide protection from terrorist attacks. Now, remember, that gap was a horrible gap; and the results were horribly, horribly tragic. But the fact is we have had a lot of terrorist threats, including the one on the millennium that tried to come across the border that was stopped. We can protect against that. We can enhance that.
The one I really want to focus on is the missile-delivered weapons of mass destruction attack. Keep in mind when we talk about missile defense, which I think absolutely has to be imminent for the defense of this country, and I think it is an inherent obligation of all of us sitting on this floor to provide a missile defensive system for this country. Keep in mind that a lot of people out there assume we already have missile defense; that if somebody fires a missile against the United States of America, that we have the capability to defend against it. We do not. We do not have that capability today. And that ought to be our highest priority as far as national security from an outside source. I think it is really, really critical. Let me mention a couple of other things.
Most people, when we have talk about missiles coming against the United States, think of a nuclear missile. Of course, that is a worst case scenario; and we know that there are countries, there has been proliferation around the world of countries capable of delivering nuclear missiles. But when we also talk about nuclear missiles, a lot of people think about an intentional launch against the United States. I want to say, think about this for a moment, I believe that the possibility of an accidental launch against the United States of America is very possible with a nuclear warhead or a missile with a chemical type of weapon on top of it.
So a missile defensive system protects us not only against an intentional launch against the United States but an accidental launch. A lot of people, including some of our colleagues, have pooh-poohed the idea that I say this could happen by accident. They do not give it too much credibility. Guess what happened 2 weeks ago. Out in the Black Sea, the Ukrainian Navy fired, by accident, a missile. What did it hit? It hit a civilian Russian airliner. It shot it right out of the sky. It killed everybody on board. That was accidental. If it can happen in a military exercise out in the Black Sea, let me assure my colleagues, it can happen with a missile aimed at the United States of America.
I am not trying to create any kind of panic because I think the United States of America has some time, not a long period of time, but some time and we have the technological capability to do it to provide a missile defensive system for this country.
There was a treaty signed not too many years ago and I intend to go into that in much more depth later on this week, but it was the Anti-
ballistic Missile Treaty. The President of the United States has justifiably and very accurately called that treaty obsolete. The treaty is obsolete with the exception of one provision within that treaty, contained within the four corners. The authors of that treaty, the first people that drew it up, realized that times on would change. They must have realized that the United States and Russia in the 1970's were the only two countries capable of delivering missiles, either intentionally or accidentally with nuclear warheads. They must have realized if it is possible that in the future it could expand and there could be proliferation of nuclear weapons in other countries. If that occurred and if that became a threat to the national sovereignty of either Russia or the United States, then under this treaty, the Anti-
Ballistic Missile Treaty, there would be a clause that is contained in the treaty, that would allow either country to withdraw from that treaty upon a 6-month notice.
That is the first step that has to take place from an administrative point of view. This administration is preparing to do exactly that. They ought to do that. That is what leadership calls for.
From the technical point of view, this government and this Congress and, fortunately, our colleagues down the hallway have dedicated resources to continue the research to perfect that technology that we have. We are very close. We are very close to providing the necessary information to build a missile defensive system in this country. We have got to get closer and we have got to close that gap and we have to put that defensive system into place.
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Let me point out that the threat is real. Rogue states and weapons of mass destruction. Among the 20 Third World Countries that have or are in the process of developing weapons of mass destruction are:
Iran. Iran has nuclear weapons, they have chemical weapons, they have biological weapons and they have advanced missile technology.
Iraq. Iraq, same thing: Nuclear, chemical, biological, advanced missile technology.
Libya. Well, almost the same thing, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, advanced technical information.
North Korea has all four of them. Syria has all except the biological weapons.
This chart tells us a lot. This chart tells us that there are people out there in the world that are not friends of the United States. In fact, they are foes of the United States. And while we sit without a missile defensive system, they continue to build a missile offensive system.
How can we, as Members of Congress, continue to sit idle or even advocate the idea of sitting idle, not building a defensive system, when we know there are countries like these countries out there that are aggressively building an offensive system? These systems are not defensive. These countries are designing these weapons to go after somebody, to fire at somebody, to destroy somebody. And let me ask my colleagues, who do you think that target is? After September 11, I think it is easy to conclude. It is not just an asset of the United States located somewhere in the world. It could very well be within the borders of the United States of America.
That is why I am urging my colleagues to join the President, to join the administration and come together as a team to build a missile defensive system that protects the security of this Nation. We can do it. And do not let people tell you we are walking away from the treaty. The treaty allows us to do it. It is contained within the rights of the treaty. So it is absolutely necessary for this country to move forward with the development of a missile defensive system.
Let me conclude my remarks this evening by just quickly going over or repeating some of the key points. Key point number one: the airport security in this country must immediately be improved for a long-term basis. Mr. Ridge, the new head of the Homeland Security Agency understands this. I think he has a good grasp on it. But the key element here is that we can dramatically and must dramatically improve that security.
I think it is a mistake to rapidly go out and hire as Federal employees tens of thousands of people and put them on the Federal payroll. I think the Federal Government has a very important role in the tightening of airport security by issuing and overseeing the regulations, but I think it would be a big mistake creating a brand-new bureaucracy. These bureaucracies are very, very difficult to manage, very, very inflexible, and usually not very productive. We cannot afford to have an agency, an agency-bungling, so to speak, of airport security. It has to be improved and improved in a dramatic fashion. Point number one.
Then point number two. The borders. It is now, in my opinion, absolutely correct, not politically incorrect but absolutely correct, to talk about what we have to do to tighten the borders of this country and who we ought to have in this country as guests and who we should not have as guests. And when the guest stays too long, we, this country, ought to be there to say it is time to go home; it is time to go back across the border from which you came because your invitation has expired. You have been around just a little too long.
Right now, as I demonstrated with some of the numbers and statistics that I gave in earlier comments, this is not controlled at all in our country. We have tens of thousands, tens of thousands of people who are in this country on expired student visas. And do not let the university system and the college system come to the defense of these expired visas. And do not let the college or university system come and say, well, these student visas are absolutely essential for this purpose or that purpose. We need a balance.
Now, a lot of these schools and universities get money, a high tuition charge for those people; but the fact is we have to bring it back in tune. I am not saying stop student visas, but I am saying we have to control them and enforce them; otherwise they are meaningless, and they provide a threat to the security of this Nation.
Finally, the third point that I covered this evening, and I will reiterate it as long as I am a Congressman in the United States Congress, is that this Nation must proceed, as the administration has urged us to do, as President Bush has told us to do, this Congress and this Government must proceed with a missile defensive system for the borders of this country and for the borders of our allies. Failure to do so would be, in my opinion, the most horrible dereliction of duty in the history of the United States Congress. That is how strongly I feel about that.
We have an absolute obligation, a responsibility to protect the security of this Nation by providing a defensive missile system. Keep in mind how many countries throughout this world are building offensive, offensive, attack systems. We know now after September 11 that the United States will very likely be at the top of the target list for many, many years to come. So we, colleagues, have an obligation to understand that reality and to defend against that reality.
A missile defensive system should be the first and the highest priority on that list in regards to the missile offensive system of these other countries. We need to defend against it. We have fair warning and we have a little period of time to do it and we ought to do it.
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