Senate OKs Leahys Amendment
To Delay Border-Crossing Requirements,
As Leahy Also Beats Back Bid
To Curb 1st Responder Grants To Smaller States
WASHINGTON (Thursday, July 13) Vermont Thursday scored two
significant policy wins engineered by Sen. Patrick Leahy as the U.S. Senate passed
the annual homeland security budget bill.
In the home stretch to the bills Senate passage Thursday evening,
Leahy successfully led the effort to beat back an attempt to weaken the funding
formula he authored for first-responder grants his all-state minimum
formula that has brought more than $65 million to Vermont in the last four
years. The Leahy grant formula, which he included in the USA PATRIOT Act of
2001, assures that Vermont and other states receive basic grants for their first
responder agencies the police, fire and rescue departments that are
responsible for homeland security and emergency preparedness. The bid to
weaken the Leahy formula lost in a vote of 34 to 66.
The bill also includes Leahys legislation to postpone and
improve implementation of the controversial Pass Card system for border
crossings, which will require new identity cards and methods for crossing U.S. borders, including the Northern Border with Canada. Leahy and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) earlier had added to
the bill their amendment to delay implementation of the Pass Card system
part of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) -- for 17 months, until
June 1, 2009, and to require the Secretary of Homeland Security and the
Secretary of State to certify to Congress that several standards are met before
the program moves forward.
Leahy is a senior member of the Appropriations Committee and of its
Homeland Security Subcommittee, which handled the Senates work in
drafting the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland
Security. The bill now goes to conference with the House version of the
bill, which does not include Leahys WHTI amendment but which does also
maintain the Leahy formula for first-responder grants.
Leahy says the lack of sufficient
coordination on the Pass Card (or Passport Card) system between
DHS and State, and between the Bush Administration and the Government of
Canada, spells trouble for the system. This has been shaping up as
a bureaucratic nightmare that could clog our borders while making us even less
secure, said Leahy. We need to prod these agencies to come
to grips with these problems and fix them beforehand, not afterward.
The certification requirements in Leahys
WHTI amendment require the two departments to:
1.
Ensure that the
technology for any Passport Card meets certain security standards and
that DHS and State agree on that technology.
2.
Share the technology
with the governments of Canada and Mexico.
3.
Justify the fee set
for the Passport Card.
4.
Develop an
alternative procedure for groups of children traveling across the border under
adult supervision with parental consent.
Install all
necessary technological infrastructure at the ports of entry to process
the cards and train U.S. agents at the border crossings in all aspects of
the new technology.
6.
Make the Passport
Card available for international land and sea travel between the United States and Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean and Bermuda.
7.
Establish a unified implementation
date for all sea and land borders.
# # # # #