Garrett's Floor Speech Against COPS

As promised, here's Garrett's floor speech from yesterday. My observations are below.

I am deeply disappointed that the Democratic leadership has chosen to bring up H.R. 1700, the COPS Improvement Act of 2007, under suspension. While the Committee on Judiciary reported the bill out without objection, I am concerned that the hundreds of Members not on the committee will not have any opportunity to offer any improvements to the bill.

Had I been allowed the opportunity, I would have introduced an amendment to more fairly allot grants by State. According to last year's funding statistics, small States received a disproportionate amount of funds. In fact, in some cases small States have received more funds than States more than five times their population. For instance, Alabama gets more assistance than California.

My home State, New Jersey, a densely populated State nestled between the major metropolitan centers of New York City and Philadelphia and also home to a heavily trafficked drug corridor and its own inner-cities, receives less than 2 percent of all grants.

As if this imbalance weren't bad enough, the Office Management and Budget's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) graded COPS as ``not performing: results not demonstrated.'' The bill authorizes $1.15 billion for this program next fiscal year and another $4.6 billion over the next 4 years. With so much taxpayer money at stake, and so few positive results demonstrated, why is the House missing this opportunity to fully consider how we might improve a program that is failing despite its good intentions?

The people of New Jersey watch a disproportionate share of their Federal taxes go to Washington to carry out this unproven program in other States. And for these reasons, I regret that I simply could not support this bill on the floor today.

This may be the best speech Garrett has ever given articulating his reasons for voting against a Bill. I have three thoughts on it:

1. With Garrett's recent history of misrepresenting the truth and making up sources on the House Floor, I'll have to fact check it, which I won't be able to do for a day or two. I'm not saying he's not telling it like it is, I'm just saying we can't take his arguments at face value.

2. If reforming the system was needed, and considering what Congress did to meth prevention funding it probably needs reform, why didn't Garrett push for these changes before he fell from 144 to 411 in influence over the last two years? When 92% of Congress liked this Bill, what hope does he now have of being heard? What other initiatives wasn't he pro-actively trying to fix on which he now must take a hopelessly defensive stance?

3. If this Bill really is such a raw deal for NJ, then why did the rest of the Delegation vote for it?

Garrett Votes Against Police...Again

In yet another classic example of saying something during the campaign and voting differently once down in Washington, Representative Scott Garrett joined 33 other Representatives in opposing the "COPS Improvements Act of 2007." The Bill restores many of the funds stripped from community policing programs over the last few years, and establishes new grants for anti-terrorism training for officers, training grants for veterans to join law enforcement, and technology upgrades.

Here's part of how the National Sheriff's Association described the Bill:

As sheriffs are often the first-responders in times of emergency, police hiring grants will begin to allow sheriffs to appropriately man, train and prepare for effective responses to both local and terrorist disasters. Furthermore, as first-responders, it is important that sheriffs have the ability to coordinate, collaborate, and communicate with other law enforcement agencies and public safety agencies. Thus, the technology grants that the bill supports will allow sheriffs to increase their interoperability with other agencies, and also provide sheriffs with the opportunity to obtain necessary state-of-the-art equipment for crime tracking and reporting.

Makes sense to me, and 92% of the Representatives voting on the Bill, but not our Garrett. Once again, as with his vote against the 9/11 Commission recommendations, Garrett has failed to live up to his campaign rhetoric.

Here's what Garrett claimed to believe on his campaign website:

Providing for our security also means ensuring that our local law enforcement personnel have the tools and resources they need to do their jobs.

And then there is this from his official website:

Scott Garrett has set up a First Responders Advisory Council of firefighters, police, and paramedics from across the Fifth District to discuss issues of importance to these brave community leaders.

Obviously, Garrett has now voted against two major bills favored by law enforcement. So it would seem he doesn't believe the first statement, and more than likely doesn't listen to the group touted in the second.

Votes speak louder than words, and I hope our the Fifth District's finest are listening. How Garrett can look his Advisory Council in the eye and say to them he's doing what he can to get them the resources they need bewilders me. If Garrett said anything in his defense, I'll post it as soon as I see it in the Congressional Record.

NJ's Rights Attacked (Again)

One of the fundamental beliefs I've held for the entire time I've been politically conscious is that while the Federal government sets minimum standards, it is a State's right to determine if those standards adequately protect it's population. Granted, there will always be issues where the interest of the nation leads to standards above what some States would like, the number of those issues is where the classic divide between Republicans and Democrats stands. However, up until the Bush Administration, it was almost unheard of that the Federal government would attempt to trump a State's right to enforce a more stringent safety standard than the Federal one. Now, for at least the third time in less than a year the Administration is attacking New Jersey's right to protect us.

First, it was an Administration supported bill aimed at eliminating New Jersey's right to label the food we buy at the supermarket as we saw fit (Rep. Garrett voted against this bill and it died in the Senate). Then, it was the EPA announcing an increase in the amount of pollutants like mercury and lead a company could dispose of in the environment before they reported how they did it. Now, it is the Department of Homeland Security continuing it's march toward an April 4th change in regulations that would weaken New Jersey's regulations on the chemical plants we have in our state that contribute to New Jersey being home to the "Two most dangerous miles in America."

At a hearing held by Senator Frank Lautenberg in Newark yesterday, a Deputy for DHS Lawrence Stanton had this to say:

"The federal government has a role to play as well as the states, and we believe as a matter of principle that these things can be worked out," Stanton said.

The Homeland Security Department plans to preempt a local or state rule only when the rule would "frustrate" Washington's ability to secure plants, he promised.

That's all well and good, and would make sense if it wasn't an established fact that our security regulations are the most stringent in the nation, so preempting only stands to make us less safe. With NJ's population density and seven plants within range of a million people, our tougher standards are intended to prevent another Bhopal disaster. In a worst case scenario at one of those seven plants, the loss of life from Bhopal(15,000) compared to what New Jersey would suffer is akin to comparing the loss of life from Hurricane Katrina (1,836) to the 2004 Tsunami (229,866). It would be Bhopal on steroids.

This dangerous change in DHS policy came before the Senate last year at the behest of the Administration, and they rejected the idea of endangering us by weakening our regulations. Still, the Administration announced the DHS regulations on their own, the Friday afternoon before Christmas (so no one would notice). And what noble cause, national security and public safety requirement dictates our State getting watered down Federal regulations: Corporate interests.

During the hearing yesterday, Stanton acknowledged that his understanding was that the chemical lobby would prefer to have the weaker Federal regulations trump our State's right to protect us. While corporate interests were not so explicitly rolled out with the DHS proposal initially, when the EPA rolled out the weaker reporting requirements they didn't mince words, citing the billions their proposal would save business. Seeing a jarring public health and safety conflict with relaxing the EPA standards, Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) requested the Government Accountability Office to look into how this rules change transpired. Here is a bit of what they reported to the Senate a couple weeks ago:

Although we have not yet completed our evaluation, our preliminary observations indicate that EPA did not adhere to its own rulemaking guidelines in all respects when developing the proposal to change TRI reporting requirements. We have identified several significant differences between the guidelines and the process EPA followed. First, late in the process, senior EPA management directed the inclusion of a burden reduction option that raised the Form R reporting threshold, an option that the TRI workgroup charged with analyzing potential options, had dropped from consideration early in the process. Second, EPA developed this option on an expedited schedule that appears to have provided a limited amount of time for conducting various impact analyses. Third, the decision to expedite final agency review, when EPA’s internal and regional offices determine whether they concur with the final proposal, appears to have limited the amount of input they could provide to senior EPA management.

They rushed the process not to protect the public interest or safety, but because they had already received over 118,000 letters in opposition (out of about 120,000) to the plan. There is no way this ever would have gotten through the House, let alone the Senate. The same mode of operation is being used with regard to the DHS attack on our chemical safety laws. They couldn't get it through the Senate, and now the Administration has decided to go through the bureaucracy.

I have no issue with the majority of chemical companies already doing business in our state. While some companies do resist increasing regulations further, the majority have been good partners in disaster planning with First Responders I've spoken with. I also fully understand and appreciate the contributions the chemical industry provides for our State and nation. That said, I also appreciate the fact that they are generating the billions they do with our tougher regulations in place. If other companies wish to tap into our talented and experienced pool of employees, they too can make a profit in NJ without subverting public safety via an overstep of Federal authority.

A large chemical disaster will have one certain outcome, citizen sickness and death. The question is, how many will die and how many will have died unnecessarily if the Administration succeeds? If they haven't already grown the moral fortitude to fight this plan, I hope our entire Congressional delegation will soon be loudly criticizing it, if not they should be held accountable next year.

Garrett votes against 9/11 Commission

Unbelievable.

Representative Scott Garrett voted against the implementation of the commonsense recommendations offered by the 9/11 Commission. This from the man who said the following on his campaign site:

My top priority since being sworn in as your Representative in Congress has been the safety and security of our nation. To this end, I have been a leading advocate for strengthening and improving our security, particularly here in New Jersey.

Yes, that's right, his "top priority." I would love to know how many people voted for him instead of Paul or me because they believed he'd do a better job on Homeland Security. This was his first test, and his credibility just went down the toilet. Votes speak louder than words, they always have. His next opponent won't even have to spin this or attempt to confuse the issue as is so often the case in the modern campaign.

The average voter:
"Mr. Garrett, did you really vote against the implementation of the 9/11 Commission recommendations?"

Rep. Garrett:
"Yes, but..."

The average voter in our district either knows someone, or someone who knows someone, who was directly impacted on 9/11. The average voter will stop listening at yes.

George Washington Bridge saved

Whether it was the overall public outrage, or the New Jersey legislature feeling the payment was too low and calling for investigations, it appears at least for the time being the Geico deal is dead. There will be no eyeball licking lizard over the tolls, in the tolls, or popping up in your mailbox because you use the tolls. Basically, all of North Jersey revolted, and the economics didn't make sense.

On the face of the deal, number of people who use the bridge vs. cost, Geico was going to pay the same 3 cents per impression (person who would see the ads) as those advertising in the Super Bowl for a 30 second ad. However, there would be a barrage of placements defacing the actual entrance to the bridge, as well as their ability to mail directly to EZ-Pass users who cross the bridge.

If the Port Authority is so hungry for cash to pay for added security that they'd sell off a landmark for a pittance, maybe our Congressional delegation can get to work ensuring the Homeland Security dollars are assigned based on risk rather than that formula currently being used for grants. This is a very tangible example of what can happen when the bureaucrats decide who gets security funds instead of reality.