Lawmakers fish for more port security funds

There is little disagreement that more needs to be done about securing the nation's seaports against possible terrorist attacks, but the money to do it has been slow in reaching the harbor.

"Everybody talks about port security, but they don't do anything about it," Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., said earlier this month. Hollings' spokesman added that the senator is "afraid that it will only be taken seriously when it's too late."

Hollings, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, along with Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., the top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, have relentlessly trawled for more funds to shore up port security. They and other lawmakers-mainly Democrats-have been critical of what they see as the Bush administration's shortchanging of security for the nation's seaports.

Oberstar blasted the administration's war supplemental budget for failing to provide enough money for port and maritime security.

"All Americans, whether you live in a port city or whether you live in Boise, Idaho, will benefit from that security," Oberstar said on the floor last month. "The impact on our economy and on all Americans if our nation's ports are closed down for a few weeks because of a terrorist attack is simply too great. Factories will close down. Refineries will run out of oil. Stores will run out of goods."

But attempts to address the issue in the supplemental budget debate got lost in the fog. Hollings failed in his attempts to add $1 billion for new security requirements under the Maritime Transportation Security Act, passed last year. And House Republicans defeated an amendment by Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, that included $1.5 billion for port security grants.

Under the Maritime Transportation Security Act, the federal government must conduct vulnerability assessments of every port and by July 2004 approve a security plan for each port, facility and vessel. But the fiscal 2004 budget request contains no money for the added duties because it was drawn up before the new law was passed.

The Coast Guard estimates it will cost some $1.4 billion to comply with the law in the first year and $6.5 billion over the next 10 years, according to Coast Guard spokeswoman Jolie Schifflet.

Coast Guard Commandant Thomas Collins told a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee earlier this month that his agency hopes to complete vulnerability assessments on the 55 largest ports by the end of 2004. This more optimistic outlook-last month the projected completion date was 2009-came as a result of coordinating Homeland Security Department and Coast Guard funds, Collins said.

So far, the Coast Guard has completed 13 of the assessments and expects to do another four this year, Collins said. The Coast Guard says those completed are mainly medium-sized ports and include Honolulu; Guam; Savannah, Ga.; Baltimore; Charleston, S.C.; Boston; Portland, Maine; San Diego; Corpus Christi, Texas; Beaumont/Port Arthur, Texas; Lake Charles, La.; Portland, Ore.; and Detroit.

Earlier this month President Bush-donning a life preserver on a visit to the port of Philadelphia-touted that the fiscal 2003 budget included a $1 billion increase for the Coast Guard, bringing it to its highest levels ever. He also noted that his fiscal 2004 budget requests an additional $500 million.

Still, the money to address all the new homeland security tasks required by the Maritime Transportation Security Act is not there, and "for the foreseeable future the Coast Guard will need to absorb the costs related to these tasks within its operating budget," JayEtta Z. Hecker of the Government Accounting Office told the House Transportation and Infrastructure's Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee earlier this month.

In addition to efforts by Hollings, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrats to get additional money in spending bills, other lawmakers have introduced legislation aimed at beefing up port security.

A bill (S. 746) introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., would require high-risk shipping containers to be inspected in foreign ports before they reach the United States and establish a profiling plan so U.S. authorities can focus inspections on high-risk cargo. It would also require minimum federal security standards at ports, use of high-security seals on all incoming containers and universal transaction numbers that can trace the container's movement from origin to destination.

"U.S. seaports are a gaping hole in our nation's system of defense against terrorism," Feinstein said last month when introducing the bill. "We have beefed up security at airports, but we have not done nearly enough to increase the security to our seaports. This legislation would change that."

Each year, some 13 million shipping containers come into U.S. ports-including six million from overseas, Feinstein said, adding that California ports handle 50 percent of these containers. U.S. ports handle more than 800 million tons of cargo valued at about $600 million. Excluding trade with Canada and Mexico, America's ports handle 95 percent of U.S. trade.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is sponsoring a bill (S. 193) calling for a demonstration project to evaluate radiation detection systems at the nation's seaports. And port security is a component of larger border and transportation security bills offered by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. (S. 539) and Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz. (H.R. 1096) as well as Minority Leader Tom Daschle's first responders bill (S. 466).

The question remains, however, whether efforts to shore up security at the nation's ports will get the money needed to do the job.