Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Democrats in the House, the Senate and our Governors unveiled the Democratic plan for real security. This plan reveals the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans and the Bush administration in protecting our country.
Among the differences, the greatest danger we face is that al Qaeda gets nuclear weapons. The problem with getting nuclear weapons is how to find fissionable material. There is enough fissionable material lying around not properly guarded in the former Soviet Union for thousands of bombs. The Bush administration wants to get it out of there--in 30 years. Democrats say, Get it now, all of it, by 2010 before it is smuggled to al Qaeda to make nuclear weapons to use against American citizens.
We are rightly concerned about the Dubai Ports deal, who controls our ports, but more important is what comes into our ports. Eleven million shipping containers a year, 40-foot boxes, come into American ports. The Republicans, the Bush administration, inspects 5 percent of them. Democrats say, no shipping container, not one, should be put on a ship bound to an American port till it is electronically scanned and inspected by the United States in the foreign port so that no atomic bomb gets put in there and we know about it before it gets on the ship, not after.
If we want to make our country safe, we better elect some Democrats.