Leahy Presses Ashcroft And Ridge In Homeland Security Hearing
For More Help For First Responders

Senator Patrick Leahy today called on the Bush Administration to end its “undercurrent of resistance” to efforts by Leahy and others in Congress to secure adequate funds for the nation’s first-responders in the war on terrorism.

In a Senate Judiciary Committee heating today with Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Department Secretary Tom Ridge, and FBI Director Robert Mueller, Leahy also asked the three to support a new $5 billion first responder grant program plan that he has introduced in the Senate with Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.  [click here for full text of opening remarks]

Leahy said efforts to secure help for first responders – for the new unfunded mandate they have had since September 11 – have been met “first, with a stone wall of silence” and then, more recently, “by a constant undercurrent of resistance.  We read almost daily about the Administration’s apparent eagerness to provide untold billions of additional dollars for foreign governments in the war on terrorism abroad.  But our first responders here at home are told to make do with a small fraction of those sums.”  Leahy noted that “our demands on first responders have been heavy, and unrelenting.  They are overworked and exhausted.  They are doing their duty, and we need to do ours, by helping them as they help us.”

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Click here for full text of Senator Leahy's opening statement