surveillance, communications systems, our improved responses for all sorts of human health emergencies, whether they are naturally occurring or intentionally caused by some threat. We want to hopefully make sure that those programs don't get crippled by a new complex bureaucratic model. The administration recognized as much by leaving these programs at HHS, but the model that is put up, one that would put the programs in HHS. But subject it to the authority of Homeland Security, raises some real problems. For example, language that suggests the new Secretary could direct or manage public health emergency activities raises some very difficult questions. For example, who would declare the public health emergency? Who would issue quarantines? That is normally done through the authority of these agencies. Administratively, we believe it would be unnecessarily cumbersome and bureaucratic for the funds to first go to the Homeland Security Department and then be appropriated through these agencies for these ordinary, ongoing public health purposes. Last, with respect to HHS, the committee recommends retaining at HHS the Assistant Secretary of Public Health Emergency Preparedness. This is the office we created in the bioterrorism bill. Now, we support the transfer of several of its responsibilities, the operation of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, The National Disaster Medical System, and the Metropolitan Medical Response System, but we want to note something for you. If FEMA goes to the new department, then it makes sense to move these three functions over. But if you make a decision not to move FEMA, then we would question the appropriateness of even moving these three functions because they are more closely associated with the work of FEMA. Second, with respect to critical, physical, and cyber infrastructures, such as those that run telecommunications and electric power systems, we think the President's efforts on consolidation and increased coordination are right on the mark; but we have some concerns. The original language could have been construed to give the new Secretary regulatory authority over the security of critical infrastructures that are currently regulated by the Federal Government, or that are now regulated by other Federal agencies. We make it clear in our print to you that the creation of this new department does not include new regulatory powers for the Secretary to directly compel security improvements through regulations or mandates. Rather, you would work with the State, Federal and other agencies who have jurisdiction to enhance security and to work directly with the private sector in the collaborative fashion designed in the President's report. We also recommend the emphasis on cyber security within the new department be greatly enhanced. What we have done over the last 4 years, Mr. Chairman, is an extensive review of the vulnerability of America's agency cyber security weaknesses. I have to tell you, every system we looked at we used the GAO red teams to come in and challenge those systems and every single one demonstrated pervasive weaknesses. So we recommend to you the creation of the Federal computer security red teams in the new department to, in fact, test these sys tems out and provide information and recommendations to strengthen them. We think this needs to be a high priority of the new department. Third, in the area of research and development, we believe that the committee concurs in the need expressed by many of those in Congress to have this new department play a critical role in coordinating, accelerating and improving the focus on research and development in the new technologies that are going to be used to fight terrorism. For example, the things that are going to be included in our reports to detect the possibility of radiological material coming in. To address these needs, we recommend the new department serve as a focal point for technological research and development activities, and that it establish a Federal technology clearinghouse. Not to design the technology, but simply to go through the recommended technology improvements and recommend which ones work and which ones don't work for all the agents of government who may in fact use this technology to better protect our ports in our country. We think the current bill makes it unclear as to whether the new department could directly contract with the national laboratories. We make it clear they can't. They can directly task the national laboratories to do work for them in this regard. Fourth, with respect to the control of dangerous pathogens and select agents, in the bioterrorism bill, we set up the within CDC a department that has the capacity to track not only who has these agents, but when they transferred it, for what reason they transferred, and the license of the section and transfer of these agents. It is a critical component of that bioterrorism bill. We also set up something similar within the Department of Agriculture for pathogens and agents that might affect animal health; that has some relation to the section in CDC. If the CDC section is going to be transferred to this new agency, we would obviously be concerned that the section in Agriculture. would similarly go with it. If the second doesn't, then we question whether the first should go. Otherwise, it is going to create some real problems in coordinating between pathogens that affect animals and may similarly affect human health in terms of bioterrorism threats. In closing, I want to again thank you for allowing us to come and make these recommendations and to thank my colleague, John Dingell, who has been an extraordinary partner in our committee's work in making these recommendations to you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The statement of Mr. Tauzin follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, CHAIRMAN, Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to join you and the ranking Member, Congresswoman Pelosi, to provide testimony regarding President Bush's historic proposal to create a new Department of Homeland Security. I believe the President's proposal reflects a sound framework for Congressional consideration, and I fully support creating a Cabinet-level department with an empowered Secretary to get this critical job done. I am here today to testify on behalf of the Members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce who convened last week and voted, without opposition, to support a Committee Print that preserves the President's key priorities in the areas within our Committee's jurisdiction. We did so while clarifying the new Department's powers and authorities, enhancing the functions and focus of the new Department, and improving the workability of the interface between the new Department and the Departments of Health and Human Services and Energy. Over the past three weeks, the Committee has given serious deliberation to the President's proposal. We held two days of hearings at which over forty witnesses from Federal, State, and local governments, the private sector, academia, and the scientific and research communities shared their views on the President's proposal. In addition, over the last year, the Members of the Committee helped to shepherd through Congress a sweeping $4.6 billion bioterrorism preparedness bill that the President recently signed into law. In both of these efforts, we were able to work in a bipartisan fashion to address homeland security, and I want to thank and praise the Committee's Ranking Member, John Dingell, for working with us to get this done. The Committee's recommendations to the Select Committee fall into four specific areas, which I will address in turn. First, with respect to the biomedical research and emergency preparedness activities of the Department of Health and Human Services, the President's proposal rightly recognizes what our Committee's oversight has revealed that the Federal government's bioterrorism-related programs have been cumbersome to navigate and have been poorly coordinated in the past, leaving critical gaps unattended while being duplicative in other aspects. We agree with the President that the new Department should play an important role in changing that. In particular, given that the new Department will have important intelligence, threat, and vulnerability-related information necessary for the identification of program priorities, the new Department should develop our national strategic plan for bioterrorism activities and identify our most urgent national priorities, including priorities for programs at HHS. Our Committee Print not only recognizes this role of the new Department, but enhances it beyond what the President initially proposed. The Committee Print also makes clear that HHS will maintain primary responsibility over human-health related research, most of which is currently being conducted by CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and that this new Department will not engage in such R&D efforts. We understand that the Administration supports this clarification, and does not wish to duplicate the research capabilities of NIH and CDC at the new Department. We also understand, based on Governor Ridge's testimony before our Committee, that it was not the Administration's intent to give the new Secretary the unilateral authority to direct these HHS programs or their priorities, but rather simply to ensure collaboration between the two agencies. We concur with the need for such collaboration and our Committee Print adds an explicit requirement that the Secretary of HHS must collaborate with the Secretary of Homeland Security on setting the HHS research priorities related to countermeasures for terrorist attacks. However, we do not believe that the new Department should have primary authority-including budgetary authority-over bioterrorism programs that remain at HHS. Substantively, we do not believe that the new Secretary should have primary control over the $1.9 billion in NIH research grants relating to pathogens and countermeasures, or the $1.5 billion in public health emergency grants to state and local public health departments included in our recently enacted bioterrorism legislation. As GAO experts emphasized in testimony before the Committee, much of the terrorism-related research currently being performed through NIH and CDC is dualpurpose in nature-serving the priorities and needs of both counter terrorism and traditional public health. Similarly, the grants to state and local public health departments and hospitals are not just to prepare for the possibility of bioterrorism, but for building up basic infrastructures such as surveillance and communication systems to improve response to all sorts of public health emergencies, whether intentionally caused or naturally occurring. Unlike more conventional acts of terrorism or those involving radiological or chemical elements, a bioterrorist attack will look, at the beginning, just like a naturally occurring disease outbreak. The people, resources, and skills necessary to respond to bioterrorism will not likely be different than those necessary to respond to naturally occurring outbreaks of diseases. We cannot and should not separate either of these dual-purpose activities, or have them be under the under the control of two different departments. The Administration recognized as much by leaving these programs within HHS. But its model-one in which the programs remain in HHS but are subject to the authority of the Homeland Security Department-potentially creates more problems than it would solve. The Committee does not believe it is feasible to separate authority from responsibility, or to separate the officials charged with administering those responsibilities from the personnel required to do so. Moreover, any language suggesting that the new Secretary could direct or manage the public health emergency activities of HHS raises many difficult questions, such as who can declare public health emergencies or issue quarantines under the Public Health Service Act. The Committee believes that these activities are properly authorized and administered under the Public Health Service Act. Neither a wholesale transfer of these responsibilities, nor some unusual splitting of responsibilities, is warranted. Administratively, we believe it would be unnecessarily cumbersome and bureaucratic for the funds for such activities to be appropriated in the first instance to the new Department, only to be "contracted" back to HHS for further distribution to NIH, CDC, and the hundreds of grant recipients conducting such research and preparedness activities. The Committee supports the need to improve the coordination of funding on such activities across the Federal government, but we believe that such coordination can occur without the control of HHS funds. Under the Administration proposal, the new Secretary would not receive control over the substantial research funds of other agencies that conduct research activities similar to those of HHS, including the Departments of Defense, Veterans' Affairs, and Agriculture, the Central Intelligence Agency, and others. Given that fact, the Committee does not believe that budgetary control is necessary with respect to HHS research dollars to ensure such coordination. The type of budgetary maneuvering described in the Administration's proposal could also result in delays, hampering our efforts to get the money out the door and into productive use as quickly as possible. These grant programs are already in place at HHS and appear to working quite well. We do not believe it makes sense to potentially disrupt these programs now by routing them through the new Department, only to have the new Department contract back with HHS to manage them. Last with respect to HHS, the Committee Print recommends retaining at HHS the Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness created by the recent bioterrorism response act, in order to coordinate remaining HHS emergency preparedness functions and to serve as a liaison to the Homeland Security Department. But we support the transfer of several of his responsibilities, including the operation of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, the National Disaster Medical System, and the Metropolitan Medical Response System. These are operations that currently work closely with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). We note that if the Select Committee chooses not to transfer FEMA or its response functions to the new Department, it would no longer make any sense to transfer these emergency response activities of HHS to Homeland Security either. If FEMA is not transferred, I believe that most of Title V of the Administration's proposal would no longer be appropriate, including the transfer of the National Strategic Stockpile of vaccines and drugs run by HHS. Second, with respect to the protection of our Nation's critical physical and cyber infrastructures-such as those that run our telecommunications and electric power systems the President's efforts at consolidation and increased coordination are right on the mark. The key to success in this area is to recognize that many of the most important critical infrastructures are privately owned and operated, and may not be subject to Federal security mandates or requirements. Thus, the only way to succeed in ensuring their protection is through a strong and effective public-private partnership for national security. The original language of H.R. 5005 could have been construed to give this new Secretary regulatory authority over the security of critical infrastructures that are not currently regulated by the Federal government, or that are regulated now by other Federal agencies. Based on testimony before our Committee by Governor Ridge, it is clear that such an interpretation was not intended by the Administration. Thus, the Committee Print makes an important clarification to ensure that the new Secretary's authority to assess vulnerabilities and support protective measures with respect to private sector critical infrastructures does not include new regulatory powers for the Secretary to directly compel security improvements through regulations or mandates. Rather, the Secretary will work with the other Federal, State or local agencies that have jurisdiction over such sectors to enhance security, and would work directly with the private sector in a collaborative fashion. The Committee Print also recommends that the emphasis on cyber security within the new Department be greatly enhanced. Over the past four years, our Committee has conducted extensive oversight of the cyber security practices of many of the agencies within our jurisdiction, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Commerce, and Energy, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency. With the help of expert computer teams, sometimes known as “red teams,” from the General Accounting Office, we found that, without exception, the computer systems of these agencies were riddled with pervasive weaknesses. Our homeland security depends on building improved defenses to cyber attacks, which are occurring every day. As a result, our Committee Print proposes the establishment of a Federal cyber security program that will provide computer security expertise to other Federal civilian agencies to help improve protection of their critical information systems. This program will include a Federal computer security "red team" to test, and provide recommendations on, the security of key Federal information systems. It also will promote R&D on security enhancements for critical information systems, particularly the command and control systems that our Nation's critical infrastructures depend upon-called SCADAS ('ska-duhs'). The vulnerability of SCADA systems-such as those that control our electricity networks or the operation of our large dams and drinking water systems-needs to be a high priority for the new Department. Third, in the area of research and development, it is important for us to remember that new and improved technologies and American ingenuity and innovation are among the greatest advantages we have in fighting terrorism. Thus, the Committee concurs with the need expressed by many others within and outside of Congress for this new Department to play a critical role in coordinating, accelerating, and improving the focus of research, development, and implementation of new technologies in our fight against terrorism. Our country's top scientists are working through existing programs at our national laboratories to develop new methods for detecting and preventing terrorists attacks—such as improved sensors to detect radiological devices, and new scanners to screen luggage and cargo. But our oversight of these programs has shown that they are not well-coordinated. As a result, our Nation's current ability to detect radiological or nuclear materials that may be entering our ports or other border entry locations is woefully inadequate, and I strongly believe that the Federal government must improve both our research in these areas, as well as the speed of deployment of viable technologies to prevent illegal radiological devices from entering our country. We have heard from those on the front lines that they need guidance from the Federal government as to what types of technologies are available, what they should be looking for in such technologies, and how best to implement them. Yet today there is no single Federal agency they can turn to for help. To address these needs, the Committee Print recommends that the new Department serve as the focal point for such technology research and development activities within the Federal government, and that it establish a Federal technology clearinghouse to assist other Federal agencies, State and local governments, and the private sector in evaluating, implementing, and disseminating information about key homeland security technologies, such as radiation and bio-weapon detectors. We do not intend to create mandatory Federal standards for such technologies, or a Federally-approved list of technologies. Rather, the goal is to provide assistance and guidance to those on the front lines as they seek to evaluate and implement the use of such technologies, so as to accelerate deployment of useful technologies and better protect the American people from weapons of mass destruction. In addition, H.R. 5005 is unclear as to whether the new Department could directly contract with our national laboratories with respect to the transferred DOE functions and programs, or whether it would have to negotiate with DOE over such work through the traditional "work for others" program. The Committee Print ensures that direct tasking of the laboratories by the new Department would be permitted, and would indeed be the anticipated method. Such an approach will ensure that the new Department can carry out these important R&D responsibilities in the most direct and effective manner, and avoid the bureaucracy and extra costs involved in the current DOE "work for others" program. Fourth, with respect to the control of dangerous biological agents and toxins known as "select agents," the Committee Members recently helped to enact a sweeping new registration, tracking, and security structure-both for those select agents regulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because of their potential human health threat, and for those agents regulated by the Department of Agriculture because of their potential threat to livestock and crops. While the Administration's proposal clearly transfers the CDC select agent program to the new Department, it is less clear with respect to the companion USDA program. The Committee recognizes that there are certain disadvantages to transferring the CDC select agent program. But if both the CDC and USDA programs are transferred to a single department, it will enhance the joint registration and regulatory system that is a key component of our recently-passed bioterrorism act. These are companion programs designed to serve as one national registration and regulatory system for tracking the possession and use of the most dangerous biological agents. If the agricultural select agent program remains at USDA, then the Committee views the transfer of the CDC program as only exacerbating existing coordination |