mr. mccaul and mr. thompson, the ranking member, for their bipartisanship and bipartisanship of this committee. working along side of the other jurisdictional committees that includes my other committee, judiciary, that has as their ranking, mr. conyers and mr. goodlatte and many other committees. our commitment should be to secure the american people. so in this instance, pursuant to the fiscal year 2013 consolidated and furthering appropriations act, the department of homeland security was directed to evaluate its activities related to preventing and responding to threats posed by chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive weapons and to determine whether there were ways to improve coordination. two years later, d.h.s. submitted its report to congress and requested that certain activities be consolidated to create a center of gravity for activities.rnbe this seeks to implement many of the department's proposal. it would bring the office of health affairs, the office of bombing preventio

mr. mccarthy: chairman mccaul. mr. mccaul: thank you, leader. i want to thank you for bringing this legislation so quickly to the floor. it's a response in many ways to what happened in paris. i want to thank the judiciary for working well with us. i think it's important to state why we need this legislation. when abu bakr al baghdadi was released out of prison in iraq what he said is, i'll see you in new york. isis has an intent to hit the west. they openly declared their intent to washington and new york. we came up with a bipartisan foreign fighter task force report with 50 key findings and recommendations and legislative recommendations as well. visa waiver being one of the top recommendations that we needed to fix. what we found in the report is disturbing. 30,000 foreign fighters from 100 different countries, 5,000 of those foreign fighters have western passports. so what does that mean? that means 5,000 foreign fighters with western passports can enter the united states without a visa. and when you look at paris, several of the paris atta

we -- mrs. mccaul and i have some domestic terrorism issues of our own. i want to thank a few people here today. i don't have the list in front of me. but i know we have former attorney general ed meese here today. i want to thank you for your service and being here. [ applause ] as he was leaving the justice department, i was actually coming in as a young prosecutor and you served us well. thanks for being here. i want to recognize john catco from my committee who chaired the foreign fighter task force. did great work. nick palrino who served with distinction in vietnam and served me and my committee very well over the years. and there are others. i want to thank the national defense university for hosting us. and the national war college. i can't think of a better place to give these remarks. they're sobering and it's a state of the homeland security. i picked this day for several reasons. it's the anniversary of pearl harbor. and my father was a world war ii veteran serving in the european theater as a bomber on a b-17 as was part of the air campaign f

mr. mccarthy: chairman mccaul. mr. mccaul: thank you, leader. i want to thank you for bringing this legislation so quickly to the floor. it's a response in many ways to what happened in paris. i want to thank the judiciary for working well with us. i think it's important to state why we need this legislation. when baghdadi was released out of prison in iraq what he said is, i'll see you in new york. isis hases a intent to hit the west. they openly declared their intent to washington and new york. we came up with a bipartisan foreign fighter task force report with 50 key findings and recommendations and legislative recommendations as well. visa waiver being one of the top recommendations that we needed to fix. what we found in the report is disturbing. 30,000 foreign fighters from 100 different countries, 5,000 of those foreign fighters have western passports. so what does that mean? that means 5,000 foreign fighters with western passports can enter the united states without a visa. and when you look at paris, several of the paris attackers carri

mr. mccaul: we must go further. more than 30,000 individuals from 100 countries have gone to syria to join jihadist groups and 5,000 of them have western passports. this includes several of the paris attackers who could have traveled to the united states without a visa. that's why this legislation is so important, before us here today. it will close security gaps in the visa waiver program, to keep terrorists from entering our country undetected. it also includes several recommendations from the bipartisan task force on combating terrorists and foreign fighter travel, which i created earlier this year. this member-led panel uncovered gaping security weaknesses overseas, including the fact that some countries are not sharing intelligence on terrorists, many are not screening travelers against critical counterterrorism databases, and too few of them are cracking down on passport fraud. this bill will help close those security gaps, to keep terrorists from crossing borders. and would implement several of the task force

we -- mrs. mccaul and i have some domestic terrorism issues of our own.i want to thank a few people here today. i don't have the list in front of me. but i know we have former attorney general ed meese here today. i want to thank you for your service and being here. [ applause ] as he was leaving the justice department, i was actually coming in as a young prosecutor and you served us well. thanks for being here. i want to recognize john catco from my committee who chaired the foreign fighter task force. did great work. nick palrino who served with distinction in vietnam and served me and my committee very well over the years. and there are others. i want to thank the national defense university for hosting us. and the national war college. i can't think of a better place to give these remarks. they're sobering and it's a state of the homeland security. i picked this day for several reasons. it's the anniversary of pearl harbor. and my father was a world war ii veteran serving in the european theater as a bomber on a b-17 as was part of the air campaign fo

mr. mccaul. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. mccaul: i want to first ank lobiondo for his work on this legislation and house intelligence committee working closely with my committee to get this important legislation done and i can think of no more timely piece of legislation and i want to thank ranking member swalwell from california for his hard work on this as well. i rise in support of this bill. hundreds of our people have been radicalized, lured to the jihadist safe haven in syria and forming foreign fighters. they represent a triple threat. they strengthen groups like isis on the ground, they radicalize others back home and worst of all, they may be sent back to conduct terrorist attacks against us and the homeland. we saw this in the streets of paris, where extremists returned from syria prepared to kill. and here at home, we have arrested so-called returneys from syria, including one individual planning a terrorist attack in ohio. i launched a bipartisan congressional task force on combatting terrorists and foreign fighte

mr. mccaul, bipartisan amendment. and we add it to your excellent bill on the floor today -- tomorrow. with that i yield back. the chair: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from michigan reserves. the gentleman from new jersey is recognized. mr. pallone: thank you, mr. chairman. i yield five minutes to the gentleman from new york, mr. tonko, as one of our subcommittee chairs. the chair: the gentleman is recognized for five minutes. mr. tonko: thank you, mr. speaker. thank you to the gentleman from new jersey for yielding. mr. speaker, there is strong, certainly bipartisan, consensus that we need to update and modernize our energy infrastructure. unfortunately this bill fails to make meaningful advances in this arena. it does not advance clean energy. the energy efficiency title would actually be a setback in reducing consumption and carbon emission and climate change is not addressed at all. whenever upon, -- possible, this legislation favors supplies over consumers, consumption over efficiency, and the fossil fuels over renewable energy. most disappointin

mr. mccaul. this amendment is almost identical to h.r. 702 which passed the house floor on a strong bipartisan basis several months ago, 261 votes, i believe, was the -- those in favor of it. this is necessary because while we had hopped that h.r. 702 would be brought up in the other body as a stand-alone bill, it doesn't appear that's going to happen this session and so we want to try to put this on another vehicle that the senate may yet bring up. will also point out there are a number of larger bills in play that there's a possibility we'll try to attach it to those also. in any event, this amendment is true to the bill that was brought up on the house floor. it is identical with two exceptions. one, it does not have the maritime provision to provide some additional funding for our maritime merchant marine fleet, because that was not germane. not because we don't support it but it was not germane. and, two, we had a requirement that we do a study of the strategic petroleum reserve. that is no

mrs. linda mccaul to get have earned a -- as proud parents of five teenagers, including triplets.you again for joining us today your ladies and gentlemen, chairman michael mccaul. [applause] thank you, trembling. thank you, colonel concentrate on what he thank you for your service, to the committee and to our country, and you serve well. i want to thank you for the. thank you for mentioning my five teenagers at home. we have some domestic terrorism issues of our own. [laughter] i want to thank a few people here today. i don't have a list in front of me but i know that former attorney general ed meese here today. i want to thank you for your service and for being here. [applause] as he was leaving the justice department i was coming in as a young prosecutor come and he served us well. thanks for being a. want to recognize john from my committee who chaired the foreign fighter task force, did great work and nick who served with distinction in vietnam and served with me and my committee very well over the years. and there are others but i want to thank the national defense university

mccaul. important this morning and at all times, because happens to be chairman of the homeland security committee on the house side. mr. chairman, i guess i'm asking for what you know that you can add to however much of our conversation you have been able to overhear. are we talking about new york and l.a. having seen and taken in the same threat overnight? l.a. having acted upon it, new york not? >> yeah, we think it does come from the same source but we don't have all the facts in right now. the threat appears to be the same type of threat and of course, in new york, as you know, they have called this a hoax. i think the l.a. superintendent did the right thing, taking the extra precaution of shutting down the schools until we got better information about what this is. this happens actually more frequently than we would like to. oftentimes a bomb hoax. we also know the terrorists would like to basically disrupt things by hoaxes. we saw before the fourth of july last year airplanes that were grounded over hoaxes. so this is currently what the fbi and homeland are looking into is where did the threat come from. there h

mr. swalwell of california for co-sponsoring this legislation. i want to thank chairman nunes and ranking member schiff, my colleagues on homeland security, chairman mccaul and ranking member thompson. and before closing i want to thank the men and women of this country who serve our intelligence communities and our armed forces. so many of them in the course of my oversight work and to see their efforts in help keeping our nation safe. i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from new jersey reserves. the gentleman from california is recognized. mr. swalwell: i yield myself such time as i may consume. let me express my thanks to mr. lobiondo. i serve as a subcommittee's ranking member and i appreciate the bipartisan way that the chairman of the whole committee and our ranking member, mr. schiff, as well as the way mr. lobiondo and i have approached this critical issue of foreign fighter flow. isis is one of the greatest threats that is facing the united states. defeating isis means that the united states and its allies must be more coordinated in our efforts to scrub isis from this earth and protect americans at home than isis in attacking us.