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Congressman Scott issued the following remarks from the House Floor during debate on America's Homeland Security:

As always, it is indeed a pleasure to join you on the floor of our very distinguished Congress of the United States to address what is without a doubt the most pressing issue facing the American people, and that is security of our Nation, national security, homeland security.

I think it is very important for us to make the first step, to show that we as Democrats are indeed not only strong on security, but we are the stronger party on security.

Our legacy, our history is rich. We have built this military all the way through Democratic Presidents, from World War II with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, through the Korean War with Harry Truman, through all of the crises that we have had with Lyndon Johnson, with John Fitzgerald Kennedy; and with Bill Clinton leaving this Nation with a tremendous surplus and built a military that was capable of moving and being able to handle any threat in the world.

But then 9/11 came and then President Bush's response. And I am here to say tonight that the American people deserve much better than what we have gotten in that response from President Bush and this Republican-led Congress. Let us review for a moment 5 years.

Five years ago, 9/11 took place. And what has happened since that time? Can we say we are safer? Are our ports safer today? Obviously they are not, for not only do you and I and the rest of America know that only 5 percent of our cargo is being checked, the whole world does. The President's response to checking our ports was to turn the security over to a company that was owned by a country, the United Arab Emirates. That was one of only three countries in the world that recognize the Taliban as the ruling authority in Afghanistan.

At a time when our young men and women were dying and are dying and putting their lives on the line fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, our President, this administration, so cavalierly says let these people guard our ports, a nation that we had from our intelligence that proved to be the central banking process that handled the financing of al Qaeda and other terrorists coming through that country; yet this was the country that owned the company Dubai Ports to handle security at our ports, a country that we know from our intelligence that was the cross-trading ground for shipping nuclear material, building fusion material into Iran, who has subsequently said they want to knock Israel off the face of the Earth and then turn and do the same to the great Satan, the United States of America. That has been that response on the port security.

And as Democrats have tried to do time and time again since then, to rein that in, joined by Republicans, we were successful in defeating that move, that very foolish and unwise move made by the President and this administration. And then, as we turn then to one of the worst disasters, perhaps the worst natural disaster in the history of this country, the very first opportunity for this Nation to be responsive to the major threat to homeland security, when Hurricane Katrina rolled in, another disturbing, disappointing, mismanagement, incompetence, and failure of the worst kind that resulted in the loss of over 2,000 American lives, billions and billions of dollars of loss and damage, farms and crops out of place, energy costs zooming, all because of slow mismanagement that we have not been able to recapture our place to this day.

FEMA, the lead organization in homeland security, a total F in response. And right to this day, exactly 14 days before the next hurricane season begins, we do not even have not just an executive director of FEMA, we don't even have a regional director of FEMA in the Atlanta region, my home base, in the region which will be most devastated by a natural disaster and the hurricanes.

And in that region, while I am at it, the response has been, even to reorganizing our military, even to realignment of our military bases, to take the primary base that trains, that deploys all of the National Guard and first responders in the event of a terrorist attack or a hurricane threat, a hurricane hitting this country at Fort Gillam. Instead of responding and building that base up, this administration comes in and recommends that that base be closed. And yet when Katrina hit, where did they have to turn? The only bright spot we had in the whole response to Katrina was to come and take our first responder commander, General Honore, and dispatch him down to the scene. Total mismanagement in every single aspect of response to our homeland security.

Now here we are with a great threat to our borders, which, quite honestly, is perhaps the single most aspect of our own threat to not just homeland security but our national security, untold numbers, thousands of undocumented illegal immigrants sneaking into this country putting extraordinary downward pressure on our wage system, and providing in a way a very serious threat to the basic social services infrastructure of this country.

But it just didn't happen overnight. Where has this administration been? Why are the American people so upset? Why are the polls so low in the face of these Republicans and this administration? It is obvious: slow response, mismanagement. And nowhere is it more exacting and exemplary than with the response to Katrina, a threat to our homeland, and a response to our border security. And that is what is happening.

What is the response? Now it is because in this budget that they get on the floor and they are clapping about that they passed, a budget that cut homeland security by over $6 billion, a budget that would not fund the 1,000 border agents that the 9/11 Commission and a bipartisan group of us Democrats and Republicans in this Congress have recommended. And then to take and overtax the overextended National Guard that has been overextended in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in responding to our hurricanes, and to say now we are going to put them on the border. Too little, too late of the wrong type. And how hypocritical.

How hypocritical to take 6,000 of our National Guard and put them on the border, but to cut the funding for an additional 1,000 to 2,000 border agents that actually need to be there? The American people want some answers to that. That is not an adequate response. America deserves better, and I assure you that Democrats are going to give them better.