Senate Hearings Before the Committee on Appropriations
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S. HRG. 112–697 Senate Hearings Before the Committee on Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Fiscal Year 2013 112th CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION H.R. 5326/S. 2323 DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION NONDEPARTMENTAL WITNESSES Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations, 2013 (H.R. 5326/S. 2323) S. HRG. 112–697 COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2013 HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ON H.R. 5326/S. 2323 AN ACT MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE DEPARTMENTS OF COM- MERCE AND JUSTICE, AND SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30, 2013, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES Department of Commerce Department of Justice National Aeronautics and Space Administration Nondepartmental Witnesses Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/ committee.action?chamber=senate&committee=appropriations U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 72–305 PDF WASHINGTON : 2013 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii, Chairman PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi, Ranking TOM HARKIN, Iowa MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama HERB KOHL, Wisconsin KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas PATTY MURRAY, Washington LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California SUSAN COLLINS, Maine RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana MARK KIRK, Illinois JACK REED, Rhode Island DANIEL COATS, Indiana FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey ROY BLUNT, Missouri BEN NELSON, Nebraska JERRY MORAN, Kansas MARK PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota JON TESTER, Montana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin SHERROD BROWN, Ohio CHARLES J. HOUY, Staff Director BRUCE EVANS, Minority Staff Director SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland, Chairman DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama HERB KOHL, Wisconsin MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee JACK REED, Rhode Island LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin BEN NELSON, Nebraska SUSAN COLLINS, Maine MARK PRYOR, Arkansas LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina SHERROD BROWN, Ohio THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi (ex officio) Professional Staff GABRIELLE BATKIN JESSICA M. BERRY JEREMY WEIRICH JEAN TOAL EISEN ART CAMERON (Minority) ALLEN CUTLER (Minority) GOODLOE SUTTON (Minority) Administrative Support MICHAEL BAIN KATIE BATTE (Minority) (II) CONTENTS THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2012 Page Department of Justice: Attorney General .............................................................. 1 THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2012 Department of Justice: Federal Bureau of Investigation ..................................... 111 THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2012 Department of Commerce: Office of the Secretary ............................................... 143 WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2012 National Aeronautics and Space Administration .................................................. 205 Nondepartmental Witnesses ................................................................................... 247 (III) COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RE- LATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2013 THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2012 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met at 10:01 a.m., in room SD–124, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Barbara Mikulski (chairman) pre- siding. Present: Senators Mikulski, Leahy, Feinstein, Lautenberg, Pryor, Brown, Hutchison, Shelby, Alexander, Murkowski, and Graham. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ATTORNEY GENERAL STATEMENT OF HON. ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., ATTORNEY GENERAL OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BARBARA A. MIKULSKI Senator MIKULSKI. Good morning, everybody. The Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Sub- committee (CJS) will come to order. This morning, we welcome the Attorney General of the United States, and as is the usual and cus- tomary way, Senator Hutchison and I will make opening state- ments. We’ll go to you, Mr. Attorney General, for yours, and you may summarize. With unanimous consent, all statements will be included in the record. Senator Shelby, our colleague and former ranking member on this subcommittee, has a banking hearing. With Senator Hutchison’s concurrence, we’ll go right to Senator Shelby for the first question. Senator HUTCHISON. Okay. Senator MIKULSKI. Does that sound okay? Senator SHELBY. Thank you. Senator MIKULSKI. And then we will observe Senators in their order of arrival, and we expect robust participation. We’re going to strictly adhere to the 5-minute rule. So, having laid the groundwork, I just want to say good morning and welcome to our first CJS subcommittee hearing, the Attorney General of the United States, in which we will hear his presen- tation on the Department of Justice (DOJ) budget. We have a very positive relationship with the Attorney General. He’s brought to the Justice Department the experience of a career (1) 2 prosecutor. He’s been dedicated to fighting violent crime and ter- rorism. He knows that he is pioneering work now, working with our administration, on how to deal with the new and emerging threat of cybersecurity, which is, how do we protect our citizens, and his views and recommendations on protecting our civil lib- erties. Well, Mr. Attorney General, before we get into the numbers and the money, I would just like to thank you, and in thanking you, I want to thank all the hardworking men and women who do work at DOJ. There are 116,000 employees who work there; 25,000 are Federal agents, and people work at the Federal Bureau of Inves- tigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). We have 20,000 prison guards and correctional staff, and 10,000 prosecutors and investigators. They’ve had some amazing accomplishments, which I’ll talk about when I get to my question period. But we want to thank them, because every day and every way, they stand sentry, either to do prevention and intervention, to make sure they are out on the street, doing traditional violent crime work, to really being all over the world, and then fighting issues related to white collar crime. As the chair of the CJS Subcommittee, I have three priorities when examining the budget: communities security, how does the budget support the mission of keeping our communities safe; na- tional security, what resources are needed to keep America safe; and then, oversight and accountability. No boondoggles on the watch of this subcommittee. And I want to make sure the Justice Department has what it needs to do its mission. As I looked at the President’s budget, I noted that there was only one new initiative, and that’s the expansion of mortgage and finan- cial fraud. That request is $611 million. It is a modest $5 million targeted increase, and we are going to want to hear more about that. Because we, in our own State of Maryland, have seen such a rising number of scams, and schemes, and predatory lending practices, and we need to know what you want to do with the money. We can’t have a strong, economically vibrant community unless they’re safe, whether it’s in our neighborhoods, whether it’s pro- tecting small business on Main Street. So, I want to know how the budget will keep America safe at home on Main Street. The request for $2 billion for grants to State and local law en- forcement, I wonder if it’s sufficient. This is $32 million less than the 2012, and we might have to consider, you know, reorganizing priorities. The State and local funding seems to have borne the brunt of budget cuts. Since 2010, grants have been cut by $1 billion in local funding. Now, part of this was the axe and acts of the Con- gress itself. Many of my colleagues don’t realize that cuts have consequences in discretionary spending. So, we need to hear your view on what we can do. We know the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recommended that you should conduct a review and eliminate unnecessary duplication. We support that. 3 We also want to work in community security at the protecting of our children. One of the areas of bipartisan support is in the money to catch predators who use the Internet to stalk children, break up children’s pornography rings, and track down and arrest these child molesters. We understand you are requesting $328 million, and we’ll look forward to seeing how you will allocate that, and what to do. The Southwest Border—my colleague, Senator Hutchison, has worked assiduously in that area. I want to know that this is not only bipartisan support—we think it ought to be nonpartisan to support our border, and I’ll let her raise those questions in there. In the area of cyberthreats, our Nation faces a growing and per- vasive threat overseas, from hackers, cyberspies, and cyberterrorists. We need safe and resilient networks. We worry about online banking and commerce, the safety of our power grids, air traffic control systems, digitized records. Yesterday, with the administration, the Senate held a cyber exer- cise. The majority of the Senators were there to listen to an exer- cise on an attack on a major city’s power grid. It was chilling. It was terrifying to know what happened there, and what we could do to protect it. So, we need to know about cyber. PREPARED STATEMENT Finally, I want to know how the Justice Department is improving its accountability to taxpayers. You know, you’ve gotten a bad rap—some of them, about lavish banquets, cost overruns, the In- spector General doing its audits—and it should.