Press Releases
"It took the President less than a week to waiver from the promises in his State of the Union address to lower taxes and cut the record deficit. Instead, his proposed budget increases spending to a record of $3.75trillion next year and more than doubles our nation’s debt over the next five years. This includes the massive $1 trillion government takeover of healthcare despite an emphatic ‘no’ from the American people.
Statement by Congressman McCaul in response to President Obama's State of the Union Address:
State Department to McCaul: Father was not a credible enough source to revoke terror suspect’s visa
Below is the transcription of Congressman Michael McCaul’s (R-TX) exchange during today’s Homeland Security Committee hearing regarding intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day terror attack. McCaul is Ranking Member of the Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee. Bold highlightedmaterial includes visa issue.
Testifying:
"The proposal to cancel the Constellation program has much broader implications than the planned return to the moon. Eliminating this vision for America’s manned space program will put us even further behind in our plans to replace the Space Shuttle at a time when other nations are already challenging our preeminence in space.
"Today's vote in the most liberal state in the union should send a message to Democrats that the majority of Americans do not buy into their healthcare plan. I congratulate Senator-elect Brown, and I re-extend the offer for Republican ideas to be included in the healthcare debate. We can reform our healthcare system without a government takeover, and without unnecessarily taxing small businesses, killing jobs and adding another trillion dollars to our nation's debt."
Washington, D.C. – Today Congressman Bob Goodlatte, chair of the Republican High Tech Working Group and co-chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus, and Congressman Michael McCaul, co-chair of the House Cyber Security Caucus and co-chair of the Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency, issued the following statement in support of Google’s announcement that it is considering terminating its business in China.
"We need to be more proactive and not reactive. The fact that the State Department issued a cable stating Abdulmutallab had been in contact with extremists in Yemen and did not act upon it by revoking his visa was an absolute failure. I am encouraged to see that the President has now directed the State Department to review its processes for issuing and revoking visas. Revoking Abdulamutallab’s visa and placing him on the no fly list would have prevented him from carrying out his attack. 300 people bound for Detroit are alive today by sheer luck. The threat’s still out there.
"We are dealing with a lack of information sharing on two fronts: within our intelligence community, and between the administration and Congress. It is unacceptable that our intelligence community had information that would have allowed us to disrupt the Christmas Day attack before it materialized, but failed to act on it. If this resulted from a procedural flaw we must correct it. If it is human error we must hold the appropriate individuals accountable.
I commend the President's selection of Howard Schmidt as Cybersecurity Coordinator. Schmidt's experience protecting high profile private sector networks combined with his extensive government and defense background is the right combination to ensure the nation's critical infrastructure is secure. I look forward to working with him and hope this position gives him the authority he needs to coordinate across all of the agencies involved.