mr. chairman , i yield myself such time as i may consume . 
i want to take this opportunity to thank the chairman of the full committee , the gentleman from wisconsin ( mr. sensenbrenner ) xz4003650 , and thank the chairman of the subcommittee . 
when i offered this originally as stand-alone legislation in connection with another bill as an amendment , the chairman offered to work with me on this further down the line ; and every bit true to his word , he has been a great partner to work with on this . 
i want to thank the gentleman from north carolina ( chairman the numbers are quite startling : 141 million ferry and cruise ship passengers , more than 2 billion tons of domestic international freight , and 3 billion tons of oil move through the u.s. seaports . 
millions of truck-sized cargo containers are offloaded on to u.s. docks . 
as a part of the homeland security authorization bill , the house took some important steps to improve the screening of cargo by expanding the container security initiative and refocusing it based on risk . 
but the truth is that not every container can be inspected , and we need to use other tools at our disposal to deter and punish those who would use our seaports as a point of attack . 
i urge support for the amendment . 
mr. chairman , i yield back the balance of my time . 
