PROGRESS ON PORTS

Despite an attempt from Sen. Harry Reid to stop a port-security bill with a grab bag of vaguely related amendments yesterday, the bill is ready to be voted on in the Senate today. It should be strongly supported. The security of the 11 million shipping containers that enter the United States each year would be significantly improved with its passage.

Sens. Susan Collins and Patty Murray, the authors of the bipartisan Port Security Improvement Act of 2006, have been pushing for improved security for years, but the issue has not caught on as a popular cause. The bill represents crucial but unglamorous work, requiring, for instance, Homeland Security to improve the international chain-of-command for cargo moving through U.S. ports and to develop protocols for resumption of trade in the event of an incident.

But for the 400,000 people who work at U.S. ports and the 750,000 workers with access to them – indeed, for the nearly endless number of businesses that depend on ports for the majority of goods consumed in this country – the bill’s lack of excitement is more than made up by its necessity. That is why it was disappointing yesterday to see it held up by the Reid amendment, which was more about U.S. policy in Iraq and measures that already had been adopted by the Senate. Fortunately, it was defeated, 41-57.

Shipping containers have been used to illegally transport weapons, drugs and people. The Collins-Murray bill reduces the chance of a bomb being next. It would give the secretary of Homeland Security 180 days to develop tougher standards for the movement and storage of containers; it would expand the work of Customs and Border Protection overseas to target and inspect cargo headed for this country. It would create a pilot program for a 100 percent screening of cargo, and it would allow for a faster GreenLane program to expedite the cargo where supply chains have been verified as safe.

As important, these good ideas are matched with funding, though it wisely doesn’t write a blank check. Instead, the bill recognizes that ports will have upfront costs to improve security over the next five years. The additional benefit of this is that it doesn’t allow improvements to drag out over decades – the money is available for a limited time.

Until the Dubai ports debacle last spring, port security got little attention in Washington. The Dubai overreaction may even have been caused by the nation’s lack of port preparedness. The outcome of that mess, however, is the legislation in the Senate. The Collins-Murray legislation is a thoughtful, methodical approach to improving port safety. It moves ideas that have been agreed upon for years but never assembled and funded, and it creates new checks that both improve security and ensure cargo keeps moving.

The bill is well worth supporting.