WASHINGTON – Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., issued the following statement Tuesday in response to The Partnership for Public Service’s report Homeland Insecurity: Building the Expertise to Defend America from Bioterrorism. Lieberman is a member of the Partnership’s board of governors.
“I commend The Partnership for Public Service for its new report Homeland Insecurity: Building the Expertise to Defend America from Bioterrorism. Just as we need to have highly, trained public employees — policemen, criminal investigators, and prosecutors — to deter and respond to crime and terrorist attacks, the American people also need highly trained public employees — doctors, scientists, and public health specialists — to respond to bioterrorist attacks. This report sounds the alarm that the five key federal agencies at the forefront of our nation’s defense against bioterrorism simply don’t have, and are not going to have, the skilled people they need to protect Americans from this threat. The Administration should stop chipping away at federal employee protections and recognize that many of them are on the front lines of our war on terror. Federal workers need reinforcements not restraints.”