Senate drops 100-percent inspection proposal

Senate drops 100-percent inspection proposal International shippers and ocean transportation providers dodged a bullet late Thursday when the Senate voted 58 to 38 to kill an amendment proposed by Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., to require all containers to be scanned and imaged at foreign ports within five years to detect nuclear weapons or radiological components.
   The amendment was to be attached to a bill under debate for implementing the rest of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations on homeland security improvements. The Schumer amendment, which was co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy, Mass.; Joseph Biden, Del.; and Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, among others, replicated language dealing with container security in the House version of the 9/11 bill.
   Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican and former chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, led the floor fight against the 100-percent inspection proposal.
   Schumer argued that the Department of Homeland Security has dragged its feet on pursuing technologies to detect nuclear weapons in cargo containers, and that the only way to make rapid progress was to set deadlines. He suggested there could be a possibility of an extension down the road if DHS proves it has made every effort to invest in machines and develop processes for integrated scanning but technical challenges prevented deployment.
   'When it comes to this problem we can't afford to give them another chance,' Schumer said on the floor.
   U.S. businesses oppose efforts to inspect all containers because technological limitations prevent containers from being scanned in the normal flow of movement through a port without extra steps and because reading the images in real-time could also delay time-sensitive shipping operations.