Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell joined with fellow democrat, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, today to call for funding to help law officers share criminal records. Boswell says a bill that passed in the House would include one-point-five million dollars for the records sharing, and now awaits Senate approval. Boswell spoke with several Des Moines and Polk County law officers surrounding him.
Boswell says we have to give the law officers the tools to work with and access to records is a very important thing. Boswell, who is running for re-election to the third district, says it’s a top issue in the campaign. Boswell says as he travels around he asks about the most important thing in people’s lives and they tell him their children.
Biden is in Iowa as he seeks another run for the presidency and says the money is a very small part of a trillion-dollar U.S. budget — but the need is big. Biden says last year there were 20-percent of the nation’s 600-thousand sex offenders totally unaccounted for even though under the law we’re supposed to know exactly where they are.
Biden says republicans are giving tax breaks to wealthy companies while failing to fund things such as Boswell’s criminal records bill. Biden also was critical of the administration’s handling of the war on terror. Biden says, “If anything is shown by the British uncovering the (terrorist) plot on the airlines, it’s simple, it’s that we are not protected.” Biden says the bipartisan Homeland Security Commission gave failing grades “to this republican-controlled congress, and republican president.”
Biden cited what he says is a failure to protect railyards and the potential for sabotage of a rail car. Biden says he asked experts what happens is plastic explosive were put under a 90-ton chlorine gas tanker car that goes through a city. Biden says the experts predicted up to 100-thousand people would die if the explosion went off in a major metropolitan area.
Biden says a bill that would allow mayors of cities to divert such rail cars around cities has failed to go anywhere in the republican-controlled Congress. Boswell faces republican Jeff Lamberti in November.