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We do not wish to open your ports to foreign trade all at once.

And let us be frank, the security threats that emanate from our ports come from foreign cargo.

Thank God we're going to try to continue and effectively defend our frontiers with the Border Patrol, with the Customs Department, with the Coast Guard, with the Armed Forces.

Our ports are owned by local governments who are responsible for the ports. It is the Coast Guard and Customs that provide security. The federal government will never outsource our security.

While port security remains one of our single greatest vulnerabilities, it makes little sense to give operational control of our ports to a foreign nation without first doing proper investigations.

Ports are the gaping hole in America's homeland security.

Our ports are a vital link in national security and it is extremely dangerous to be considering their sale to the United Arab Emirates government.

We know that the most fundamental responsibility of our Federal Government is to ensure the safety of its people and to protect and ensure our National security. And clearly port security has been left in limbo.

We will have a border that is open for business, open for tourism, open for legitimate travelers; but that is closed to terrorists and drug pushers and smugglers and others who seek to break the law.

This Congress has promised all manner of border security and port security to the tune of billions of dollars... yet we have - to date - funded our promises for port security at only $900 million. That's quite a distance between what we say and what we actually do.