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Democrats urge tighter mass transit security

Menendez says White House policy 'putting lives at risk'

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(CNN) -- -- In the wake of last week's terrorist attacks in London, Democrats are asking the Bush administration to spend more money securing the U.S. public transportation system.

They say White House transportation policies are "putting lives at risk."

"A major attack on a public transportation target in this country would result in a devastating loss of life, and could have economic impacts even greater than September 11," Rep. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, told the nation Saturday in the Democrats' radio address.

"But even in the face of these facts, the Bush administration has largely ignored the security of the 16 million people who use public transportation everyday."

Menendez, who serves as the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said he has been working with fellow Democrat, Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, to introduce legislation that would allocate additional funding for transit agencies across the nation.

The bill, he said, would allow those agencies to hire more police officers, operate more K-9 patrols and invest in other technological security measures, such as cameras and sensors for explosives.

"We cannot wait until we get hit with a London or Madrid-type attack before we make the investment in transit security that we should have been making all along," Menendez said.

"Unfortunately, the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress have opposed many of our vital efforts," the congressman added. "We need a complete and total strategy to fight this enemy -- not the partial strategy the Bush administration is giving us today."

The Department of Homeland Security raised the terror threat level to orange, or high, for the mass transit portion of the transportation sector after the subway explosions in London.

But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview earlier this week: "D.H.S. will concentrate first and most relentlessly on addressing threats that pose catastrophic consequences," he said, specifically mentioning the dangers posed by a nuclear attack.

"I want to be clear we are concerned about all kinds of attacks," said Chertoff. "But I also want to make sure that we don't lose focus on what are the big-picture priorities. As bad as the attack in London is, as bad as an attack on a subway is -- and that's very bad and we have to do our level best to prevent it and to mitigate it -- a catastrophic attack would be many times worse.

"We've got to drive our strategy with a long-term vision and not simply by reacting to an individual attack," the secretary said.

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