Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, says the lesson of Sept. 11, 2001 is that government cannot afford to wait for disaster before addressing known risks — and he worries Washington still hasn’t fully learned it.
Garbarino, who represents New York’s 2nd Congressional District on Long Island’s south shore, was a high school senior in Mr. Ponzi’s government class when the first plane struck the World Trade Center.
“We all thought it was a little plane. And then we went to the next class. And then the second plane hit, and everybody realized that stuff was wrong,” Garbarino told Fox News Digital.
Twenty-five years later, Garbarino now chairs the congressional committee overseeing the Department of Homeland Security, an agency created in direct response to the attacks. He says preventing another catastrophe of that scale is his defining priority.
“Being chairman of the committee, being a New Yorker, it’s one of those things you focus on, and you want to make sure another 9/11 doesn’t happen, and doesn’t ever happen again. And that’s my goal. That’s my priority,” he said.
A Call to Act Before, Not After
Garbarino argues Congress has a habit of responding only once tragedy has already struck.
“Congress is very good at being reactive… We don’t want another 9/11. So if I could leave my fingerprints on something here, it’s the fact that the focus, Congress’ focus on national security, Congress’ focus on homeland security or safety, is that we address an issue before something happens,” he said.
He wants lawmakers to pass legislation proactively rather than scrambling after the fact, saying: “instead of being like, ‘Oh my God I can’t believe this happened, how did this happen, let’s fix it now.'”
He traced the roots of the 2001 failure directly to a breakdown in government coordination.
“That’s why 9/11 happened. 9/11 happened because our intelligence agencies, they were siloed, they were not sharing information. I don’t know if it was a complacency or whatever, but there were a lot of problems,” Garbarino said. “I don’t want to fall into that same complacency.”
A Wound Still Open on Long Island
As a representative for a New York City suburb, Garbarino says his constituents live with the tragedy’s aftermath every day.
“We have people that lost loved ones that day that are still dealing with it 25 years later,” he said. “So the scar is still there.”
He noted that more people have now died from 9/11-related illnesses than died on the day of the attacks themselves.
“There are now more people that have died from 9/11-related illnesses than died on the actual day. So it’s a day that keeps taking people away from us,” Garbarino said. “You have firemen who, 9/11 was their first call. They were 21, 22 years old. They’re now 47… And a lot of these, some of these cancers, they take a while to take hold, and they’re now just getting sick.”
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed legislation led by Garbarino to address a projected funding shortfall in the World Trade Center Health Program, which covers medical treatment for survivors and responders. Garbarino said the program’s reach extends well beyond New York, with participants in nearly every congressional district in the country.
“People moved out of New York, people who came from all over the country after 9/11 to help, they all went back home, they also got sick. So this does affect the entire country,” he said.
