Homeland Security like a poor JV squad

Polke Online ^ | March 12, 2008 | Scott G. Borgerson and David S. Abraham

[3AngelaD]

NEW YORK - Over the coming months, Congress will continue to debate President Bush's record $3.1 trillion budget request. Although the Democrats and Republicans do not see eye to eye on many issues, they are in total agreement that national security should receive the highest budgetary priority. Regardless of the rhetoric that this spending makes America safer, the proposed budget continues the trend of placing inordinate emphasis on offensive military strength at the expense of homeland security. It is as if the United States plays the A-team for pre-emptive wars abroad, and then fields a poorly equipped junior-varsity squad to defend the homeland....

The $515 billion the president proposes for traditional defense spending is the largest it has been since World War II in inflation-adjusted terms, an increase of more than 74 percent since Bush's first year in the White House. And that's without emergency supplemental funding requests...In total, the United States will spend three-quarters of a trillion dollars next year to support what is essentially offensive firepower.

This all comes at the expense of providing for first lines of defense, such as installing bomb-detection equipment in ports and along roadways, shoring up collapsing infrastructure or better quipping first-responders in cities that are most at risk from terrorist activity. Spending $148 million for every F-22 Raptor fighter might not be the best bang for the buck to protect the United States against a conventional explosive, which Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, referred to in recent congressional testimony as "the most probable al Qaida attack scenario."

America's national-security priorities are warped when the combined proposed annual budgets of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Border Patrol, the Transportation Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are equivalent to less than 2 percent of the total cost of the war in Iraq, or the price tag of two new aircraft carriers, when the United States already claims an uncontested dominance on the world's oceans. As the 9/11 Commission concluded, traditional military spending should not be America's only defensive strategy.

Many taxpayers may be surprised that the president would fund homeland security at only $51 billion, or about 7 percent of the total amount spent on force projection abroad. For example, the president allocates the U.S. Coast Guard - a key agency in the fledgling new Department of Homeland Security responsible for protecting America's 361 ports and 95,000 miles of coastline with a force so small that it could easily sit inside most football stadiums - only $9 billion, or the equivalent of less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the overall defense budget.

America needs better balance in its budgetary priorities. The traditional defense agencies that are breaking under the strains of war deserve to be supported, but not at the expense of guarding the homeland. America is ill-prepared to prevent, much less recover from, future catastrophic events ...What America needs more than an increase in defense spending is a top-to-bottom reassessment of budgetary priorities and a better definition of what constitutes security. Identifying and supporting programs that contribute to a more secure homeland is a good first step.

[Brilliant]

“they are in total agreement that national security should receive the highest budgetary priority.”

No, they aren’t. The Dems just realize they’d lose that battle, so they aren’t going to put up too much of a fight.

[ChinaThreat]

I’d like to remind this dimwit, that a good offense is better than a good defense. Ask the French about the ol’ Maginot Line.

[Iron Munro]

Your Tax Dollars At Work

$700,000 fence was waste of money, Florida agency head says

A grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security paid for it.

Add this to the list of dubious expenditures in the name of national security: a $700,000 fence around the state of Florida Emergency Operations Center.

So says the man whose agency had it built last fall using federal tax dollars.

"I personally did not see the need for that and I would have said I don't see the necessity for that," said Tom Pelham, who became the secretary of the Department of Community Affairs last year.

"Pelham mocked the fence as a source of protection and said it could easily be scaled by someone seeking to do harm. "Anyone who wants to get over that barrier or drive through it could easily do so," Pelham said."

Federal tax dollars paid for this 6-foot fence around the Florida Emergency Operations Center

[Cicero]

Homeland Security is such a total politicized mess, I doubt whether they would spend any money they got wisely. What they could do is fire that jerk Chertoff and put in somebody who didn’t think illegal aliens coming over the border were a Very Good Thing.