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U.S. Senators Launch Bipartisan Attack on New Bush Approach to Doling Out Emergency Response Funds By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — Powerful senators from both major parties expressed opposition yesterday to the Homeland Security Department’s proposed new approach to distributing emergency response grants to state and local institutions (see GSN, March 8). Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) criticized President George W. Bush’s administration for seeking a 66 percent cut in the percentage of Homeland Security grants that is doled out to each state as a baseline. Senior committee Democrat Joseph Lieberman (Conn.) said the administration simply is not asking for enough funds to adequately protect the country from terrorist attack. The statements came as the panel met to question new Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on the administration’s fiscal 2006 budget proposal. Chertoff said Bush had “affirmed his staunch commitment to the Department of Homeland Security mission by allocating $41.1 billion in new resources, a 7 percent increase over the current year.” The White House says its 2006 request seeks to “restructure” $2.6 billion of a proposed $3.6 billion budget for “state and local first-responder grants and other assistance,” in part by cutting the baseline state rate from 0.75 percent to 0.25 percent and by spending the funds freed up in ways that reflect information about terrorist threats and U.S. vulnerabilities. The change follows heated debate last year in Congress over how much of the money to spend based on risk calculations and how much to use for per-state minimum payments and population-based grants. Collins was among several senators and representatives to propose legislation meant to reform the grant programs, and although no such bill was passed, lawmakers vowed in a “sense of Congress” resolution to try again this year. Her bill would have both retained the 0.75 percent minimum payments and placed more emphasis on risk information in distributing the remaining money. “Every state and local government, regardless of its size, has vulnerabilities, and each should be ensured a baseline level of homeland security funding to assure preparedness,” the chairwoman said yesterday in a letter to the Senate Budget Committee. “Drastically reducing this baseline level of funding will make it virtually impossible for states and localities to conduct necessary emergency planning activities.” Lieberman in his statement did not delve into the specifics of the debate over how to allocate the funds, but he said the administration in its 2006 proposal “underestimates what it will take to keep our citizens as safe as possible here at home.” “There are increases, but they are modest: only a 3 to 4 percent increase in DHS discretionary spending after inflation — and even that increase largely depends upon a controversial airline ticket fee that may or may not be approved by Congress,” Lieberman said. “More important, the increases pale by comparison to what the experts tell us is necessary.” Resulting “gaps,” Lieberman said, range “from the inability of first responders to communicate between agencies and jurisdictions to a lack of preparedness for a biological attack to inadequately defended train, railway and highway transportation networks.” To fill such gaps, he asked the Budget Committee to increase the governmentwide homeland security budget by more than $8 billion and to earmark about half the increase to train, equip and pay emergency responders. Meanwhile in the House of Representatives, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) told reporters on a conference call yesterday that he and Collins have discussed response grant reform “in the most general terms” and that his committee has not yet discussed the matter in the incipient congressional session. “We have a good deal of planning work to do … to make sure that this legislation … becomes law this year,” said Cox, who sponsored his own legislation on the matter last year (see GSN, May 11, 2004). He said it is a “fair estimate” that whatever legislation Congress passes this year to reform the grants would reflect the same principles as his bill last year.
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