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Senate Democrats Want More Homeland Security Funds
Senate Democrats yesterday criticized the Bush administration’s $31.9 billion domestic security budget for fiscal 2006, saying last week’s London bombings show that more money is needed to protect mass transit and other areas, the New York Times reported (see GSN, July 12). “We cannot seem to get the leadership, the planning, the money and the values right to do homeland security the way it should be done in our country,” said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). Costs for the war in Iraq and tax cuts have prevented the White House from requesting enough money for domestic security priorities, said Democrats. “They are willing to spend too little money to protect the homeland security of the American people,” said Senator Joseph Lieberman (Conn.). Republican leaders, however, have pointed out that domestic security funding has skyrocketed, having grown at a faster rate over the past two years than almost any other federal department, according to the Times. Senate Republicans are also advocating more prevention measures aimed at terrorists seeking to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction, with funding to come from a 12 percent spending cut on airport screeners and a 26 percent reduction in antiterrorism grants to local and state agencies. Senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), chairman of the Homeland Security appropriations panel, said he would support increases for mass transit security in the coming fiscal year by $100 million. That would bring the total to $200 million. Gregg questioned the value of further spending in that area. “If a group of terrorists want to attack the mass transit system, they will be able to find a weakness somewhere,” he said. In addition, the Senate yesterday rejected a measure, proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and supported by the White House, that would have required that 90 percent of Homeland Security grants be allocated based on risk assessment. Senators opted instead to apportion 70 percent of the funds in this way, leaving considerable grants for those states considered to be at less of a risk (Eric Lipton, New York Times, July 13). Meanwhile, during the third in a series of Sept. 11 commission follow-up hearings, former panelists called on Congress to allocate homeland security funding based on risk assessment, not pork-barrel politics, the Christian Science Monitor reported (Gail Russell Chaddock, Christian Science Monitor, July 13).
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