Congressional Quarterly - DHS Management Budget Again Takes Heat From Approps Subcommittee
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For the second year in a row, a budget request from the Obama administration to build up the management staff at the Department of Homeland Security came under attack by the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, with Republicans promising Wednesday that the president won't get what he wants.
In fiscal 2010, the Obama administration sought $566 million for DHS managerial obligations, including the secretary's office and the office of the undersecretary for management. Congress appropriated $486 million, with Republicans on the subcommittee lambasting the request.
President Obama is looking for an even bigger increase for fiscal 2011, asking for $852 million, a number that subcommittee ranking member Harold Rogers balked at during a Thursday hearing with Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano.
The House is likely to follow a similar course for fiscal 2001 as it did last year, Rogers said: cutting funding from the office of the undersecretary for management's office and other areas to fund operational priorities.
"I have confidence we'll reject [it] again this year," he told Natpolitano. "When are you going to learn?"
Mark Steven Kirk, R-Ill., also predicted that the pattern would repeat.
"I think on a bipartisan basis we'll have to do that again," he said.
Rogers said he saw an "alarming disparity" in the budget request, with proposals to increase funding to DHS headquarters staff, but trim back funds for cyber, border and maritime security.
But Napolitano said the ranking member misinterpreted the numbers. The $852 million would not go toward "headquarters" staff, but for personnel that would be spread through operational components.
"I really believe that it is superficial to say that you're increasing bureaucrats and decreasing people who do the mission," she said, "Nothing could be further from the truth."
She said the additional staff is needed to meet mandates -- including grant and acquisition oversight -- set by Congress.
"I will tell you as a former governor, you've got to have some of these personnel to make your operations," she said.
She reiterated the point when Kirk expressed displeasure about Project Shield, which was supposed to outfit suburbs in Cook County Illinois, with surveillance equipment but, he said, resulted in $43 million being misspent.
"You need project managers to manage that," she said, adding later that "You can't on the one hand say you've got too many headquarters staff . . . and then have a critique on a particular program because it wasn't managed.
Rogers said Napolitano's arguments had not convinced him.
"I think we're all here saying you need personnel . . . but this is way beyond what I think is necessary," he said.
Subcommittee Chairman David E. Price, who has defended past DHS requests for more managerial staff, had his own concerns about the Obama's fiscal 2011 document, including the fact that it would spend $519 million on operators for whole body imagers and other advanced aviation screening equipment -- nearly double the $215 it seeks for the machines themselves.
He also called DHS' repeated failure to provide timely reports to the subcommittee "a constant thorn" in its side.
"The Congress requires these reports in order to make informed decisions about your budget," he said.
Price and Rogers agreed that two particularly problematic reports that DHS has yet to turn in are updates on the Coast Guard's multi-billion dollar "Deepwater" fleet revitalization project and the Southwest border surveillance technology development program known as SBINet.
Although Napolitano said the subcommittee leadership were right to be upset about the tardy reports, she added that the sheer bulk of congressional requests presents a logistical headache for her department.
"We have 400 mandated congressional reports, I think more than any other department," she said. "There is a huge administrative and oversight aspect to this, in part because Congress itself has not changed its committee structure to match the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and I think it's fair to point that out.
For the Appropriations subcommittee alone, DHS currently has roughly 80 reports in progress, Napolitano said, asking that the members come up with a method of prioritization for them. Price and Rogers said the request is reasonable, but the department should have known that the SBINet and Deepwater evaluations were of greater importance than others. Rogers pointed out that the subcommittee cut the DHS Deepwater budget in half in 2006 due to a late report.
"This is not a request," he said. "This is a command. We want the reports."
The reporting issue also allowed Rogers to come out as one of the few in Congress with anything supportive to say about SBINet.
"How can the Congress even contemplate the administration's substantial cuts to SBINet and Deepwater when the investment plans and oversight reports required by law have been completely ignored," he said.
The president's budget request would give SBINet -- which has consumed millions but produced few results satisfactory to government officials who have evaluated it -- $571 million, a sharp decline from its $800 million fiscal 2010 level. Napolitano has said she is not satisfied with the program, and wants it reevaluated before it goes forward.
At a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday, John McCain, R-Ariz., called efforts to build a "virtual fence" at the border "a waste of billions of dollars on what seems to be an abject failure."
Rogers and Napolitano seemed at odds throughout Wednesday's hearing, with the ranking members generally condemning Obama's request.
"In the seven years that I have examined DHS' budgets, I don't think I've seen a proposal that is so poorly prioritized and that so badly fails to address the realities that our country is currently facing," he said in his opening statement.
In her own opener, Napolitano responded that Rogers was "off the mark."
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