Homeland Security Under Scrutiny in Congress
Senator Coburn is at it again. This time he is going after the Department of Homeland Security is his 55-page report entitled “Safety At Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland security Spending in US Cities”
“If in the days after 9/11 lawmakers were able to cast their gaze forward ten years, I imagine they would be surprised to see how a counter-terrorism initiative aimed at protecting our largest cities has transformed into another parochial grant program. We would have been frustrated to learn that limited federal resources were now subsidizing the purchase of low-priority items like an armored vehicles to protect festivals in rural New Hampshire, procure an underwater robot in Ohio and to pay for first responder attendance at a five-day spa junket that featured a display of tactical prowess in the face of a “zombie apocalypse.”
DHS has since spent an estimated $35 billion on its grant programs over the past decade, including $7.144 billion for UASI Urban areas. Los Angeles alone got some $500 million in grants while smaller cities like Milwaukee got $44-million to buy gee-whiz stuff. Even tiny towns such as Keene, NH got $90k to buy an armored BearCat vehicle just in case. An incident involving the purchase of 13 sno-cone machines with $6,200 in homeland security grants illustrates the weakness of FEMA’s oversight of its grant programs. This is the focus of the report, basically throwing rocks at how local law enforcement agencies spend the Feds money on junk they probably don’t need, but hey, it’s the Fed’s offering them the money, soooooo….