Quick Factchecking: Homeland Security

There were a few points in the debate where I thought Bush said something that was just wrong. For instance, he said that "There are 100,000 troops trained, police, guard, special units, border patrol." Last Friday Reuters reported that "The Pentagon also said on Monday that only about 53,000 of the 100,000 Iraqis on duty now have undergone training." However, rather than going over lots of statements, I want to focus on one that I worry will be passed over, namely Bush's claim, on a question about homeland security, that "Of course we're doing everything we can to protect America." This statement is clearly, flatly false.

I wrote about this several weeks ago here. The quickest way to find a list of things that we have not done to make our country safer is to download a GAO report on the status of key recommendations made by the GAO to the Department of Homeland Security, and flip to p. 30, where you will find a list of recommendations that have not yet been implemented. And the quickest way to show that Bush did not tell the truth is to note that in eight of the cases where DHS provided an explanation of delays in implementing recommendations, it cited funding problems. Those recommendations include, among other things, deploying isotope identifiers to detect radiation in ports, finding people whose visas have been revoked because the government suspects them of involvement in terrorism, and controls over foreign military sales. These are all things that would have made our country safer, and that we did not do simply because we were unwilling to commit the necessary funds.

Below the fold I go over some areas in which this administration has failed to secure our country. Many of them are shortened versions of points I made my earlier post; sorry for the repetition. But I think it's important to ask, about each of the items listed (and the list is far from exhaustive): is this something that Bush thinks his administration cannot do? If so, what does that say about the capabilities of his administration? If not, how does he square this with his claim that "we're doing everything we can to protect America"?

* Aviation: Less than 5% of air cargo is screened, and the Federal Air Marshals program does not have enough money to allow the number of air marshals on flights to reach target levels.

* * Rail Security: Our railroads are vulnerable to terrorist attack. Yet it is only within the last year that the Transportation Safety Administration developed a plan to deal with rail security; actual steps to protect rail passengers are still in the experimental stage, and there are no plans to fully deploy them. During the last year, the TSA gave out a total of $115 million in grants for rail security; most estimates place the cost of securing our railroads in the billions of dollars. For the most part, the government has chosen to rely on voluntary safety measures undertaken by the railroad industry instead of defining standards and taking steps of its own.

* Port Security: We inspect only 4-6% of all cargo containers entering our ports. There are significant problems with how the containers to be opened are selected, including lack of testing and a failure to perform a comprehensive risk assessment of cargo containers. Moreover, we have not secured our ports. The Coast Guard estimates that it would take 7.3 billion dollars to secure the nation's ports. So far, the Department of Homeland Security has given out only $563 million in grants for port security.

* Chemical Plants: There are no laws and regulations governing security at chemical plants. Moreover, according to the GAO, "the federal government has not comprehensively assessed the chemical industry’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks. As a result, federal, state, and local entities lack comprehensive information on the vulnerabilities the industry faces." DHS claims that by December of this year, it will have come up with a plan that will "describe the roles and responsibilities of all sector stakeholders, including federal agencies", and will "describe the process to be used in prioritizing and assessing the vulnerability of chemical facilities within the chemical sector." There is no word on when we might expect anyone to actually do something to secure them.

* Border Security: To cite one problem, when the government determines that someone in this country on a visa might be a terrorist, it often takes months before that person's visa is revoked and the DHS initiates a search for him or her.

* First Responders: In March 2003, a study by a Task Force for the Council for Foreign Relations found that first responders' emergency response capabilities are underfunded by $98.4 billion over the next 5 years, and that there is no systematic procedure for determining how those funds that are available should be distributed.

There are other major problems that I have not dealt with (bioterroism planning leaps to mind.) However, the ones just cited are all things that we plainly could have done, or at least made a lot more headway on. Why didn't we? Chiefly because the Bush administration has not chosen to devote either the money or the high-level attention needed to make it happen. And why didn't we spend the money it would have taken to secure our ports, our trains and subways, our critical infrastructure, our borders, and our chemical and nuclear plants; to prepare for bioterrorist attacks; and to provide our first responders with the resources they need? It's not because that money was simply unavailable. Rolling back the tax cuts on people making over $200,000 a year would have provided it. It was simply because when President Bush had to choose between tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens and securing our homeland, he chose the tax cuts.

For this reason, I think that when he claims that his administration is "doing everything we can to protect America", that is just not true.

And then there's the minor matter of his failure to secure Russian fissile material, which also counts as something that the Bush administration could have done to make this country safer, but chose not to pay nearly enough attention to.

Comments

[rilkefan]

OT - did you catch Wes Clark on The Daily Show? I like Kerry but I wish I was voting for Clark. Hopefully he'll get to be Sec of Defense or State and maybe run again after Edwards...

[hilzoy]

Alas, no: I really wanted to, but I decided that I had to blog this claim, since I thought it might be overlooked because it didn't contain e.g. a statistic. I, too, would have loved to be voting for Clark, but oh well.

[carsick]

I don't remember the quote exactly but I'm certain I heard Bush say about Kerry's security agenda, "I don't know where you're going to find the money to pay for all that?"
Kerry replied something like, "We'll get to that in the next debate."

So Bush's attitude is, "I wake up every morning making the tough decisions a president makes. Money for pharmaceutical companies or homeland security? I made that decision."

[John Kelsey]

Well, nobody ever will do everything possible to protect the US from further terrorist attacks. There are always diminishing returns and limited resources to worry about. The big questions are whether the Bush administration is doing enough (spending enough resources) and whether it's doing the right thing. It looks to me like we're spending plenty of resources, but not necessarily spending them in the right way. Specifically, Bush clearly believes that invading and occupying Iraq, and running an extended nation-building operation there, is an important part of preventing future terrorist attacks on us. Kerry clearly doesn't think so, though he was careful enough to say that now that we're there, we still have to do the nation-building thing. It seems to me that this is a pretty nice distinguisher between the candidates.

--John

[dutchmarbel]

I don't remember the quote exactly but I'm certain I heard Bush say

transcript here

[hilzoy]

John -- that is, indeed, the question. But while Bush could have said that he has done everything that it's wise and prudent to do, he didn't.

About paying for it: whenever Bush says that, it amazes me. I mean, it almost makes you think he thinks that when Presidents make decisions that cost the government money, they have to pay for it somehow.

[carsick]

dutchmarble
I was close. Bush said "That's for another debate."

Kerry:...And long before President Bush and I get a tax cut -- and that's who gets it -- long before we do, I'm going to invest in homeland security and I'm going to make sure we're not cutting COPS programs in America and we're fully staffed in our firehouses and that we protect the nuclear and chemical plants.

The president also unfortunately gave in to the chemical industry, which didn't want to do some of the things necessary to strengthen our chemical plant exposure.

And there's an enormous undone job to protect the loose nuclear materials in the world that are able to get to terrorists. That's a whole other subject, but I see we still have a little bit more time.

Let me just quickly say, at the current pace, the president will not secure the loose material in the Soviet Union -- former Soviet Union for 13 years. I'm going to do it in four years. And we're going to keep it out of the hands of terrorists.

LEHRER: Ninety-second response, Mr. President.

BUSH: I don't think we want to get to how he's going to pay for all these promises. It's like a huge tax gap. Anyway, that's for another debate.