Dr. James Jay Carafano explains three simple ways Congress can improve Homeland Security. This is an issue that effects everyone and every member of Congress should be interested in it. It also effects every level of Government – Local, State, and Federal. Currently, there are 85 Committees overseeing the Department of Homeland Security which makes it extremely difficult to get things accomplished. Congress also has no way of overseeing how the federal agencies work together. The way that it is set up now is disjointed and needs to be reformed …
This evening John McCain and Barack Obama will appear together (but speak separately) as part of a nationally televised forum at Columbia University in Manhattan. The two presidential candidates have promised to set aside politics to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and will instead lay out their personal visions on civic engagement and service. The candidates’ call for unity on this day is admirable, but the chosen topic of the event is also yet another missed opportunity for the American people to hear about how each candidate …
Seven years removed from the attacks of September 11, 2001, what are the key next steps for homeland security? In a testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Management, Investigations, and Oversight, I provided several answers to that question; my first answer, consolidation of congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security. At a forum hosted by the Heritage foundation on the subject, Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), ranking member of the same subcommittee, stated that “Congress has protected its prerogatives and privileges at the expense of oversight.” …
Congress has often criticized the Department of Homeland Security for its short comings, however in many ways Congress itself is to blame. When DHS was created 22 agencies and almost 200,000 people were pulled together into one entity. However, despite the 9/11 Commissions recommendation that congressional oversight should be consolidated, there still remains some 86 congressional committees and subcommittees with oversight over DHS. “The risk of too much oversight” is extensive, as deputy assistant secretary for policy development at the Department of Homeland Security Stephen R. Heifetz explained in a …
As tornadoes and flooding torment the Midwest, citizens are working together to protect the cities and towns they call home. But that’s no average Joe in this photo — it’s Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. So with five states under federal disaster declarations since the beginning of June alone, what’s wrong with this picture? Though DHS has acknowledged the disaster scale of the Midwest flooding isn’t as the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, requirements of the recovery effort are massive. DHS and Chertoff have a lot on their plate. Is shoveling sand in Waterloo, Iowa, really where …
Today the Washington Post looks at the Department of Homeland Security’s failure to develop or deploy a virtual fence on the Mexico border and reports: “Former officials, private-sector partners and independent analysts say the evolving 208,000-worker, $38 billion agency remains hindered by a crisis-of-the-moment environment, in which the rush to fulfill each new mandate or meet every threat undermines its ability to hold a strategic course and deliver promised results.” We think we’ve hear that sentiment before. In June 2007, when Congress was planning to massively expand DHS responsibilities as …
