• Email Sign-Up

    E-Newsletter Sign Up

    Enter your email and click submit to
    receive email alerts from Robert

     

Office Locations

  • Office Locations

    Washington D.C. Office
    235 Cannon House Office Building
    Washington, D.C. 20515

    Cullman District Office
    205 Fourth Ave. NE, Ste 104
    Cullman, AL 35055

    Serving Blount, Cullman, Lawrence and Marshall (City of Arab) Counties

    Tuscumbia District Office
    1011 George Wallace Blvd
    Suite 146
    Tuscumbia, AL 35674

    Serving Colbert, Franklin and Marion Counties

    Gadsden District Office
    107 Federal Building
    600 Broad Street
    Gadsden, AL 35901

    Serving Cherokee, DeKalb, Etowah, Jackson, Marshall (Excluding Arab) Counties

    Jasper District Office
    247 Carl Elliott Building
    1710 Alabama Avenue
    Jasper, AL 35501

    Serving Fayette, Lamar, Tuscaloosa, Walker and Winston Counties

Print

CQ Roll Call | Lawmakers Cool to Homeland Security Funding Priorities

Lawmakers Cool to Homeland Security Funding Priorities
By Rob Margetta | CQ Roll Call | April 11, 2013

 

 

Members of both parties gave a frosty reception Thursday to the Obama administration’s proposal to reduce funding for the Coast Guard and immigration detention in fiscal 2014 while fully funding the construction of an animal disease lab and adding money for Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

The priorities in the $39 billion net discretionary budget request “defy logic,” House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman John Carter, R-Texas, told Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano during a hearing. “More money for headquarters consolidation and research, but deep, shameful cuts to operations.”

The White House is asking for $106 million in departmental funding and $262 million in General Services Administration money for work on the department’s planned new headquarters at the St. Elizabeths campus in the Anacostia section of Washington. The project has faced years of funding shortages and delays.

Ranking Democrat David E. Price of North Carolina gave a much kinder assessment of the budget proposal, saying the department has managed to prioritize its efforts in an era of shrinking budgets. Still, he said he worries about requested cuts at the Coast Guard and other areas of the department that would pay for $714 million to build the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Kansas, which would replace a DHS laboratory in New York that studies the most serious of animal diseases.

“We’ve got to consider the cost to the rest of DHS,” Price said.

Napolitano called the funding for both headquarters and the NBAF necessary and a long time in coming. Without a consolidated headquarters, the department’s ability to connect the dots on critical security issues is limited, she said. And the new lab, she said, is an investment the country needs to make.

“Every group that has looked at the issue as of biological threat has concluded that our current Level 4 lab . . . is inadequate,” she said. “At some point, we had to bite the bullet.”

Opposition to the NBAF money wasn’t universal; Alabama Republican Robert B. Aderholt called the project important and said he was encouraged to see money for it in the budget request.

Looking Closely at Cuts

The proposed Coast Guard reductions that caught the subcommittee’s attention included a plan to decommission two large offshore cutters and the elimination of their mission support facilities; the retirement of eight HU-25 helicopters and two HC-130 planes; and the elimination of 826 living quarters for Coast Guard staff.

At Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the administration wants to see Congress cut its mandate of maintaining 34,000 detainee beds back to 31,800, a difference of about $120 million, according to DHS budget figures.

Although Democrats were open to the ICE reduction, Republicans on the committee expressed hostility toward both the ICE and Coast Guard proposals. The request would “decimate the Coast Guard, and ICE . . . in favor of headquarters pet projects and controversial research,” said full committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky.

Napolitano defended both requested cuts. The Coast Guard housing is mostly either unfilled or for on-shore administrative staff, she said, and the money from the decommissioned equipment would go toward funding the top priority of the agency’s leadership: completing construction of its new fleet of long-range National Security Cutters. The budget proposal includes funding for the seventh National Security Cutter and two Fast Response Cutters, which are smaller patrol boats. Those new vessels require less manpower than the ones the department wants to retire, according to Napolitano.

Rogers said the committee has rejected proposals for such funding shifts within the Coast Guard in the past “and I think we’ll do it again.”

Questions About Detainees

The discussion on ICE beds was colored by the controversy that ignited earlier this year, when news broke that the agency released more than 2,000 detainees in February. ICE leaders said they did so because they were holding more than the required 34,000 detainees at one point and had to balance their books before funding from a temporary spending measure ran out. Given the agency’s admission that at one point it was holding up to 35,000 people, “do you still think you don’t need 34,000?” Carter asked.

Napolitano reiterated DHS’ frequent response on bed requirements — that detention populations ebb and flow, and that ICE would be better off using cheaper alternatives to detention for low-priority people in deportation proceedings, including tracking anklets and supervised releases, instead of the more costly process of holding them in detention.

“We’re not releasing these people into the general population,” she said.

Although Carter pressed Napolitano repeatedly on ICE, he did not entirely dismiss the notion of lowering the mandate.

“I’m going to be very cautious about this 31,800 request,” he said.