Bush Says Wealthy More Important Than Homeland Security

Where is President Bush's commitment to homeland security? His 2005 Department of Homeland Security budget contains a 30% cut for first responders, and a meager 8% increase for the US Coast Guard. You know, those men and women who are valiantly making sure our ports are safe from nuclear and biological attacks with a few old, undercrewed boats.

The DHS budget drew bipartisan criticism Monday for various programs it cut completely — such as funding for SafeComm, a grant program to help ensure that first responder communications are interoperable — to those it scaled back dramatically, such as the $1.6 billion (30 percent) cut in key grant programs to first responders.

Sens. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn and Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the committee, both sharply questioned why DHS appeared to be underfunding the Coast Guard in light of several independent studies showing it would take billions of dollars to secure the nation’s ports and to replace a Coast Guard fleet that is aging and increasingly costly to maintain and repair.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge defended the anemic allocation by saying, "We're quite aware of the fact that we have cutters that need repair and that their maintenance costs continue to increase because of the age of some of this equipment," Ridge said. Despite that, "we're quite comfortable, given the nearly $500 million that we've requested the Congress to appropriate,"

I wonder how comfortable the men and women are, who actually have to risk their lives defending us on those "cutters that need repairs"?

Lieberman also accused the administration of "cannibalizing existing bioterrorism programs" to fund its recently proposed national biosurveillance program. "The most unacceptable act of cannibalization, to me, is the $105 million cut in bioterrorism preparedness grants to state and local health departments which, again, are our first line of defense, first responders," Lieberman said, also noting another $39 million being cut in money that could go to develop "hospital surge capacity" response in case of a bioterror attack.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge defended the funding proposals, saying the administration took a hard look at the realities of the times and made tough choices "by the balancing of the fiscal and security environment," Ridge said.

Ridge is obviously referring to our record deficit of $521 billion and Bush's attempt to cut the deficit in half while calling for the continuation of his tax-cuts-for-the-rich. I have an idea to help make balancing "the fiscal and security environment" easier: repeal the three quarters of Bush's tax cuts that benefit only 5% of Americans. I suspect they would all be very happy to sacrifice a few bucks that they don't need to help fund basic protective measures that we all need in these troubled times. I know the other 95% of us would really appreciate it.