The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has managed a flattening of its budget the past few years but attempts to fix the nation’s debt woes on the back of discretionary spending accounts rather than curbs to entitlement spending such as Medicare could lead to cutbacks in people and operations at the department, a leading expert on homeland security in Congress said yesterday.
The “danger now” in cutting the DHS budget further is that key priorities such as cyber security will be underfunded and cuts to operational entities such as the Transportation Security Administration and Customs and Border Protection will mean fewer people and assets, which in turn will mean they will do less, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I/D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said at an event sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute.
Lieberman is retiring from the Senate when his fourth term expires at the end of this year. Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) will take the reins of the committee while Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), will become ranking member in place of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who will likely rotate to a new committee, Lieberman said.
Lieberman said he is appealing to Carper, Coburn and his Senate colleagues to embrace a fiscal platform that includes cutting entitlement programs to achieve long-term fiscal sustainability and enable to fund DHS “at a level that will enable us to be prepared across the widest spectrum so that we can prevent the expected and even the unexpected in the years ahead.”
In addition to the budget challenges facing DHS, Lieberman also said that Congress needs to do his share by consolidating committee jurisdictions that oversee the department. DHS officials have to respond to too many congressional committees and subcommittees, which is taxing on their time and also prevents Congress from providing more effective oversight, Lieberman said.
The fragmented congressional jurisdiction overseeing DHS makes it difficult to pass routine authorization measures to help guide the department, Lieberman said.