Homeland Defense

Thursday, February 12, 2004; Page A36

IT'S THE ONE CHUNK of discretionary spending in this year's budget slated to go up substantially. Yet when Tom Ridge, secretary of homeland security, testifies today in front of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, no one will be well prepared to question him about his department's proposal to increase spending by 10 percent. Is it too much? Too little? Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has accused the Bush administration of underfunding the whole department, "tinkering while the clock on homeland security is ticking." But in fact no one can actually measure whether the proposed $40 billion in new resources will be money well spent.

The new department still does not provide Congress with regularly updated risk assessment reports, which would serve to justify its spending choices and enable yearly evaluations of its progress. Congressional staffers say the administration has objected to proposed legislation that would require regular reports, arguing that justifications for spending are contained within the annual budget. Spokesmen point out that the department has requested assessments of homeland security needs from all 50 states; only when those are evaluated and processed, they say, will it be possible to produce a meaningful national strategy. It's hard to quarrel with the department's proposals to spend more on container screening, border technology, vaccines, first responders or reducing the immigration backlog. Nevertheless, without a better analysis of likely threats and targets, it's impossible to say whether the amounts allocated are grossly inadequate or wastefully large.