WASHINGTON (AP) - It may take Congress only a few months to create a Homeland Security Department, but it probably will take years to get the huge new Cabinet agency fully up and running.
The General Accounting Office ( news - web sites), the investigative arm of Congress, estimates it could take five to 10 years before the new department can "provide meaningful and sustainable results."
Such a long time frame runs counter to the repeated statements from President Bush ( news - web sites) and congressional leaders that to safeguard Americans from the growing threat of terrorism inside U.S. borders, the agency must be operational immediately.[/quote]
Bolding is mine.
Does this strike anyone else as absolutely daft? Or is it just newspeak for more porcine political appointees swilling at the government trough while producing meaningless results? I expect quite a bit more for 38 billion dollars. So much for the old Republican credo of less government. Wanton waste springs to mind.
Here is the gov page descibing federal spending for Homeland Security.
posted on August 15, 2002 03:05:04 PM new
So, now with only 40 billion dollars we can expect a functioning office of Homeland Security Department in 5 to 10 years?
But just yesterday, Bush announced that he will not approve 5.1 billion Congress appropriated for homeland security and other emergency needs.
Bush needs to focus on a "meaningful and sustainable" budget.
Since he has been in office (18 months) more than 5 trillion of the projected surplus has vanished.
posted on August 15, 2002 03:51:19 PM new
Snowy,We'll all be dead by then,
Not really,What a stinking waste of money.
Bush has pezzed off Fox from Mexico,There goes the Hispanic vote.He also pezzed off the fireman and several veteran assoc.s , And
he's not worried.If this mess does't wake people up soon..........coma.
posted on August 15, 2002 07:02:47 PM new
I can't make heads or tails of the homeland security deal.
It's the economy that'll do the Republicans and Bush in. Even though there appears to be few tangible results in anything Bush is doing, the economy will be the common thread that brings in the poll numbers. I heard the Dem Gov of I think Maine the other night- he is thiking about running for Pres.. If you get a chance check this guy out, he's pretty impressive so far. He is also an MD.
A biz professor last night said that there is a mounting probability that the US could enter a prolonged slump not unlike Japan. The next thing to go should be housing prices.
posted on August 15, 2002 08:08:04 PM new
I remember reading, when the provisions for the Homeland Security legislation was first being introduced, that it would take several years for it become an effective department. That's one example of so many things that the news media, especially TV, focus very little attention toward, but that seem to me critical.
posted on August 15, 2002 09:18:01 PM new
Why can't we just call it America's security. I really hate this moniker "Homeland "security. I feel like a German ~ pre-WW2.
What if we don't even need it in five to ten years? We will have spent all that money and created yet another monstrous agency for what?
wait...I just about know.....someone named Ashcroft seems to have something to do with it...something about internment camps?.......darn slipped right out of my mind again..shoot
With the stern granite faces of four presidents gazing down from the Mount Rushmore monument, Bush suggested the Senate was placing dangerous limits on his ability to protect the nation through the planned 170,000-strong agency whose creation he proposed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I need the flexibility to be able to look at the American people and say we're doing everything we can to protect the homeland against an enemy that hates us," Bush said forcefully to an audience that included Daschle.
Daschle, who stood listening with his hands folded in front of him as Bush spoke, later accused the president of seeking "dictatorial powers," particularly in the freedom to fire government employees and the right to move money around the government without congressional approval.
