Working in a Fishbowl with Malevolent Eyes All Around

Rolling so many federal agencies into a new giagantor of a new mega-bureaucracy seems to typify modern governmental responses to crises. When we were attacked on 9/11/01, the administration’s response was to create yet another bureaucracy melding everything from our border patrol and customs functionality with all sorts of other military, federal police and security operations, embracing disaster relief as well as immigration functions and adding billions for an entirely new cadre of port and airport inspectors. Congress allocates about $100 billion to this newbie cabinet-level agency, although actual expenditures are considerably less.

Back in 2001, we had the agencies we needed already; they just required a tad more coordination. Nevertheless DHS absorbed twenty-two formerly autonomous or semi-autonomous operations from the following departments: Justice, Treasury, Agriculture, Energy, FBI, Health and Human Services, Defense, Transportation and the General Services Administration. A massive new supervisory bureaucracy was put in place, TSA was created (today numbering over 55,000 people in this portion of DHS alone), and the turf wars began – both within DHS and with other federal agencies that maintained some level of separation by remaining within different cabinet departments. This cumbersome monolith staggered from the weight of its new massive configuration.

Since a number of the absorbed new operational functions had previously been “covered” by a host of Congressional committees and subcommittees, DHS now finds itself in a quagmire of Congressional oversight, unfortunately at a time in our history when Congress has fallen to one of its least productive periods. Thus, the turf wars were and are equally present as our federal elected representatives battled/battle with each other over who controlled what within Congress. The old committees just won’t let go, and it has been this way since DHS was formed in 2002.

“More than 90 committees and subcommittees have some jurisdiction over DHS, nearly three times the number that oversee the Defense Department. And that doesn’t count nearly 30 other congressional bodies such as task forces and commissions… ‘It makes no sense at all,’ said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a homeland security committee member, who attributed the structure to a ‘petty fight for power’ between committees reluctant to give up their piece of DHS….

“‘It makes it very difficult for the department,’ said King, who sees ‘no movement’ in Congress to change the situation. ‘The amount of time that goes into preparing for a congressional hearing is immense. It’s like this hydra-headed monster they have to deal with.’… Indeed, some former DHS officials said it often seemed like they had little time to deal with much else.

“Between January 2009 and [August 2014], DHS officials testified at nearly 800 congressional hearings and had a total of 10,584 ‘non-hearing engagements’ with Congress, which includes such contacts as meetings and briefings, according to statistics the department provided. Even that number does not include e-mails exchanged between DHS and congressional staff members and DHS reports prepared at Congress’s request.” Washington Post, September 25^th. And that’s the record-holder among federal departments.

Folks in Congress – hands outstretched to their campaign benefactors, implementing the strategies that these contributors pay them to effect – are constantly raising campaign financing, especially in the House, where members face re-election every other year. They need visibility, campaign material fodder, TV cameras and headlines. Holding hearings and challenging “bureaucrats” is the easy button to accomplish these self-serving goals.

It has to send drug cartels and terrorists into gales of unbridled laughter. Not only is DHS hamstrung by turf wars from within and without, adding massive layers of additional bureaucracy, but its billions of dollars of resulting waste are draining the U.S. treasury, inflating our escalating deficit and thus weakening our economy in such massive ways that even most terrorist groups must indeed envy.

DHS seems ungovernable, duplicative, self-contradictory, constantly stepping on competing toes (and vice versa), watched over by too many Congressional “bosses” with conflicting agendas and has become the poster-child for government waste and ineffectiveness. Do you really feel safer traveling with those TSA folks lethargically checking your shoes, carry-ons, etc.? This offensive trend of solving problems with new cumbersome bureaucracies is a terrible habit that we can no longer afford.

I’m Peter Dekom, and do you really feel better protected with DHS on the job (versus the agencies that pre-existed it)?