Where We Stand: Our Principles On Protecting the American Homeland

Sacrificing civil liberties for security is unacceptable. Maintaining a strong and vibrant civil society is an essential part of protecting the character of the nation and sustaining the strength for the long fight against terrorism. Instruments that are employed must both effectively reduce threats and protect our freedoms. No fundamental liberty guaranteed by the Constitution can be breached or infringed upon. Any new intrusion must be justified by a demonstration of its effectiveness in diminishing the threat. The full extent and nature of the intrusion must be understood and appropriately limited, and appropriate oversight measures must be put in place to ensure that these powers are not abused.

Participation in a free society carries duties and responsibilities as well as privileges. All levels of government, the private sector, and individual citizens must fulfill their appropriate roles to make the nation safer. The United States was founded on the concept of federalism, which carefully enumerated, separated, and restrained the powers of the national government. The necessity of protecting U.S. citizens does not override the principles of federalism; rather, homeland security solutions should draw on the strength of this approach to limited government. For example, local agencies are far better prepared to determine how best to respond to disasters, including successful attacks. Local governments must also bear the fiscal burdens commensurate with their responsibilities.

Looking to the federal government with its deep pockets may be convenient, but it is not sustainable in the long term and is likely to result in lethargic policymaking, lack of innovation, and increased vulnerability as bureaucrats far removed from local needs fail to act appropriately. Instead, a generally accepted burden-sharing agreement among federal, state, and local authorities, with each fulfilling its appropriate role, is the right answer.

Similarly, homeland security should not be an excuse to expand the regulatory burden of government that is borne by the private sector. By and large, private-sector entities will bear many of the expenses for providing security of commercial enterprises: After all, they own most of the means that produce and trade goods and services, and they benefit most from these activities. Security, in much the same manner as providing for environmental and safety concerns, is part of the price of doing business in the modern world. However, if participants are to bear the responsibility for protecting the ways and means they use to conduct commercial activities, they must have the freedom to determine how to provide security in the most efficient and effective manner.While there is a place for security regulations, they should be based on open standards that are uniformly applied. The optimum regulations will be performancebased. In other words, they will set reasonable objectives without dictating to the marketplace how to achieve the desired ends.

Economic power is the root of the nation’s strength and the source of power that will enable the United States to both out-compete terrorists over the long term and better the lives of American citizens. Maintaining a robust economy must be a priority. The United States is intricately tied to worldwide networks of trade and exchange, which must be protected from attack or exploitation by terrorists without inhibiting the free flow of goods, services, people, and ideas. Likewise, the United States should eschew economic polices that would make the nation less competitive and, as a result, less safe.

Creating overly expensive and intrusive security regimes is counterproductive. The United States must pursue a strategic approach to counterterrorism that rejects the notion that there is a single “silver-bullet” solution to transnational threats. Rather, America must develop a multilayered system that assumes no one security initiative will suffice. This approach provides multiple opportunities to thwart or mitigate terrorist acts. Security is provided not by a single initiative, but by the cumulative effect of all security programs. For example, securing U.S. national borders must be a critical element of homeland security, but that means more than “securing the border.” Border security includes addressing the issue from the point of origin, in transit, at the border, and within the United States and addressing issues ranging from illegal immigration to identity theft and document fraud to transnational crimes, including drugs, arms, and human trafficking. To build an effective layered security system, funding must be directed toward programs that provide the greatest contribution to supporting the critical mission areas established by the homeland security strategy. Getting the “biggest bang for the buck” is a worthwhile criterion for guiding spending decisions.

Virtually no aspect of homeland security—from safeguarding commerce to protecting the border and providing intelligence and early warning to engaging in a global struggle of ideas—can be accomplished without significant international cooperation. The United States must energetically engage other nations in multiple ways: in bilateral cooperative agreements, multinational forums, and international organizations, using each appropriately to achieve the measures needed to combat terrorism.Most important, this global enterprise must engage both the developed and the developing worlds. The developing world cannot be sidelined from the pathways of secure global commerce. Allowing that to happen would play into terrorist hands by letting the economies of developing countries fall even farther behind and simultaneously creating new sanctuaries and opportunities for terrorists to use against the United States.

To guard the nation during a protracted war against terrorism, Congress created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by integrating the activities of more than 22 federal agencies and programs into a single cohesive effort. While the department has performed yeoman’s service in striving for this goal, it is not clear that Congress is doing its part by providing appropriate oversight. From just the most recent legislative session, there is more than enough experience to suggest that it is long past time for both the House of Representatives and the Senate to establish permanent committees to oversee homeland security.

Creating the Homeland Security Department was the right thing to do. It was the most significant transformation of the U.S. government since the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947. Two years after creation of the DHS, however, an assessment needs to be conducted to look at structural, performance, management, resource, and legal authority issues and to suggest improvements. The Administration and Congress must learn from the experiences of the past few years and ensure that the DHS is structured and resourced to perform its missions efficiently and effectively.

As the final report of the 9/11 Commission concluded, current grant programs are in danger of becoming porkbarrel legislation. Federal funding should focus on initiatives that will make all Americans safer. That includes providing state and local governments with the capability to integrate their counterterrorism, preparedness, and response efforts into a national system and expanding their capacity to coordinate support, share resources, exchange and exploit information, and respond to catastrophic terrorism. In addition, the federal government must enhance its own capacity to increase situational awareness of national homeland security activities and to shift resources where and when they are needed. To achieve this, the Administration should fully implement Homeland Security Presidential Directive 8. Congress should pass legislation mandating a structure for distributing funds based on strategic needs, performance-based spending, and assessments of readiness. Give-away grant programs such as COPS and Fire Grants should be discontinued and their resources rolled into a general grant program administered by the DHS.

Programs such as US-VISIT and Secure Flight should be implemented as soon as practicable. The government should also develop new technologies such as data mining, link analysis, and other information tools and develop policies and programs that enable it to focus law enforcement resources on real threats more effectively while limiting its intrusion into the lives of U.S. citizens.

Achieving both goals requires promoting economic growth in the developing world. The United States should aggressively pursue free trade agreements. To ensure that foreign aid does not perpetuate policies that retard growth and development in poor nations, it should also target assistance toward developing countries with good governance, expand technical assistance programs to focus on security programs, and create one-stop shops for security assistance and coordination.