The new House majority's H.R. 1, "Implementing the 9/11
Commission Recommendations Act of 2007," may reach a floor vote
today. The bill, a part of the new congressional majority's
"100-Hours" agenda, does far less than its title implies. For the
most part, its new measures are not terribly useful, and what is
useful in the proposed law is not terribly new: a restatement of
the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, a gloss on existing
requirements and ongoing government initiatives and programs, and
demands for more reporting. Rushing the bill to a vote without
hearings or floor debate has resulted in a flawed proposal. To
avoid damaging U.S. homeland security operations and wasting
taxpayers' money, Congress should strip the most troubling
provisions from this legislation.
More Checkbook Security
The House bill would limit the percentage of grants that, as a
minimum, are assigned to each state by an inflexible formula. In
itself, this is a positive proposal, and the House passed similar
measures twice in the past under Republican leadership. This bill
veers off-course, however, in establishing at least two new grant
programs for emergency communications and creating "intelligence
fusion centers." There is nothing wrong with federal assistance on
these initiatives, but they can and should be funded out of
existing homeland security grant programs, displacing wasteful and
inefficient efforts that have done little to meet national
priorities. Simply adding more grant programs is just throwing
money at the problem and increases the risk that homeland security
will become, as the 9/11 Commission warned, just more pork barrel
spending.
More Feel-Good Security
To deter terrorists from exploiting international trade, the
U.S. currently relies on counterterrorism and intelligence programs
combined with risk assessments, random checks, and the inspection
of suspicious high-risk cargo. The House bill would replace that
system with one that mandates "strip searching" every package and
container coming from overseas. The bill expects the private sector
and foreign countries, as well as the U.S. government, to spend
billions of dollars on these inspections even though they would
likely be no more effective than current programs and, in fact,
could be much more easily circumvented by terrorists. Diverting
energy and resources into mass screening is a poor strategy that is
likely to make Americans less, not more, safe.
More Checklist Security
In an effort to address the recommendations in the 9/11
Commission's report, the bill meddles in many already ongoing
initiatives. In some cases, it would do more harm than good. The
Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) offers a case in point. PSI
is a voluntary, multi-national, bilateral program established by
the Administration to combat the smuggling of dangerous and banned
weapons, technologies, and materials. Incredibly, the bill proposes
that PSI be approved by the United Nations. While the 9/11
Commission did propose that the U.S. seek greater international
cooperation in the war on terrorism, it did not recommend that the
U.S. and other free nations outsource their responsibilities to the
U.N. or other international bodies. PSI is perfectly legitimate
under existing U.S. laws and treaties and does not require U.N.
sanction.
Back to the Drawing Board
The House's Homeland Security bill requires far more scrutiny
from Congress. The most egregious measures--such as piling on more
federal grants, adding mandatory inspections, and requiring U.N.
sanctions--should be stripped from the measure. Meanwhile, Congress
should take a hard look at the rest of the bill to ensure that it
will actually help make America safe, free, and prosperous, as the
9/11 Commission intended in its recommendations.
James Jay Carafano,
Ph.D., is Assistant Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom
Davis Institute for International Studies and Senior Research
Fellow for National Security and Homeland Security in the Douglas
and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, at The
Heritage Foundation.