Napolitano says thanks but no thanks, DHS has funds

[Sigaba]

Source is here.

Napolitano says thanks but no thanks, DHS has funds
By Jordy Yager
Posted: 03/25/09 07:06 PM [ET]
The head of the Department of Homeland Security turned down an offer for more money to fight crime along the U.S.’s southern border, saying she’ll pay for it with the funds she has.

At a meeting of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said he requested an additional $380 million in funds for enhanced border protection.

But Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she thought that the agency’s existing funds would cover the costs of the administration’s increased presence in the border region.

“These actions so far are designed to be budget-neutral,” she said. “What I have done is identify other activities that are less urgent ... to be able to move these resources where I think they are needed most.”

President Obama’s administration announced Tuesday that it planned to send hundreds more federal agents to the Southwest to battle the increasing levels of guns, money and drugs trafficked across the border.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) joined Lieberman in suggesting that perhaps more resources were needed to fight the growing levels of violence and drug trafficking. He also expressed his concern that other areas of law enforcement would suffer as they lost personnel to the Southwest’s increased manpower.

Napolitano said the increase in forces along the border the administration announced Tuesday was not the “last word” on the matter, and that it would be open to revision following Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s visit to Mexico this week and President Obama’s trip in April.

“If we need to scale up, that will be something that we will bring to you,” she told Lieberman. “In light of the other demands on the budget and the economic exigencies of the situation, I viewed it as my responsibility to find a way to pay for this with the money that Congress has appropriated.”

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee supported Napolitano’s plan and refusal to ask for money, calling it a “prudent approach” in an economically trying time.

“I’m not certain that just plusing-up the budget is the way to go,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). “I think what [Napolitano] has offered is a reasonable approach to the situation. She’s saying, ‘Let me look at the budget, we’ll assign some people, and if we do that and it doesn’t work, then we’ll [ask for more money].’ ”

But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) criticized Napolitano for not requesting more money and said he would support sending military personnel to the border, a move the administration said it is not considering.

“It’s, quite frankly, not appropriate, in my opinion, to say that we’ve got budget problems when it comes to this,” said Graham. “I would encourage you not only to think about it but come back to us and say, ‘Help me fund it.’

“When it comes to the idea of how to use the military, if you think there’s a need for it, let’s get all in.”

Despite assurances that current funding would suffice, Napolitano may not have a say in the matter, according to Lieberman.

“So we may have a friendly disagreement,” said Lieberman of Napolitano’s refusal to ask the committee for more money. “I may try to get you more resources than you’re asking for.

“Sen. McCain and me have an inherent tendency to want to support surges,” added Lieberman, who along with McCain supported the troop increase in Iraq in 2007.

Meanwhile, Clinton arrived in Mexico on Wednesday and acknowledged the role the U.S. plays in Mexico’s drug wars.

“Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” she said, according to media reports. “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.”

And Lieberman told Napolitano he thought she could use the money.

“I think you’re going to need more resources to get the job done,” said Lieberman, who in his 2010 budget requested $250 million to hire an additional 1,600 customs and border protection officers along with additional funds for border protection activities. “I mean, this is a kind of war.”

Obama’s plan would send to the region more than 300 Homeland Security personnel, 16 Drug Enforcement Administration personnel and 100 Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives personnel.

The recently passed omnibus spending bill included $300 million to supply the Mexican government with helicopters, police training and other tools to wage war against the cartels, which were responsible for more than 6,000 murders in Mexico last year.

“The 6,000 homicides already noted in the northern states of Mexico is a huge number,” Napolitano said. “But the fact that over 550 of them were assassinations of law enforcement and public official personnel is itself chilling. And that indicates itself the seriousness with which this battle must be waged.”

Ms. Napolitano declined the additional funding after giving the statement available here. In that statement, Ms. Napolitano discussed in detail her expertise and experience.

I have fought border crime for the past 16 years in my posts as Governor, Attorney General, and U.S. Attorney in the border state of Arizona. I have hiked, driven, flown in a helicopter, and even ridden horseback over our southwest border. While border crimes are not new to those of us who are from border states, they are troubling, which is why we are bolstering DHS's ability to go after border criminals.

Clearly, we have nothing to worry about with her firm hand at the wheel.

[csquare]

PHOENIX -- Police Chief Jack Harris, a solid block of a man with a shock of thick gray hair, is stolid and patient, but there are limits. Clearly he is weary of explaining that this is one of America's safest large cities, with declining rates of violent crime and property crime, even though it has one of the nation's highest rates of home foreclosures. Unfortunately, there are the kidnappings.
There were 368 reported kidnappings for ransom here last year -- perhaps more than anywhere else, other than Mexico City, where kidnapping is such a long-established industry that the wealthy sometimes buy kidnap insurance. It is difficult to know how many kidnappings occurred there or here: Many are not reported because it can be dangerous to do so. And because they are settled before there is time to report them. Receiving a finger severed from the kidnap victim often speeds ransom transactions in Mexico. Not here yet.
In any case, law-abiding citizens here are rarely at risk. Most of the kidnappings are drug smugglers and human traffickers preying on one another.
Some of the smugglers who bring in drugs from Mexico bring people, too, along desert trails and through dry washes, to "drop houses." Regarding both drugs and people, Phoenix is a transshipment point: Most of both are distributed to other states. But some of the people become pawns in horrific transactions. A person in the United States might pay, say, $2,500 to have someone smuggled into the country, and then might receive a phone call: Pay another $5,000, and we will stop raping or torturing -- do you hear the screams? -- the person you want.
A small "drop house," with no functioning toilet, may, Chief Harris says, hold 60 people -- he has seen 100 -- in squalor. Fifty of them just want to move deeper into America in search of work, but all of them might have only their underwear, their clothes having been taken away to prevent them from running away.
The cross-border traffic in narcotics and people is, Harris says, just one way globalization is shaping crime. When the United States tightened controls on supplies of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, the precursor chemicals for manufacturing methamphetamine, American motorcycle gangs were pushed out of the business. The production of those drugs, which had been done in many improvised labs in rural America, or even in American kitchens, moved to Mexico, where drugmakers imported ephedrine and pseudoephedrine from China.
To the problem of reducing regular crime -- homicides in Phoenix were down 24 percent in 2008 -- Harris has applied proven methods. They include the nimble deployment of manpower to high-crime hot spots, close relations between police and neighborhoods, and intense concentration on the small number of career criminals who commit a large majority of the crimes -- often hundreds a year by each individual.
Phoenix's familiar sorts of crimes have not much to do with most of the city's immigrants, legal or illegal. They commit a smaller percentage of the crimes (10 percent) than they are of the city's population (24 percent). But the lurid crimes that are giving this city an unmerited reputation as dangerous represent the seepage of the Mexican cartels into his city.
For them, Harris says, "The answer is not in Phoenix. The answer is in Washington." We know how to close a border, says Harris with acid dryness -- "build a wall" and deploy "machine gun nests." But, "I personally think that is stupid." For now, however, the United States "has turned immigration policy over to Mexican thugs." So we have reached a point at which barbed wire, car batteries and acid become the business tools of kidnapper-torturer-extortionists.
With a force large enough to police the nation's fifth-largest city, Harris can deploy 60 officers to deal with one kidnapping. That would be impossible in smaller cities, to which such crime might be driven by success here. But "don't give me 50 more" officers to "deal with the symptoms." Rather, says Harris, who was raised in a rough Phoenix neighborhood, give me comprehensive immigration reform that controls the borders, provides for whatever seasonal immigration the nation wants, and one way or another settles the status of the 12 million who are here illegally -- 55 percent of whom have been here at least eight years.
For those whose profession it is, law enforcement sometimes seems like bailing an ocean with a thimble. Harris wants not a bigger thimble but a smaller ocean.


Guess this wasn't happening on her watch? I'm sure TS can really go indepth with this. Glad we have someone of her experience in the position!

[Team Sergeant]

Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris is nothing more than a spineless politician, I say that because he cannot be fired like most police chiefs can and he knows he’s safe for years to come.

Also remember, Police Chief Jack Harris speaks only for Phoenix, the valley’s violence is on the rise, many murders no longer are reported in the news, even ones committed in Phoenix. I've no idea how the chief thinks the violence is on the decline or rather that’s it’s being underreported and is also, now, valley wide. What I mean because Phoenix has 3000 LEO’s much of the crime is moving to Avondale, Buckeye, Mesa, Cave Creek, Glendale, etc etc etc these are all the small towns surrounding Phoenix. And believe me the killings, executions, home invasions, drugs, ID theft etc are rampant. This is the only area in the entire country where four individuals can be shot execution style, hands and feet tied, bodies burnt, left beside the side of the road, and no one reports it in the local media. This is also one of the only places where 150 illegals can be kidnapped and held hostage at gunpoint and it doesn’t make news. Anywhere else it would be national news.

I also understand that Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris and the mayor Phil Gordon (including the local media) are on a campaign to blow smoke up peoples skirts, "make Phoenix" seem safe, and I’ve discussed this before. How else do you get millions of stupid old folks to retire here?

I’m betting 2009 is the year we have multiple "beheadings" in the Valley.

Napolitano is a complete moron. Wait until the jobless situation gets a bit worse here in the Phoenix area, the weather gets warmer and the illegals start getting money hungry……. It’s going to be a banner year for violence, I’d bet on it.

[Red Flag 1]

Napolitano and Pelosi skip off arm and arm into the sunset of the great southwest........damn; looks like I picked the wrong day to give up dramamine!

RF 1

[ZonieDiver]

You know there is an underlying agenda when a Washington bureaucrat TURNS DOWN "free money" that Congress is attempting (almost) to force upon them! To quote Al Pacino in "And Justice For All" - "...something is realllly rotten!"

[Pulsar]

Just an estimate, but it sounds like the money was turned down to score political points. With the rampant spending by the Obama administration, they can use something like this and claim they are being fiscally responsible.

[Patriot007]

It makes sense that she turned down the money. There is no more terrorism, only "man-made disasters", and we all know you can't stop disasters. You can only be "ready" when they occur.

Time to read that "Be Prepared" thread again...

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Pulsar

Just an estimate, but it sounds like the money was turned down to score political points. With the rampant spending by the Obama administration, they can use something like this and claim they are being fiscally responsible.

Pulsar--

I like the logic on scoring political points but I don't know whom the SecHS is trying to impress.

She spoke of "budget neutral" changes for "activities that are less urgent." I think that shift in focus--rather than declining additional funding--is the bell she's trying to ring.

ETA

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said

I’m not certain that just plusing-up the budget is the way to go[.] I think what [Napolitano] has offered is a reasonable approach to the situation. She’s saying, ‘Let me look at the budget, we’ll assign some people, and if we do that and it doesn’t work, then we’ll [ask for more money].’

I'd be curious to know if he brought the same sensibility to the table when the stimulus bill designated $2,433,551,064 for his state. (Source is here.)

[Ret10Echo]

So would the "Budget Neutral" changes be politc-speak for:

"We are looking at our spending and have determined we are currently wasting more money than you offer....."

[The Reaper]

I'd wager that the fence money which was budgeted is not going to be spent on fencing.

TR

[greenberetTFS]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

Pulsar--

I like the logic on scoring political points but I don't know whom the SecHS is trying to impress.

She spoke of "budget neutral" changes for "activities that are less urgent." I think that shift in focus--rather than declining additional funding--is the bell she's trying to ring.

ETA

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said

I'd be curious to know if he brought the same sensibility to the table when the stimulus bill designated $2,433,551,064 for his state. (Source is here.)

Sigaba,

Good post. I was able to see where that stimulus money was going in my state. Only problem is I live in Pearl River county and nothing is slated for it..........

GB TFS

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by greenberetTFS

Sigaba,

Good post. I was able to see where that stimulus money was going in my state. Only problem is I live in Pearl River county and nothing is slated for it..........

GB TFS

GB TFS--

Sir, thank you.

IMHO, the database would benefit from search features that allowed one to view how the money is being spent by congressional district and the representative serving that district. This feature would allow for voters to decide to punish or to reward their congresspersons as they see fit.

[echoes]

Originally Posted by Patriot007

It makes sense that she turned down the money. There is no more terrorism, only "man-made disasters", and we all know you can't stop disasters. You can only be "ready" when they occur.

Time to read that "Be Prepared" thread again...

IMHO,

It is always a good time to read the "Be Prepared" thread!

Originally Posted by The Reaper

I'd wager that the fence money which was budgeted is not going to be spent on fencing.
TR

An excellent point Sir, and as usual, spot-on!