"So.......how, exactly, do you define pork?"
mtstandard.com
State rakes in Homeland cash
By The Standard Staff - 08/27/2005
SUMMARY: It's not how much money is spent so much as how it's spent that protects homeland security.
If al-Qaida operatives hijack another airliner and fly it into an old barn near Dixon, we'll be ready. The Department of Homeland Security just sent $91,200 to the Dixon Rural Volunteer Fire department to buy a new truck.
Of course, you never know where the next disaster may strike, so the Bush administration and Congress are taking no chances. They're laying down a covering fire of money that's ricocheting to state and local governments throughout the country. The Dixon Volunteer Fire Department is but one of 37 small fire departments to score grants in just the most recent round of funding.
If you're thinking that underwriting local fire departments may not be the most logical federal expenditure, you're right. But logic doesn't apply.
One of the enduring images of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was the heroic response of New York firefighters. When Congress and the Bush administration set out to make America safer, they decided it would be good if we helped all "first-responders" — firefighters, police, ambulance crews, etc. — gear up, train and wait for similar emergencies. We're not picking on them. They provide just a handy recent example of how money for homeland security gets spent. It's pretty much the way most federal money gets spent.
The Homeland Security Grant Program is somewhat controversial, but not so much for the reasons you might think. It's controversial because of the way the money gets doled out. Some in congress think their states don't get their share. States with low populations, including Montana, get proportionally more than the most populous states.
Montana has received more than $37 million in homeland security grants over the past two years. That works out to an average of more than $20 for every man, woman and child in the state. By contrast, New York's share has averaged about $12.80 a person for those same years.
A provision of the USA Patriot Act (don't get us started again on that!) required homeland security grants to be distributed according to a formula; 0.75 percent of the pot of money goes to every state. That eats up a little less than half of the grant money. The rest is dished out according to population. None of it is strictly tied to making America safer.
The House of Representatives voted to require homeland security grants to be based on identified risks. The Senate apparently sees risks everywhere — well, OK, risk of losing re-election. The Senate agreed to reduce the amount guaranteed to each state to 0.55 percent of the budget for grants, but not to limit grants according to any kind of risk assessment.
The preceding seven paragraphs pretty much condemn us to at least a day on the telephone listening to people tell us that security threats come in many forms; that danger is danger no matter what its form; our security, like a chain, is only as strong as its weakest link; and the people in even the smallest towns of Montana are entitled to look to the federal government for a greater sense of security. Nobody will say out loud that homeland security money helps fuel local economies and provide jobs, but some will think it.
But pretty much all our angst about America's security has to do with jetliners hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 four years ago. We feel considerably less anxious about terrorism in the northern Rockies. Something tells us we'll feel a greater sense of security here if the country does a better job of safeguarding likely targets, even if that means less money spent in places al-Qaida and its ilk possibly never heard of. If the federal government takes care of what it's supposed to, the rest of us can manage (as we always have) dealing with the sundry other calamities and crises that have been lumped into the homeland security catch-all.
We should again remind ourselves that the more things the federal government takes on, the thinner it must spread available resources. The feds cannot extend their to-do list to include, say, taking on funding for local volunteer fire departments without cutting corners on something higher up the list — immigration and border control. It was a lapse in immigration control, not inadequacies among first responders in every burg in America, that led to the worst-ever attack on American soil.
— The Missoulian |
