-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/01/politics/01CONS.html?ex=1026538564&ei=1&e
n=ab167a20e857bb14
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July 1, 2002
Conservatives Question Reorganizing Domestic Security
By DAVID FIRESTONE
WASHINGTON, June 30 � He has no realistic hope of stopping the proposed
Department of Homeland Security � a reorganization of federal agencies that
official Washington suddenly considers vital to the prevention of terrorism � but
John J. Duncan Jr. says he is seriously considering voting against it.
Representative Duncan, a Republican from Tennessee with a record of trying to
knock down government projects, says the department will become another
overgrown garden. He has no illusions, though, about why his colleagues will
probably pass it overwhelmingly.
"Almost everyone in Congress wants to be seen as doing something big and lavish
for homeland security, so they'll vote to create this new department," he said. "But
I'm not sure it's going to make the dramatic difference that some people are hoping
for."
Mr. Duncan is the sole member of Congress who openly speaks of opposing the
department. But several other conservatives on and off Capitol Hill are asking
whether rearranging agencies will truly improve the nation's defense against
terrorism.
Ivan Eland of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group in Washington, wrote
that the department was "designed to pretend that the administration is doing
something," rather than to improve the nation's efficiency at gathering intelligence
or plugging holes of vulnerability.
"Even before the September attacks, the U.S. government had sufficient
bureaucratic machinery to deal with terrorist attacks on the homeland without
adding a new department," wrote Mr. Eland, the group's director of defense policy
studies, in a paper this month. "But in Washington, the typical response to any crisis
is to rearrange organizational charts and add bureaucracies. The real problem
revealed by the terrorist attacks is too much bureaucracy � causing too many
communication and coordination problems � not too little."
In an interview, Mr. Eland criticized the administration for failing to reduce
duplication and waste before announcing the plan. He said 11 government agencies
� including the departments of Commerce and State � have intelligence
departments. But rather than combining those, he said, the White House proposed a
department that would demand more money and employees.
Despite such criticism, the momentum for the new department appears
unstoppable. Democrats were the first to propose it, and most Republicans trudged
along after the administration made the idea its own. Even conservative editorial
pages like those of The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times grudgingly
set aside their opposition to bigger government and agreed.
The administration insists that creating the department will not in itself cost
taxpayer
money. In testimony before Congress this month, Tom Ridge, the White House
director of domestic security, said the department "would not grow government,"
and he predicted that the expenses of creating any new functions would be offset by
the savings derived from eliminating duplicated services.
But many conservatives said they heard such promises when the departments of
Education, Energy and Transportation were established.
Stephen Moore, the president of the Club for Growth, an antitax political action
committee, said any new cabinet department creates a demand for money. He cited
the same postwar reorganization President Bush brought up this month.
"Homeland security should have been a function of the Department of Defense, and
that's what they originally had in mind when they created it back in the 1940's," Mr.
Moore said. "That department was originally supposed to keep us safe from foreign
invaders, but our foreign policy has become so adventurous in the following years
that now they say we need a new department to handle the job."
Mr. Duncan said his staff had found that the growth of each modern cabinet
department had outpaced the inflation rate.
"We've got to start asking these questions now, before it becomes just another
department that greatly increases our expenditures," he said.
Although they have stopped short of expressing outright opposition, several other
members of Congress have voiced doubts about whether the proposed agency
would make domestic protection more efficient. Senator Charles E. Grassley,
Republican of Iowa, wrote to Mr. Ridge this month urging him to ensure that the new
department reduces government security costs.
"I am going to watch that agencies losing staff or funds do not try to replicate what
they give to homeland security just to keep their turf," he wrote.
Some liberals have also raised warnings. Representative David R. Obey, a
Wisconsin Democrat who is the ranking member of the House Appropriations
Committee, has railed about what he calls haphazard planning. Representative
John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, the ranking member of the House
Judiciary Committee, said the department was intended to deflect attention from the
intelligence failures of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central
Intelligence Agency. He also said that moving agencies from one department to
another had rarely solved problems.
Congressional conservatives who normally oppose large government initiatives said
this plan was different because of the national sense of emergency and the
perception that the security structure had failed.
"I always have a concern about more bureaucracy," said Representative Bob Barr,
Republican of Georgia, an outspoken conservative. "But in this case there's not
much doubt that things weren't working the way they should work."
Mr. Moore said conservatives should seek something in return for a new
department. "We ought to have a position of no growth in cabinet departments," he
said. "In exchange, couldn't they at least get rid of the Commerce Department?"
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