(x-posted at my site)
Our current homeland security is a total joke. Five years after 9/11, after upsurges in terror attacks worldwide, we still refuse to allocate resources where they’re desperately needed. Sure, we’ll sink hundreds of billions into Iraq, but in three distinct instances this week, the Republican-led Congress wouldn’t bother to fund our most basic security needs.
Whether they were perpetrated by Al Qaeda or Kashmiri militants in Pakistan like Lashkar-e-Taiba, the deadly Mumbai train bombings reflect a pattern of targeting public ground transportation that goes all the way back to Israeli buses. So will the Do-Nothings in the Senate bother to increase rail security funding?
One day after the mass transit rail bombings in India, the U.S. Senate was asked to increase funding for rail security in this country. The majority said no.
The vote was 50-50, one vote shy of providing extra money to beef up security on U.S. railroads.
Republicans said there was already enough in the homeland security budget. But Democrat Joe Biden of Delaware was outraged, warning senators that if the bill didn’t pass, “We will regret this.” […]
“Twenty thousand people in a relatvely confined space at any one time, sit in a alumninum tube in tunnels where there’s virtually no protection,” says Sen. Biden.
And by the way, that includes Sen. Biden, who takes Amtrak into Washington from Delaware every day. He keenly understands the vulnerabilities, not only to the country, but his own person. The Do-Nothings? They don’t care. We spend nine dollars per passenger on airplane security, and less than a penny per passenger on rail security. It’s like we’re running in slow motion, able to work on preventing the LAST attack while doing nothing for the one that comes next.
And then there was the Sen. Dodd Amendment to deliver urgently needed funds to first responders like firefighters and emergency personnel, paid for by reducing the tax breaks for millionaires. Guess how the Do-Nothing Senate handled that one?
Not one Republican voted for this bill. NOT A ONE. That’s because it would mess with the Holy Writ of 21st-century conservative ideology: don’t make the rich pay for anything. We all remember during the 2004 Presidential debate, when the President said in reaction to John Kerry’s plans to fully fund homeland security and protect its citizens:
“I don’t think we want to get to how he’s going to pay for all these promises. It’s like a huge tax gap.”
And it’s not only that the Do-Nothings want to cheap out on our security. It’s not only that they would preserve every last dollar for millionaires while leaving us vulnerable to attack. The money they DO spend on homeland security goes to exactly the wrong spots. Just this week the Do-Nothing Senate decided petting zoos in Indiana are more threatened than the Big Apple:
The Senate refused yesterday to restore $750 million in anti-terrorism funds that have been taken away from New York and Washington and shifted to smaller cities thought to be at lower risk of attack.
By a vote of 53 to 47, the Senate killed an amendment by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and others, who protested the 40 percent funding reduction for New York this year and a 43 percent cut for Washington in homeland security grants.
“New York City and Washington, D.C., remain at the top of any [threat] intelligence we get, but they were given drastic reductions,” Clinton said. Had Clinton’s amendment been embraced by the Republican-controlled Senate, federal grants for protecting bridges, monuments and other possible targets of attack in New York and Washington would have been restored next year to their 2005 levels.
Sen. Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, acknowledged that he was “surprised and quite shocked” when he heard of the funding cuts for the two cities that were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. But he said that adding $750 million to a $32.8 billion domestic security bill for fiscal 2007 would “bust the budget.”
The current budget deficit is nearly $300 billion. $750 million is not even 1/3 of 1% of that. It’s far smaller in relation to the budget as a whole. And there’s a very easy way to keep the spending budget-neutral. Stop putting your money and attention into the Amish Country Popcorn Factory and the “Beach at the end of a street,” and shift it to the ACTUAL terror targets.
This is so completely wrongheaded and dangerous that it almost defies description. The Republicans have worshipped at the holy altar of low taxes for so long that they literally can’t even protect the country if it means the rich won’t get their tax cuts. And they’ve instituted so much pay-to-play and earmarks run amok on the Hill that every small town in the country is having a free-for-all with Homeland Security dollars, taking that pool of cash away from where it’s needed the most. It’s so shocking that it almost feels like it’s by design.
They don’t want to pay to keep the nation safe. They don’t want to inconvenience millionaires. In fact, they want to make sure the nation is NOT safe, from a political standpoint, for only through fear do they succeed.
