Homeland Security

DATE=1/28/03

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=I.M. DESTLER

NUMBER=3-508

BYLINE= TOM CROSBY

DATELINE=

INTERNET=

/// Editors: This interview is available in Dalet under SOD/English News Now Interviews in the folder for today or yesterday ///

INTRO: Tom Ridge, the director of the new U-S Department of Homeland Security was sworn in last week. His department already faces big questions about funding and how to convince reluctant members of Congress to approve more money than has already been appropriated. V-O-A's Tom Crosby put that matter before I.M. "Mac" Destler. The University of Maryland professor has in the past consulted with the Executive Office of the President and the State Department on policy issues.

MR. DESTLER: When the President proposed the organization, the White House said this isn't going to cost anymore money, that essentially it's all going to be savings, it's going to be efficiencies, and then there will be new things we have to spend and it will all sort of balance each other out. Now, I think that's not a very realistic, very desirable, position.

For example, an organization like the Coast Guard was under-capitalized to begin with; now it has to continue to do everything that it did before in terms of search and rescue, maintaining buoys, et cetera, and to do more in the homeland security area, in areas like port security and things. So, it seems to me it's foolish to think they can do that effectively without a substantial increase in their resources. And the same would apply probably to organizations like the Customs Service, for example.

In addition, we have activities that haven't been going on before, particularly in the effort to protect against biological, chemical, nuclear and radiological weapons. Basically, you have a part of the Department of Homeland Security which is, as it's currently structured, more an aspiration than an operation. Meaning that it has these goals but doesn't have much resources or much people power to deal with them.

So, I think they're going to need more money than is currently appropriated. And of course the administration is caught in this box of saying there is no higher priority than homeland security but in fact not having -- or at least not allocating for this fiscal year -- the amount of resources that I and a number of other people think should be there.

MR. CROSBY: Is this to suggest that on Capitol Hill that finding additional funding is just going to be a source of more debate?

MR. DESTLER: Well, it will be a source of debate on Capitol Hill, and a continuing debate. Of course it was last week in the United States Senate, when the Democrats proposed a substantial increase of several billion dollars more in homeland security funding. I think that if it would have just been a matter of the senators, the Republicans would have gone along, but they were under strong pressure from the White House to hold the line.

I think the problem is, of course, the growing budget deficit, the fact that a very substantial expansion of the Pentagon budget is being provided, I would say, more than is justified probably by the new Iraq -- even if you add both new homeland security responsibilities plus Iraq, and the administration wants to keep cutting taxes, which reduces revenue. So, they obviously put themselves, to some degree, in a fiscal box. And circumstances have also created this for them.

MR. CROSBY: When the President goes before Congress to deliver his State of the Union speech, do you think he's going to have to reassure the members that he has not been diverted from the war on terrorism by the possible war on Iraq?

MR. DESTLER: I think that he should and probably will provide such assurance, or assert such assurance. The question it will be interesting to see is whether he will do something concretely beyond what he has already done that will give increased credibility to that assurance. The conventional wisdom among people who are dealing with homeland security is that at least its funding is not a priority right now for the White House. I heard one reasonably prominent expert in a conversation on the subject last week who made that assertion, and nobody rose to contradict him.

HOST: U-S policymaking specialist I.M. "Mac" Destler of the University of Maryland.

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