Duct tape and plastic were all Tom Ridge had to offer the American people last week when he announced that clouds of biological and chemical weapons might soon fill the sky.
Intelligence was indicating that a major terror attack was imminent. But instead of executing a well-thought-out national strategy for protecting our nation, Ridge dusted off his patriotic coloring book and started painting the flag orange. The media was excited -- there was something other than Iraq to discuss!
Missile batteries dotted the hillsides surrounding our nation's capital; police armed with assault rifles rode aboard New York City's subways. And campus law enforcement paused, shrugged and continued its typical routine.
In the past, I have criticized Ridge and the administration for its failure to outline a security strategy that will protect the nation from a terrorist attack. Several rants from Osama bin Laden and a new federal department later, however, it has become clear that not much has changed.
A bi-partisan group organized by the Council on Foreign Relations and led by former Sens. Warren Rudman and Gary Hart concluded as much when it declared in a recent report, "America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic attack." Throughout the report, "America: Still Unprepared, Still in Danger," the panel reveals several disturbing realities about America's current level of preparedness.
It notes that 650,000 local and state police officials are operating in "a virtual intelligence vacuum" without necessary access to terrorist watch lists. Cargo entering the nation remains largely unscreened. In municipalities across the nation, first responders have incompatible radio systems and lack the training and gear to respond to a chemical or biological attack. These and other facts led the report's authors to conclude, "America's own ill-prepared response could hurt its people to a much greater extent than any single attack by a terrorist."
At first, the White House seemed concerned by this. Last June, the president artfully stole the congressional Democrats' idea of creating a Department of Homeland Security and made it his own. During the fall elections, Karl Rove revved up the White House office of strategery, Democrats stumbled, and on Election Night the American people voted to hand control of Congress to the Republicans, believing that the party's top priority was protecting America. Apparently, however, their trust was misplaced, for the president's promises now seem to have been little more than political rhetoric.
In Washington, where money speaks louder than glitzy photo ops, the president's recent spending decisions speak volumes about his administration's commitment to homeland security. Before passing this year's budget, congressional Republicans rejected a Democratic proposal to add an additional $5 billion to the inadequate $40 billion appropriated for homeland security.
While under Democratic control, the Senate Appropriations Committee had approved $5.1 billion to assist state and local governments in emergency preparedness. Since taking control, the Republicans have reduced the level of funding to $3.5 billion, a majority of which is actually money redirected from existing law enforcement programs.
The Republican budget for 2003 also failed to fund several other security measures. The $57 million dollars needed for a Customs Service project to inspect cargo was slashed to $12 million. The $379 million urgently needed by the Energy Department to secure the nation's nuclear materials was cut to $125 million. And during the same week Bush promoted "Project Bioshield," a new federal initiative to prepare the nation for a possible bio-terror attack, he released his 2004 budget that calls for cutting the Center for Disease Control's bio-terrorism budget by $233 million.
Responding to the criticism that he is not fulfilling his promise to secure the nation, the president claims that tough economic times require prudent spending. In the same breath, however, he argues for his $674 billion tax cut -- a measure that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has labeled "premature" and currently "unnecessary" to help the nation's stalled economy.
While the president's 2004 budget appropriates $41 billion for homeland security, it also includes $100.6 billion worth of tax cuts. Inherent in Bush's "fuzzy math" is the notion that cutting taxes, mainly for the wealthy, is more important than protecting every American from a terrorist attack. In light of the government's constitutional duty to "provide for the common defense," Bush should rethink his priorities.
Because of the administration's unwillingness to pay more than lip service to homeland security, we are left relying on duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect us. This week, the Department of Homeland Security kicked off its new "citizen preparedness campaign."
If we're lucky, the television ads telling us to "duct and cover" our windows will be as amusing as the "duck and cover" ads from the Cold War. While studies indicate that duct tape and plastic may protect us from chemical or biological agents, knowing when to seal up our houses requires that the government know when an attack is occurring. Currently, most communities are ill-equipped to do so.
Indeed, only when Ridge stops playing with his color wheel and Bush stops prioritizing tax cuts over homeland security will the government be able to address the threats terrorism poses to our country.
