The surest, quickest way to waste money is to give it to the government. Local, state and federal governments are all equally adept at burning through tax dollars with little or no measurable effect.
Following September 11, the federal government found itself in a position to spend huge amounts of money on the mother of all budgetary excuses: war. The billions already dedicated to the war in Afghanistan are a necessary burden we had ignored for quite some time prior to the terror attacks. President Bush and others in the government are right to call for higher wages for soldiers and better equipment with which to fight.
The wisdom of proposed defense spending begins to wane, however, when one looks to the $37.7 billion the Bush administration hopes to spend on homeland security. The de facto stewards of this budgetary windfall are Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and his newly christened Office of Homeland Security. Just what exactly Ridge hopes to do with almost $40 billion of our tax dollars is unclear. To date, the office has done next to nothing to increase homeland security.
Ridge's crowning achievement so far, the color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System, seems similar to the mood ring in both design and usefulness. The only purported function of the new system is to serve as a means of communication between different levels of government. In theory, the system "provides a common language, people will know automatically what they are supposed to do," according to the Homeland Security Web site at www.whitehouse.gov/homeland. In practice, the system does nothing more than assign a color and a set of recommended procedures to a given threat level.
And because those recommended procedures are just that, recommendations, the only potentially functional portion of this new "language" becomes worthless. If local authorities see a need, they can institute some or none of Ridge's suggested procedures.
As local governments begin to reassess the procedures they use to deal with terror attacks, they would do well to ignore Ridge's advice. Among the insightful list of procedures suggested at the highest threat level is, "increasing or redirecting personnel to address critical emergency needs."
Bringing more help to the scene of an emergency certainly seems like a good idea, but isn't that already the standard procedure for most emergency response teams, like firefighters or police officers? Do we really need a $40 billion dollar government agency to tell our local authorities that they should go to the scene of an emergency? The more you read into the Homeland Security Advisory System, the more it seems like a replica of the emergency protocols already in place on the state and local levels.
If new procedures are needed so badly to deal with the terror threat, local governments will surely find a way to adjust their existing procedures on their own. Terrorist-specific responses do not need to be proposed by the federal government, let alone by an office with no experience in crisis management. Not surprisingly, considering his meager experience with the topic, Ridge's suggestions do almost nothing to address how emergency actions should change in the face of terrorist threats.
Maybe we don't need the protective rainbow of the Advisory System after all, but certainly the Office of Homeland Security still has some merit. If not for Ridge's office, then the FBI might be the only agency left to warn us of terrorist threats. Clearly, there is no sense in leaving a task to one government entity when two can do the job so much more inefficiently. Perhaps we should fix existing agencies before we gorge new ones. S eptember 11 might have passed into obscurity had the INS or the FBI and CIA been properly funded.
Maybe fortifying and funding our existing infrastructure is a better way to spend $40 billion on homeland security. If only budget and policy decisions were color-coded, too.
James Manley is a journalism sophomore.
Reach him at james.manley@asu.edu.