Bush's Homeland Insecurity

John Gershman
September 26, 2003, Myrtle Beach Sun-News (Myrtle Beach, SC)

Two years after the 9/11 attacks, funding for emergency responders—firefighters, law enforcement officers, public health and emergency medical personnel and others first on the scene in case of a terrorist attack—remains dangerously low.

While the Bush administration focuses on money for the occupation of Iraq, it is failing to insure the security of Americans at home. The needs are real and they do not involve lots of new, fancy technology. Instead, money is needed to put essential equipment in the hands of emergency personnel and provide them with the appropriate training.

Examples of glaring weaknesses abound.

On average, according to the National Fire Protection Association, fire departments across the country have only enough radios to equip half the firefighters on a shift, and breathing apparatuses for only one third. Only 10 percent of U.S. fire departments have the personnel and equipment to respond to a building collapse.

Many of America’s 73,000 police, fire and other public-safety agencies still cannot talk to each other in major emergencies due to a lack of interoperable communications systems. In most states, public health labs still lack basic equipment and expertise to respond adequately to a chemical or biological attack. Only two state laboratories can test for biotoxins and 39 states recently reported that their labs were not prepared to safely accept samples that might contain multiple hazards (for example, a chemical and a biological agent).

Most cities do not have the necessary equipment to determine what kind of hazardous materials emergency responders may be facing. To date, there has not been a substantial training exercise to test national and local readiness in response to a chemical attack.

Two years after such a devastating terrorist attack, this state of affairs is inexcusable. It is a telling contrast to the Bush administration willingness to focus on funding for war and occupation in Iraq or to cut taxes for wealthy Americans.

For example, in 2002, only about $750 million in federal funds was directed to our three million first responders for training and equipment to help them deal with terrorist attacks. The administration had promised $3.5 billion. Even worse is the transfer of needed money for basic services to fund the fight against terrorism. For example, the Bush administration’s proposed 2004 budget includes $2 billion in cuts from crime prevention and public safety programs.

Meanwhile, President Bush has made tax cuts benefiting the wealthy a priority more important than our essential homeland security requirements. The current federal budget calls for $27 billion for emergency responders over the next five years, while local and state governments plan to spend up 3 times that amount over the same period. But professional associations of emergency responders and leading emergency response officials from around the country estimate that these planned expenditures fall roughly $100 billion short of what is needed to insure that emergency responders have the training and equipment they need to respond to future terrorist attacks. This shortfall of $20 billion per year represents a few months worth of the $1 billion per week we are spending on the occupation in Iraq. The meager federal funding plan will not meet our emergency responders’ needs.

Even more troubling is that the Bush administration and its allies in Congress have allowed homeland security funds to be treated like candy in a piñata. Funding for emergency responders is being allocated as a new form of pork barrel spending instead of allocations on the basis of hard-headed assessments about where vulnerabilities and needs are greatest. This puts many Americans at greater risk.

To pick just one example, Wyoming (Vice President Dick Cheney’s home state) receives $10.00 per capita from the Department of Homeland Security for emergency preparedness. In contrast, New York State receives only $1.40 per capita.

Allowing the Bush administration to play “politics as usual” with homeland security programs is unacceptable. The potential cost in lives is too great.

The efforts of local emergency responders in the first minutes following an attack will be essential to saving lives and reducing panic.

Their courage—like the police and fire professionals who entered the World Trade Center on September 11—guarantees that they will respond to crises with whatever resources they have. We must demand that they have what they need to do their jobs safely and effectively. Our security requires it. Honoring the memories of those who sacrificed their lives on September 11 demands it.

John Gershman, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus and a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center in New Mexico is a contributor to “Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy after September 11” (Seven Stories Press 2003).

COPYRIGHT 2003 Global Beat Syndicate

This op-ed also ran in North County Times (Escondido, CA edition).

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