Making sense of the FY2009 budget request for DHS
The president’s recently-unveiled budget request for homeland security for fiscal year 2009 illustrates my point. (FY2009 will run from October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009.)
DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff announced last week that the FY2009 request "represents $50.5 billion in funding," which he said was "an increase of 6.8 percent over the 2008 fiscal year level."
That’s a hefty increase, but it’s hard to see precisely which budget numbers Chertoff was using to make that assertion.
As budget mavens know, there are several different categories of spending that get cited whenever new budgets are released. "Budget authority" represents the authorization (but not the formal obligation) by Congress to spend money in a particular area. "Appropriations" represent the decision by Congress to grant a government department the right to spend some or all of that authorized money. And "outlays" represent the actions by an individual department or agency to cut a check and buy something with those appropriated dollars.
With all these terms flying around, it’s important to nail down precisely which categories of spending are supposedly being raised.
When I pored through the FY2009 budget details released by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) last Monday, I saw that "budget authority" for DHS was $41.1 billion in fiscal year 2008 and that the Bush Administration estimates that figure will drop by about 2 percent to $40.1 billion in fiscal year 2009. Budget authority is expected to drop another 4 percent to about $38.4 billion in FY2010, according to the latest budget figures.
"Outlays" show a different story. Total outlays for DHS spiked upwards in fiscal year 2006 to $69 billion, due in large part to enormous expenditures by FEMA and other components related to Gulf Coast reconstruction efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. However, outlays fell back sharply in FY2007 to $39.1 billion and then climbed upwards by about 8 percent to $42.3 billion in FY2008. The administration is now estimating that outlays for DHS will grow another five percent in FY2009 to $44.3 billion, before they slip backwards for the following three years to their FY2008 level.
Of course, throwing around these budget comparisons makes my eyes glaze over, so I can only imagine what they’re doing to the eyes of the casual reader.
That’s why I’ve concluded that the key to dissecting a new budget is looking for new spending that will support new initiatives that apparently have gathered sufficient strength within the department to justify the launch of a new program or the expansion of a fledgling effort.
Here are a few such initiatives to keep your eye on that have been slated for beefed up spending:
• The E-Verify automated identification system run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to confirm employment eligibility by citizen and non-citizen new hires.
• A biometric detainee location tracking module being developed for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to monitor the whereabouts of allegedly illegal immigrants.
• Command 21, a derivative of Rescue 21, the U.S. Coast Guard’s rescue-at-sea program, which would integrate a series of communications antennas along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf Coasts in an effort to enhance maritime domain awareness.
• A travel document checking program launched by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to ensure that airline passengers are using authentic boarding passes.
• Further deployment of the EINSTEIN system to protect federal computer systems against cyber threats and intrusions.
• Establishment of the first Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, akin to the review undertaken every four years by the Defense Department, which will recommend long-term strategy and priorities for DHS.
• Expansion of the Behavior Detection Officers program that teaches TSA officers to identify potentially high-risk individuals.
• Creation of 10 Visible Intermodal Protection and Response Teams (comprised of air marshals, TSA inspectors and canines) to provide surge capabilities for the aviation and mass transit sectors.
• Start of a new Southwest Border Enforcement Initiative that will ensure that sufficient investigators, prosecutors, marshals and detention capabilities exist to catch and prosecute criminals at U.S. borders.
In a few weeks, DHS will celebrate its Fifth Anniversary as an independent federal department. The department’s funding levels remain strong; even if not as robust as Secretary Chertoff suggests. New DHS initiatives continue to be launched. So, overall, those who pay closest attention to homeland security -- public officials at federal, state and local levels plus the commercial companies that supply the necessary technologies -- have good reasons to be optimistic about the future.
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