US Senate approves $40.6 bn homeland security budget
Ignoring a veto threat from the White House, the Senate has overwhelmingly passed the 2008 Homeland Security appropriations bill which increases spending on aviation, port, and border security
The $40.6 billion measure is $5.2 billion more than the department's original budget request, prompting the veto threat. The measure will now go to a House-Senate conference where negotiators will reconcile differences between the $36.3 billion legislation passed by the House.
The Senate bill, which passed late 26 July, includes $3 billion for border security taken from the failed immigration bill. It includes $1 billion for border fencing, infrastructure, and technology as well as $570 million to hire 3,000 more Border Patrol agents.
The bill also shifts $45.5 million from ship-borne container security to more vulnerable areas, such as air freight. Senate Democrats said they were concerned with the low proportion of air cargo which is currently being screened. Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, noted that on average, 7,500 tons of cargo is placed in the holds of passenger aircraft, "little of which is screened for explosives, and virtually none is screened for radiation."
The concern with the lack of inspection of air cargo was also echoed by the 9/11 Commission, which recommended that all cargo going on passenger aircraft be screened for explosives. Both Senate and House versions of legislation to implement most of the still-unmet commission recommendations call for 100 per cent screening of all passenger aircraft within three years. Neither version specifies a technology or method to accomplish that goal. The Senate version, passed late last week, also calls for implementing screening of all maritime cargo bound for the U.S. from foreign ports within five years.
The Bush administration is unhappy not only with the DHS budget. Bush said he had a $933 billion top-line goal for discretionary spending in 2008, but the Democratic-controlled Congress is now considering a series of appropriations bill which, if passed, would go over Bush's goal by more than $22 billion. HS Daily Wire
