Continuing to Do More with Less? DHS and the FY2012 Budget

Last Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations bill for the coming fiscal year. By some estimates, H.R. 2017 would cut around $1 billion in DHS funding from FY2011 levels. As demands on DHS increase—such as responding to record disasters this spring, enhancing international cooperation, and improving border security—the department may now be forced to do even more with even less.

Q1: What are some of the major cuts in the appropriations bill?

A1: A number of key areas within DHS were subject to funding cuts. H.R. 2017 would reduce funding for DHS’s Science and Technology Administration, including the elimination of more than 144 research projects; for DHS headquarters; and for state and local grants. Operational areas of DHS, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were mostly spared from budget cuts.
The bill also contains a sort of “hidden” cut, in that it counts about $1 billion in additional disaster relief funding as part of DHS’s baseline budget rather than as emergency spending. That much-needed money would be used to respond to recent tornados and flooding across the Midwest and South. The net effect, however, is a drop in DHS’s core operating budget. Such accounting practices—based on the unpredictability of natural disasters—hinder the ability of DHS to affect organizational change and improve the department’s mission effectiveness. DHS officials are likely to argue that the disaster relief money, like war costs for the Department of Defense, should count as supplemental spending and not affect long-term homeland security programs and research.

Q2: What would this bill mean for DHS?


A2: The Senate will not pass H.R. 2017 in its current form. If recent history is any indication, spending cuts agreed to by both houses of Congress will be less severe than those envisioned by the House. Still, DHS faces the very real prospect of funding cuts for the 2012 fiscal year. Navigating this environment of austerity will be difficult for a new and growing department.

Since its founding almost 10 years ago, DHS has sustained criticism over bureaucratic inefficiencies. In reality, most of the department’s challenges have related to the difficulty of integrating 22 different federal agencies and managing a sprawling bureaucracy. While still in its organizational infancy, the department has shown signs of improvement. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), for instance, has performed admirably during recent natural disasters, in no small part due to an improved relationship with central authorities at DHS.

In areas where DHS is still looking to make significant bureaucratic improvements, budget cuts are only likely to exacerbate, not solve, existing problems. For example, DHS struggled to manage the implementation of SBInet because of a lack of institutional expertise in acquisition and procurement. H.R. 2017’s major cuts to departmental management and long-term investments will do nothing to reverse that trend.

Q3: What should we watch for over the next several months?

A3: Today’s political realities necessitate that almost all federal entities forgo real budget increases. But last week’s proposed cuts in H.R. 2017 come at an especially inopportune time for DHS. The department is just now gaining traction as a bureaucracy. It is responding to historic natural disasters across the country. And, as demonstrated by the recent launch of the U.S.-India Homeland Security Dialogue during Secretary Janet Napolitano’s trip to New Delhi, DHS is taking on an increasingly international portfolio. The impact of such cuts on a developing bureaucracy will only serve to slow its evolution and hinder its effectiveness.

All of this means that DHS will have to redouble its ongoing efforts to make the best use of scarce resources. The department already announced plans to accelerate the use of “risk-based criteria” for distribution of state and local homeland security grants, which were cut as part of a bill to fund the government through the rest of the 2011 fiscal year. As long as funding remains limited for other top priorities, DHS will look to explore similar methods for optimization across a wide range of programs and initiatives.

Rick “Ozzie” Nelson is senior fellow and director of the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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