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July 26, 2002, 9:00 a.m. The DHS Debacle A department we’ll spend a lifetime criticizing. By Kate O’Beirne , from the August 12, 2002, issue of National Review

ongress's race to complete the most complicated reorganization of the federal government in history prompted a senior leader at one conservative think tank to caution his colleagues, who hoped to improve the proposal. "I reminded them that we were watching the creation of a department we'll likely spend the rest of our careers criticizing," he ruefully explains. Although just several weeks old, it is already clear that President Bush's plan to toss 22 agencies into a grand new enterprise dedicated to homeland security will keep conservative critics and congressional meddlers busy for years to come. Despite the president's desire to create "an agile organization that takes advantage of modern technology and management techniques," the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) promises to be a bigger, more expensive version of the bureaucratic status quo.

Conservative foes of big government aren't alone in their growing opposition to the creation of a 15th cabinet agency. Scholars at the Brookings Institution recently issued a report sounding a warning of their own. "The danger is that top managers will be preoccupied for months, if not years, with getting the reorganization right . . . thus giving insufficient attention to their real job: taking concrete action to counter the terrorist threat at home." Because the White House legislation to consolidate 170,000 federal workers and $37 billion is thin on specifics at just 35 pages long, someone will certainly have to get the details of such a massive reorganization right. Paul C. Light, director of government studies at Brookings, objects to the president's plan as "a slapped-together approach that is destined for great confusion, great difficulty, and possible failure."

The "great confusion" part came true when the plan was beaten up rather severely as it tried to speed through about a dozen House committees on its fast track to a Rose Garden signing ceremony. Under Republican leadership, the various committees voted against virtually every major agency transfer that the administration was advocating. Committees wanted to leave the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and half of the INS out of the new department. The Ways and Means Committee agreed to let the Customs Service be moved to it — as long as the Treasury Department maintained management authority over the service.

At least the Judiciary Committee agreed that the Secret Service should be moved out of the Treasury Department — but to the Justice Department rather than to DHS. A select committee set up by the House Republican leadership undid most of the committees' handiwork, but turf-conscious members' lack of support for the administration's consolidation means that DHS faces a lifetime of congressional foot-dragging and micromanagement.

Turf battles, and overall lack of enthusiasm for the enterprise, are also evident within the administration. The Coast Guard is shoring up congressional support to be left alone, while the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is lobbying not to be left behind at Treasury. Securing the borders is a fundamental responsibility of DHS, so the attorney general and treasury secretary are slated to lose major agencies, but permitting the State Department to maintain operational control over the issuance of visas — the first line of defense against malevolent visitors — protects Colin Powell's turf.

The House committees also refused to give the administration the management and budget flexibility that it maintains is crucial to the success of the new department. The modest request to be permitted to transfer up to 5 percent of appropriations to different accounts, with prior notice to Congress, in order to be able to adapt quickly to new threats, was summarily rejected. OMB director Mitch Daniels was right when he pointed out that because "al Qaeda doesn't have a three-foot-thick code of federal regulations to read through, this department is going to need to be nimble" — but it doesn't appear the administration will be nimble enough to avoid creating a new department as encumbered by rules and regulations as any other government bureaucracy.

The speedy congressional consideration of DHS's design didn't inhibit its growth. Within days of the plan's arrival on Capitol Hill, experts were predicting that the estimated number of 170,000 affected employees was probably significantly higher; one estimate put the number of workers at 225,000. A report from the Congressional Budget Office pegged the cost of creating the department at $3 billion — not for greater homeland security, mind you, just for the reorganization costs. And, even as the administration continued to insist that its proposal is budget-neutral, homeland-security czar Tom Ridge — in response to opposition to the transfer of the Coast Guard — identified a level of commitment that promises to be an extremely expensive way to appease congressional opinion. In the case of the Coast Guard, Ridge pointed out that the service is already slated for the largest funding increase in its history, and predicted that moving it to the new department "will only increase future support for its missions."

In the House, making a hash of the president's plan was a bipartisan enterprise; in the Senate, however, Republicans grumble about majority leader Tom Daschle's apparent intent to produce a plan that suits his caucus alone. Just two weeks before the president announced that he was embracing the notion of a new cabinet agency, every Republican on the Senate Government Affairs Committee voted against a similar plan offered by Joe Lieberman. Senate GOP aides now complain that the administration has been so committed to winning Democratic support that it has insisted that the plan's point men will brief only bipartisan get-togethers.

As they watch the plan develop from a distance, Republican staffers explain that they are trying to figure out what provisions the White House considers non-negotiable. For his part, Tom Daschle declared himself early on when he announced that his caucus was unanimously opposed to any waiver authority of civil-service rules for the new secretary. Tom Ridge points out that without the requested flexibility, the new agency will be forced to operate with seven different, complex personnel and pay systems; but the administration hasn't declared that the obvious need to waive some of these civil-service restrictions is non-negotiable. A GOP leadership aide predicts that Senate Democrats will "slap together a plan without the tools to make it work, and blame Bush for its failure. . . . [They] will put this pig in a dress and call it a doll."

The work of the House's select committee devoted to creating a new bureaucracy over which dozens of congressional committees will have jurisdiction was briefly interrupted when the House Intelligence Committee released its report on pre-9/11 intelligence failures. One of the key shortcomings identified in the report: "Congressional oversight of counterterrorism is highly duplicative and inefficient."

Since 9/11, there have been over 150 hearings — in the House alone — on homeland security. None of the current problems that have been discovered in the intelligence community, the INS, or airport security will be solved by a change of address for ineffectual agencies. Nor is there any guarantee that there will be a cohesive security policy just because there's a new department. The Department of Energy was created over two decades ago, ostensibly to create a cohesive national energy policy; thankfully, perhaps, it has never succeeded.

Finally, despite its billing, the proposed reorganization is neither comprehensive nor cohesive. The administration estimates that over 100 different government offices currently share responsibilities for homeland security, so the hastily proposed transfer of 22 of them leaves the majority outside of DHS. And some of the agencies slated for this new home actually bring unrelated responsibilities into it. In addition to being charged with protecting the homeland, the new secretary will be responsible for responding to natural disasters, search-and-rescues at sea, immigration and naturalization, thwarting counterfeiters, and fighting drug smuggling.

Tom Ridge has told lawmakers that only maximum flexibility for DHS managers will make the new agency "greater than the sum of its parts," and that if it's not, "it would obviously not be worth creating." He's right.