CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES THAT HAVE OVERSIGHT ROLE OVER THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY NEED TO BE CENTRALIZED

Maricruz MaGowan
June 23, 2008
CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES THAT HAVE OVERSIGHT ROLE OVER THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY NEED TO BE CENTRALIZED

Hypothesis: The fact that several Committees in Congress have oversight role over DHS makes it harder -not easier- the work of DHS and the working relationships between DHS and Congress, at detriment of the Department of Homeland Security’s already challenging situation of having had to merge 22 Agencies into one Department and in their role of protecting our homeland.
Thesis: The Congressional Committees that have oversight role over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) need to be centralized into one Committee or -at the very least- Congress needs to reach agreement in appointing one Committee in each branch to have the lead responsibility of oversight power.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created on January 24, 2003 following legislation passed by Congress on November 19, 2002. Most agencies that formed the new department merged on March 1, 2003. This important event was preceded by the creation of the White House Office of Homeland Security on October 8, 2001 by President George W. Bush. These measures were taken in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks to our homeland.
In order for this effort to become a reality, 22 Agencies had to be merged, which brought together 170,000 employees. As expected, this merger was a challenging task from the beginning because it did not allow the promptly and efficient functioning of the department and adaptation to the new structure toward meeting common goals, needs and threats.
The following chart shows the name of the Agencies, pre-merging and the new Agencies, which form part of DHS:
- inspection, border and ports of entry responsibilitiesU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement - customs law enforcement responsibilities
- inspection functions and the U.S. Border PatrolU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement - immigration law enforcement: detention and removal, intelligence, and investigationsU.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services - adjudications and benefits programs



- agricultural imports and entry inspections
FEMA

FEMA
FEMA
FEMA




, Office of Cybersecurity and Communications in the National Programs and Preparedness Directorate
in the National Programs and Preparedness Directorate
Office of Operations Coordination andOffice of Infrastructure Protection
Office of Infrastructure Protection

Original Agency (Department)	Current Agency/Office
The U.S. Customs Service (Treasury)	U.S. Customs and Border Protection
The Immigration and Naturalization Service (Justice)	U.S. Customs and Border Protection
The Federal Protective Service	U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
The Transportation Security Administration (Transportation)	Transportation Security Administration
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (Treasury)	Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (part)(Agriculture)	U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Office for Domestic Preparedness (Justice)	Responsibilities distributed within
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)	Federal Emergency Management Agency
Strategic National Stockpile and the National Disaster Medical System (HHS)	Returned to Health and Human Services, July, 2004
Nuclear Incident Response Team (Energy)	Responsibilities distributed within
Domestic Emergency Support Teams (Justice)	Responsibilities distributed within
National Domestic Preparedness Office (FBI)	Responsibilities distributed within
CBRN Countermeasures Programs (Energy)	Science & Technology Directorate
Environmental Measurements Laboratory (Energy)	Science & Technology Directorate
National BW Defense Analysis Center (Defense)	Science & Technology Directorate
Plum Island Animal Disease Center (Agriculture)	Science & Technology Directorate
Federal Computer Incident Response Center (GSA)	US-CERT
National Communications System (Defense)	Office of Cybersecurity and Communications
National Infrastructure Protection Center (FBI)	Dispersed throughout the department, including
Energy Security and Assurance Program (Energy)	Integrated into the
U.S. Coast Guard	U.S. Coast Guard
U.S. Secret Service	U.S. Secret Service

The mission and goals of each of these Agencies were already broad in scope and have been an important part of the federal Government. As one could see from the previous chart, the names of most of these organizations were changed in an effort to help them in working toward a common vision, mission, and common goals. DHS summarizes them as follows:
Vision
Preserving our freedoms, protecting America ... we secure our homeland.
Mission
We will lead the unified national effort to secure America. We will prevent and deter terrorist attacks and protect against and respond to threats and hazards to the nation. We will ensure safe and secure borders, welcome lawful immigrants and visitors, and promote the free-flow of commerce.
Strategic Goals

3. WHO ARE THE STAKEHOLDERS
The success of the colossal merger mentioned in the previous sections, does not reside solely on the Executive Branch, but also on the Legislative Branch. Congress should play an active and important role in making it possible for DHS to perform the important and emergent duties that have been bestowed on them, by centralizing the oversight roles in one or a very few Congressional Committees, or at the very least assign one Committee in the House and another one in the Senate to have direct leadership and serve as speakers for all the others. At present, there are as many as are 86 different committees and subcommittees in the House and Senate that exercise oversight role over the 22 different agencies that make up the department.
In addition, DHS has to work in close coordination with the existent intelligence community, where the Department of Defense plays an important role, and with the Committees that oversee these Agencies and DHS at the same time. And all of this is done in an environment plagued by bipartisan agendas and colloquial interests. For example, as Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann stated: “Examining a department or agency, its personnel, and its implementation policies is time-consuming. Investigating possible scandals can easily lapse into a partisan exercise that ignores broad policy issues for the sake of cheap publicity.”
Following is a representative list of these Committees.
3.1. The House of Representatives Committees Involved:

Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Rep. David E. Price (D-NC), Chair

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Rep. James L. Oberstar, (D-MN), Chairman.

3.2. The Senate Committees Involved:

3.3. Joint Committee:

As Nancy E. Roman states in one of her articles “A policy - foreign or domestic - that’s born on one side of the aisle but nurtured and challenged by the finest minds in both parties is superior policy, plain and simple. We need to work with both halves of our collective foreign policy brain.” Nonetheless, there is justified perception that partisanship has increased in Congress in the last decade or so, and this new environment has not been conducive to improving the interrelationships between bicameral committees and subcommittees or even among subcommittees either on the House or the Senate.
As Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY) who is Ranking Member of the House Homeland Security Committee stated regarding his Democratic colleagues approach to oversight of homeland security issues: “Too much is geared toward securing headlines rather than the homeland.” In other words, Rep. King means that the process is headline-grabbing and partisan. However, Rep. King does not acknowledge the fact that while the Republican Party was a majority in Congress, from the time DHS was formed until January 2007, very little, if nothing was done to consolidate oversight of DHS, either.
Rep. King summarizes the lack of central oversight jurisdiction saying that there is just such a multiplicity of jurisdiction that it translates into endless testifying, endless responses to letters, and what is even worse endlessly trying to cope with whatever the latest news story is. If the latest occurs, a large number of committees House and Senate’s feel that they have the obligation to follow it up with more hearings, and finally these hearings translate into adversarial proceedings. And if this is not enough, the oversight is further complicated by Committees’ conflicting agendas.
Asked about proposed solutions Rep. King offered to look at the issue in a bipartisan manner, which he considers an important first step. He thinks that Congress should have discussions with DHS to get ideas, instead of being told how to oversight DHS, and he reiterates that Congress should substantially diminished the time dedicated to hearings in order to free time for DHS to do their job, which is protecting the nation from terrorists using both, Congress and DHS rational approaches, instead of widespread hysteria. A change in tone, according to Rep. King, is also necessary, since Congress should avoid trivializing the oversight problem, and keep the parties, the Congress, DHS, and the public focused on an issue of great importance to our national security.
Rep. King is not alone, many others share his views. For example, as Robert McMahon states in one of his articles when he asks the question of how much does the Democratic Congress affected the Iraq war policy, he concludes, after giving examples of hearings and proposed bills, that the impact was “very little.” In spite of the fact that Democrats substantially increased the congressional oversight function on Iraq and other intelligence and homeland security related topics. Then the question is: After so many hearings and congressional inquiries mostly by the majority party, how successful these oversight hearings had been? The answer could again be: very little.
5. POTENTIAL GAPS AND DUPLICATION OF EFFORTS
Several homeland security analysts believe than although the quantity of the hearings is overwhelming, the quality of these hearings leaves a lot of room for improvement. According to Ornstein, Mann and other policy analysts that share this sentiment, “Congress has failed to ask how policies in these areas have been carried out, how faithfully laws have been executed, how reasonably taxpayer dollars have been spent, how well the executive branch has stayed within its constitutional bounds, and how vigorously malfeasance or nonfeasance by public agencies and private contractors has been handled.”
These gaps generally created by increasing partisanship have been especially apparent on issues relating to homeland security. And that is one of the many explanations of why (DHS) has been plagued by a series of management problems and a failure to prioritize its numerous responsibilities, such as creating an integrated information-management system for the department, and coordinating this information system with other intelligence agencies. This is an important gap that needs to be resolved soon, because the consequences of not doing so, have the potential to be translated into another catastrophe similar to the one we suffered on September 11, 2001.
It is also important to assess the magnitude of this problem in numbers. According to the letter sent by Secretary of DHS, Hon. Michael Chertoffon September 4, 2007, in addition to the 86 Committees and Subcommittees, both in the Senate and the House of Representatives, the total number of hearings have increased by 25% from 2004 to 2006, from 165 to 206; the number of briefings have increased by 28% from 2004 to 2006, 19% alone from 2004 to 2005, from 1,747 to 2,242; the total number of DHS’ witnesses providing testimony have increased by 31%, 27% alone from 2005 to 2006, from 205 to 268. From 2004 to 2006, DHS has provided over 10,000 pages of testimony.
In addition, DHS has produced over 535 Congressional Reports in 2007. This is an increase of 29% since 2004. Since February 21, 2006, the Secretary has responded to 2,500 Congressional letters, this does not include responses to inquiries from managers at DHS which accounts for around 7,000 just in 2007. Related to this exercise are “Questions for the Record,” which amount to 13,259 from 2004 to September 2007. A well-known example is the case related to congressional hearings and testimonies in reference to hurricane Katrina. For this case, DHS produced 400,000 pages of documents and 100 witnesses. And if this is not enough, the General Accountability Office (GAO) has produced 644 “Reports and Investigations” from 2004 related to the work of DHS.
In order to have a better understanding of this problem, one has to go beyond the barriers and difficulties created by having too many Committees and Subcommittees in the House and Senate performing an excessive oversight role, and the increasing bipartisanship environment that now characterizes Congressional hearings and interactions, it is also important to mention the role that DHS itself plays in the oversight challenge and the role that intelligence Agencies play, as well, as the role of the Department of Defense.

There is no question that Congress has failed to consolidate its jurisdiction over DHS under a single authorizing committee. However, the Department needs to improve its own coordination and operational activities to incentive Congress to do the same or in the very least to help congressional committees in implementing a better oversight role.
Although the department has been advancing its efforts and seeing some of the rewards for its efforts at integrating all of the different agencies, some of these agencies still operate as if they would not belong under the department’s structure. For decades these Agencies have operated independently and developed its own culture. The lack of desirable integration has resulted in the department’s headquarters’ leadership lacking direct-line of authority over their counterparts in the department’s component agencies.
In this sense, the Homeland Security Advisory Counciladvised Congress to take several measures that would help DHS in its own internal organization. In addition to recommending to reduce the number of congressional oversight activities, the HSC advised Congress to engage in complementary streamlining strategies such as establishing critical line items for the budget, continue to reduce the presidential-appointed senior positions at DHS, consider offering current political appointees that have highly specialized skills permanent career positions, and most importantly, interact with presidential nominees in a bipartisan manner.
According to the letter sent by Hon. Michael Chertoff, Secretary of DHS to Rep. Peter King (R-NY), which was mentioned in the previous Section, the problem with excessive oversight is getting worse, instead of better. Along with recommendations and requests such as the need to have a balance between the demands from the Congress and the operational demands that the Department needs to address in order to do their job, Secretary Chertoff’ s main request is to follow one of the main recommendations of the 9-11 commission which summarizes the issue as follows:
“Congress should create a single, principal point of oversight and review for homeland security. Congressional leaders are best able to judge what committee should have jurisdiction over this department and its duties. But we believe that Congress does have the obligation to choose one in the House and one in the Senate, and that this committee should be a permanent standing committee with a nonpartisan staff.”
The DHS duties related to operational as well as oversight tasks would also improve if DHS works in having a highly efficient relationship with other Intelligence institutions, starting with the National Security Council (NSC). This council is an excellent opportunity for DHS to raise priority issues, such as the cumbersome Congressional oversight process. The Secretary of DHS is also a member of the Joint Intelligence Community Council.

Intelligence Agencies’ missions are in many ways intertwined with the mission of DHS, the cross-cutting issues that are created by the current status may help DHS’s work in some ways, but in other ways, it helps in increasing duplication of efforts and neglecting tasks that remain to be done.
DHS work depends on proper, timely, and accurate information sharing with Agencies such as the FBI, the CIA, but also the National Intelligence Directorate and the Department of Defense. These institutions are known for having their own “culture,” and the new operational structure may work in their day-to-day operations, but it doesn’t work at including the new player: DHS.
The Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI), shares with DHS the characteristic of being a new entity, and it also serves as a model that could be followed by the oversight community at Congress. According to Hon. John Negroponte, former Director of National Intelligence this Agency was not created to manage the Intelligence Community’s individual business units, but instead to integrate them. This organization’s goal is to preside over strategy, policy, standards, and budgets, in order to make the intelligence community “more unified, coordinated, and effective.” The current Director of the DNI is Hon. Mike McConnell and he serves as Principal Adviser to the President, to the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council.
A special mention should be given to the Department of Defense. While DHS has to respond to over 86 Congressional Committees, the Secretary of Defense that owns 80 percent of the intelligence budget, ten times greater than DHS, and has seven of the 15 intelligence agencies, reports to only 36 Congressional committees and subcommittees.

The Department of Homeland Security has become the third largest federal agency, and taxpayers are rightfully wondering if they are getting a return for their money. According to DHS information, their fiscal year 2008 amounts to $46.4 billion in funding (an increase of 8 percent over the FY 2007 level). This excludes funds provided in emergency supplemental funding. The budget requests target five important areas: 1) Continue to Protect our Nation from Dangerous People, 2) Continue to Protect our Nation from Dangerous Goods, 3) Protect Critical Infrastructure, 4) Build a Nimble and Effective Emergency Response System and Culture of Preparedness, and 5) Strengthen and Unify DHS Operations and Management. The last budget activity will contribute to the centralization of DHS operations and a good policy that will help Congressional Committees and party members to work toward having a more workable oversight role.
9. CONCLUSIONS
Over the past six years, Congress' oversight of the executive branch on foreign and national security policy has virtually collapsed. Compounding the problem, the Bush administration has aggressively asserted executive prerogatives -- sometimes with dire consequences. The oversight problem must be fixed, ideally as part of a more fundamental effort to restore the balance between the two branches.
A single authorization bill would allow the authorizing committees to exercise more stringent oversight of the Department of Homeland Security to address the many homeland security issues that individual pieces of legislation have not covered, and to avoid reactive -stand-alone- legislations that would be inevitably proposed after the latest threat or incident and directed at ever-changing security concerns.
At present we are dealing with 15 Intelligence Agencies, former 22 Agencies that formed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and about 86 House and Senate Committees and Subcommittees with oversight roles over DHS. To complicate matters even further, the Secretary of Defense owns 80 percent of the intelligence budget and seven of 15 intelligence agencies. This kind of structure cannot continue if we want to ensure the safety of our homeland and the success of our intelligence body dedicated to address homeland security challenges.
It may be unrealistic to ask from Congress to have only one Committee in the House and one in the Senate overseeing DHS; it may even be acceptable to keep the roles of all the existent Committees; however, to improve the current situation, no more than two Committees -with roles clearly identified- should have the leadership over DHS’ oversight. These Committees would be:
In the House of Representatives:

In the Senate:

In conclusion, the Congressional oversight role on the Department of Homeland Security has not been effective and supportive of the mission and vision of DHS because instead of being a body that will ensure that the Department is doing the job they were asked to do, is jeopardizing this same work by having 86 Committees and Subcommittees that can inquire and request information from DHS through hearings and or correspondence, which has created and unmanageable burden to DHS. If this would not be hurtful enough these inquiries and hearings have been plagued by requests and questions whose source is not based on knowledge, but many times, on partisanship’s agendas. Topics of discussion have been redundant, duplicative, and many times, in spite of the volume have not even addressed the most important issues that Congress should care about for fear of not being in line with the party’s goals and motives, or by neglect, for not being an issue important enough for the parties, or even worse, by ignorance, since the exorbitant volume of hearings and questions gave no opportunity or time for staff members to research the issues in depth. This process has transformed the Congressional oversight on DHS from being a valuable institution that would work in close collaboration with DHS, into being a big hurdle that is preventing DHS from performing the role, for which it has been created.

Tags: opinion