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Is Congress failing on Homeland Security oversight?
Tom Ridge, the Department of Homeland Security's first secretary, testified before the 9/11 Commission on a May morning in 2004. Ridge spoke before a hall packed with emotional New Yorkers, about two miles from the site of the World Trade Center. His subject, however, was Washington.
When Commissioner Tim Roemer asked for suggestions on improving DHS, Ridge brought up an institution in which both he and Roemer had served: Congress. It would be helpful, Ridge said, if Congress took a look at the number of committees that had power over DHS.
"I think we could be even more effective in what we're doing," he began, "if there was some means of reducing, frankly, the multiple layers of interaction that we encounter every single day."
"Well, sir, you're very polite about it," Roemer responded. "It is absolutely absurd that Congress would require you to report to 88 different subcommittees and committees when we're supposed to be fighting al-Qaeda."
Five years ago next week, the 9/11 Commission, a congressionally mandated panel investigating al-Qaeda's 2001 attacks, made 41 recommendations on such topics as improving screening at airports and creating a director of national intelligence. Commissioners say Congress and the executive branch have enacted 80 to 90 percent of their suggestions. The recommendation that Congress "create a single, principal point of oversight and review for homeland security" is a notable exception.
While insisting on changes in the executive branch, Congress did not demand that its members make the same tough choices. Under pressure from powerful committee chairs, congressional leaders allowed a system of widely distributed oversight to remain largely intact. As a result, the Department of Homeland Security is still coping with an extraordinary number of demands from Capitol Hill, which are tripping up a fledgling organization. And the crazy quilt of oversight is making it difficult for Congress to provide cogent guidance on budgeting, organization, or priorities for a department still struggling on all those fronts.