Homeland Security as Public Works Project

As an American it's frustrating to see so many billions of tax-payer dollars wasted on "Homeland Security". The Department of Homeland Security operates with a budget of over $46 billion (a 10.7% increase over 2008), and it's mission extends far and wide across countless departments, agencies and industries. Just take a look at this 2009 budget overview if you think it's just about slowing people down at the airport. (If there is nothing good on TV this month because of the WGA strike, you can always read all 3,574 pages of the budget details.)

What's frustrating is that I'm personally convinced that despite spending over $126 million dollars per day I think any sufficiently motivated person with average intelligence could figure out countless ways to harm, blow-up, poison and terrorize the American population. It took just a single man and an adolescent boy to terrorize the Beltway Tri-state back in 2002, increasing the area's murder rate by 25%. Imagine if instead of hijacking a plane, 12 men manage to emulate the Beltway sniper's modus operandi? Or the could simply put cyanide in random grocery store foodstuffs in cities across the country. Or mail anthrax to a 10,000 people. Or remember what Timothy McVeigh accomplished. Or the sarin gas attacks on Tokyo's subways.

I do think that every country needs some security, but enough is enough. No amount of money would ever prevent a sufficiently motivated person or group from accomplishing grand acts of terrorism on a society.

But what I realized today is that maybe this whole Homeland Security fiasco basically amounts to Bush's economic stimulus plan. It certainly simulates lots of industries with the big budget, and it creates hundreds of thousands of jobs. So I guess it's not that different from a pointless public works project, like building freeways, bridges and dams in places that don't really need them...

But the problem is we DO need freeways, bridges and dams. America is falling apart at the seams. "Our power grids, our rail system, our roads and bridges, our drinking water and drainage systems, our dams, our ports, our dumps: they're all failing, sometimes in visible catastrophic ways, often in just slow losses of service and usability." (source.)

But I guess it's pretty hard for any working congress person to vote against a DHS budget increase. They'd be branded as "voting with the terrorists".