Two former Speakers of the House make their case for reform of Congressional oversight for homeland security. It's not easy to remember when Tom Foley and Newt Gingrich were on the same side. Their appeal is aimed directly at Speaker Dennis Hastert.
Mr. Hastert recently told the House Republican Conference that he would establish a permanent homeland-security committee in the 109th Congress, which opens in January. He could have let the Select Committee expire and opted for easier fixes, such as establishing a new subcommittee for an existing standing committee. This would have pleased a number of chairmen who strongly argued the case against permanency, but Mr. Hastert saw that the harder road for the House was the right one for a safer America. With the executive branch organized around DHS as the focus of the nation's counter-terrorism efforts, it is difficult to imagine why the Congress would want to perpetuate a piecemeal approach to homeland-security issues, with literally dozens of committees and subcommittees engaged in oversight of DHS. We are encouraged that the speaker rejected this course.The issue now — which always was the hardest of all — is what jurisdiction to confer on the new committee. This will be debated, but it's certain that we will have made no progress if the new committee isn't given broad legislative and oversight jurisdiction over DHS programs and activities, especially those focused on the department's core counterterrorism mission. That will require carving out a portion of a few standing committees' existing jurisdiction, certain to be a contentious task. In our view, however, it would be better to have no committee at all, than to create a hollow committee too weak to guide DHS effectively and that simply adds to the congressional bureaucracy. This job must be done right, or not at all.
The terrorist threat is as real today as it was on September 11 and won't go away any time soon. Congress and the president created DHS, the third-largest department in the executive branch, to focus the government's counterterrorist efforts. Congress must now align itself with the new structure of the executive branch, or it will lose influence and DHS will lose focused congressional guidance at the most vulnerable early stages of its development.
Related: House Select Committee on Homeland Security
Posted by Alan at December 8, 2004 12:00 PM