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For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary Contact 202-282-8010 Washington, D.C. February 6, 2006
Fact Sheet: U.S. Department of Homeland Security Announces Six Percent Increase In Fiscal Year 2007 Budget Request
Secretary Chertoff: Good afternoon, everybody. The moment you've been waiting for, I'm here to talk about the '07 budget request and highlight some of the areas of funding that reflect our priorities in the short and the long term.
Let me begin by giving you a little bit of an overview. This is a strong budget for the Department of Homeland Security, and it reflects the commitment of the President and the administration to our mission. It reflects a 6 percent increase in funding over the current fiscal year, a 36 percent increase in DHS gross discretionary funding since 2003, and triple the amount of non-defense homeland security spending government-wide since 2001.
The budget focuses on strengthening our initiatives in protecting our borders, increasing our preparedness, expanding our intelligence gathering and sharing, and improving maritime and transportation security.
The proposed budget also supports structural changes we've made as part of our second stage review of the Department, including creation of a new Preparedness Directorate and new offices of Policy, Intelligence and Analysis and Operations.
The budget strongly supports our underlying philosophy of risk management, which will ensure that this funding is used to build critical homeland security capabilities, addressing the most significant risks, and providing the best possible protection for the American people.
And of course the budget builds upon significant progress we've made over the last year, and let me just review some of the highlights of what we have achieved in fiscal year 2005.
First, as I've indicated, we have undertaken a significant reorganization of the Department, as a follow-on to our second stage review; a reorganization that gave us for the first time a focused preparedness capability, a flatter organization, but one which is functionally organized so that the missions are properly aligned with those responsible for carrying them out.
We also launched our Secure Border Initiative, the first integrated plan designed to look at the system of our border enforcement from beginning to end, focusing not only on apprehensions, but upon what we do to detain people and what we do to return them back their place of origin. And in connection with that we announced our migration over the course of fiscal year 2006 from a catch-and-release policy for non-Mexicans to a catch-and-return policy.
Last year we were also pleased to announce that U.S.-VISIT, the biometric entry system, was rolled out at all ports of entry. We awarded approximately $3 billion to state and local governments in grants. The United States Coast Guard distinguished itself by executing over 33,000 rescues in hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and FEMA was able to distribute $5.7 billion in aid. Operation Community Shield, conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, carried out 1,600 gang arrests. And CIS, Citizen and Immigration Services, cut the immigration processing backlog by 2.8 million.
Finally, TSA began to move to a much more risk-based threat managed approach, cutting some of the requirements that kept off things like nail scissors from airplanes, but focusing on things like, for example, behavioral pattern recognition, more intensive training for looking for explosive devices and detonators, and other programs designed to make sure that our TSA screeners are operating on a state-of-the-art risk-focused basis and carrying out their assignments.
That's where we've been. Now let me talk about where we want to go as laid out in this 2007 budget, particularly in five cross-cutting areas: increasing preparedness and strengthening FEMA; enhancing our border security; strengthening our transportation and cargo security; boosting intelligence and operations; and improving our Department resource management.
First, let's talk about preparedness. We are focused in this upcoming fiscal year on increasing our catastrophic preparedness across all levels of government and across the private sector. To that end, the proposed budget requests $50 million for a National Preparedness Integration Program, a new initiative toentify and develop risk-based preparedness plans, improve emergency communication and collaboration, and increase public awareness.
Part of this effort, as you know, is our ongoing tasking to go out and deal with the 75 largest urban areas in the 50 states, reviewing their evacuation and emergency plans, and looking to raise everybody's level of preparedness across the board.
Another element of our preparedness reflected in the budget is an increase of $10 million for chemical security efforts -- ifying chemical facilities based on risk, establishing security standards, and ensuring that strong safeguards are in place, while protecting sensitive information from public disclosure.
The proposed budget also looks for a 10 percent increase in FEMA's budget over the 2006 fiscal year, including $44.7 million to strengthen support functions. FEMA's core budget has grown 40 percent from fiscal year 2004 to the fiscal year 2007 proposed budget.
We also look to add resources such as -- in critical areas such as procurement information technology and planning, to FEMA's budget. And as I've indicated, next week we will begin to talk about some of the fundamental changes in the way DHS and FEMA operate as part of our re-engineering in the wake of lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina.
Border security is another area the budget focuses a great deal of attention on. Our approach, as outlined in our Secure Border Initiative, is to control the border through an integrated strategic vision that looks to more people, better technology, and more infrastructure, as well as a more robust interior enforcement program. To that end, the proposed budget looks to adding $458.9 million for 1,500 new Border Patrol agents. That would reflect a 42 percent increase, since the number we had on September 11th.
The budget also looks to $100 million for border technology, $30 million to continue the construction of the San Diego Border Infrastructure System, or San Diego fence; over $400 million to add 6,700 additional detention beds, bringing the total beds that we would have at the end of the fiscal year to 27,500; $135 million to expand our employment verification program, which is a critical element in moving interior enforcement to the next level of robustness; $41.7 million in direct money for worksite enforcement; and $60 million for fugitive operations, addition 18 additional fugitive operations teams for a total of 70 teams seeking to hunt down those people who are in the country illegally and are fugitives from the immigration justice system.
Finally, our border security budget includes almost $400 million for U.S.-VISIT, including $60 million to integrateENT and IAFIS, moving to that 10-print system that we have been talking about.
Transportation security and cargo security are other areas we are very focused on in the budget. We've got $4.7 billion in our request for aviation security, including almost $700 million to deploy and maintain explosive detection systems. One thing I should point out is this is separate and apart from money we have allocated in the proposed budget under science and technology for research into next generation explosive technology. The budget also looks to add $30.3 million for enhanced cargo radiography screening at ports of entry; $139 million for our Container Security Initiative and $55 million for our joint partnership with the private sector in cargo security; $157 million for radiation portal monitor acquisition; and $934 million for the Coast Guard Deepwater program, which is a major overhaul of the Coast Guard's assets.
As well, we're going to be adding $4.8 million for a maritime security response team, which is a state-of-the-art SWAT-type team for the Coast Guard to deploy in a maritime threat environment.
Finally, let me point out that we are adding $45.7 million in our request for the analysis and operations account, which includes additional money for our intelligence and analysis capability, and we are adding additional monies to allow us to manage our resources more carefully and with more discipline. That includes $12.6 million to improve financial management; $41.8 million to continue to implement MAX HR, which is our new 21st century system for managing relations with our colleagues in the Department; and $27 million additional to improve our procurement operations across the Department.
Now money, of course, is only part of the story, and as I speak to various groups and to Congress in the next week, we'll be talking about some of the strategies that we want to employ, using these enhanced resources to continue to improve our security across the entire range of threats, whether they be terrorist threats or natural disasters, strategies that we're going to be using to improve ourselves during this next fiscal year.
But money is important, and the additional funds, the increase in the budget reflected in the President's proposed budget this year, demonstrates a continued commitment to improving the baseline of homeland security for all Americans.
I look forward to working with Congress to ensure that our funding priorities are met, so that we can all work together to continue to protect the homeland and the American people.
And now I'm going to call on our CFO, Andy Maner, to give you a little bit more specificity, and then we'll take some questions.
Andy.
Mr. Maner: Thank you, sir. I'll just go very quickly through a couple of slides. The Secretary hit on much of it, but let me just enhance some of the other areas.
Obviously our budget bill starts with the accomplishments in '05 and '06 that the Secretary mentioned. But the high level overview of the budget is a $42.7 billion budget, 6 percent growth over '06. That's about -- $27.8 billion of it is for homeland security missions, and that's about a 9 percent increase over the previous years.
To understand our budget, you have to remember the supplemental funding that we've received in '05 and '06. Quickly, that's hurricane relief from the hurricanes two years ago; $800 million for the global war on terror and tsunami relief, which included significant resources for CBP, ICE, Coast Guard and FLETC; two Katrina supplementals at the end of the year. In FY 2006, a supplemental gave $1 billion of loan authority for the Community Disaster Loan Program to give critical funds to first responders in the Gulf region. And then the third Katrina supplemental, it included money for Coast Guard, Secret Service, FEMA, Preparedness, ICE, CBP and about $50 million for avian flu preparedness for the Department.
Quickly, the '07 themes that the Secretary mentioned: Preparedness and FEMA; border security; interior enforcement and reforming our immigration process; maritime security and better transportation systems; enhanced information sharing; and strengthening the DHS Department.
Going quickly down preparedness: $50 million for the national preparedness integration program the Secretary mentioned; $10 million in new money for chemical site security; FEMA enhancements -- the FEMA budget is up $360 million over the '06 budget -- that includes program dollars, as well as additional FTE at headquarters in their Preparedness, Mitigation, Response and Recovery divisions; additional FTE for management of the National Response Plan; $5 million to upgrade their Emergency Alert System, and $15.7 million for ADFT to strengthen FEMA's financial management and procurement operations.
On the grant side, $2.8 billion for grants, training and exercises. Within that, UASI is at $838 million, which is an $81 million increase over last year. Our TIP program -- Targeted Infrastructure Protection program -- is requested at $600 million, or $213 million over last year. And our state homeland security grant program requested at $633 million, or $88 million over last year. Within there, there are $60.5 million for the United States Coast Guard to assume the National Capital Region mission from CBP. That is the protection of the National Capital Region airspace. Within our Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, a total budget of $536 million, which is a $218 million increase, for not only acquisition of equipment, but also additional advanced R&D, and $18 million for Radiological and Nuclear Attribution and Forensics initiative. In addition, there are additional monies for the Chief Medical Officer.
Strengthening border security -- the Secretary talked about most of these -- 1,500 more Border Patrol agents; $100 million for SBI technology; $30 million for the fence; $400 million for additional beds; $50 million for additional infrastructure vehicle barriers; $135 million to expand the SAVE program within CIS, which is now called EEV, Electronic Employment Verification; and $112 million of both mandatory fees and additional dollars for CIS' business transformation program; additional agents within ICE for worksite enforcement and fugitive ops; and the additional monies for CSI and CTPAT, the Secretary mentioned.
On the transportation front, improving maritime security; $4.7 million for aviation security within TSA; $700 million for deployment and maintenance of EDS and ETD equipment; $175 million for checkpoint technology; $157 million for advanced next generation radiation portal monitors, which is about $32 million more than 2006; $934 million for the Coast Guard, which includes a fourth national security cutter, fast response cutter, additional marine patrol aircraft, and completion of our critical HH65 reengineering.
Information sharing with our partners -- $45.7 million increase for intelligence and analysis in our operations -- that's about 18 percent up from the previous year; $36 million for transforming our infrastructure within our IT, bringing together one infrastructure within the Department, which includes email, data center, those type of things; $12.6 million on the DHS for financial management -- that's for our internal controls audit, and our financial audit; $41 million for MAX HR; $27 million department-wide for additional procurement operations people; $8.1 million for the policy office; and $18 million for continuing the restructured Emerge program.
So that's an overview of our budget, and we'll open it up for questions.
Question: Hi, Mr. Secretary. A two-parter for you. It appears that money to help states and locals develop evacuation plans, a certain emergency management preparedness grant, has been cut by about $15 million. I'm wondering if that's accurate, why that would be, against the backdrop of Katrina. And then secondly, the way you've described some of the preparedness goals in FEMA seem to be more of a look ahead, as opposed to direct aid or assistance for Gulf Coast projects that are ongoing. Can you talk about why that is, why there's not direct aid for ongoing missions in the Gulf Coast in this budget that would go beyond the sups and the $18 billion sup that's been talked about?
Secretary Chertoff: Let me separate out a couple things. I'm not sure where you -- how you come up with theea that we're cutting money for evacuation plans. In fact, quite the contrary; we're putting $50 million into our national preparedness effort for the first time under our preparedness directorate, and theea is -- and we are currently underway with this project. We are baselining what is the current state of preparedness with respect to evacuation and emergency plans at the 75 largest urban areas in the 50 states. We are underway with that process now. We will