Spreading Homeland Security Dollars 'Like Peanut Butter'

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January 09, 2007 1:43 PM

As Democrats try to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations, they and their Republican colleagues took a verbal dressing down from angry New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee this morning.

After ticking off all the things New York City has done to guard against another terror attack, Bloomberg called for a risk-based dispersal of homeland security funds, accusing Congress and the White House of spreading homeland security dollars "around the country like peanut butter."

"If you want a honey pot for security funding, so be it, but call it what it is. It is not homeland security," he told the committee.

Bloomberg said the government has so far used "irrational" and "politically-driven formulas" to distribute funding and is reserving judgment on the tweaks to those formulas announced recently by Chertoff.

The mayor added that for Congress to pass further homeland security reform without fixing the funding problems would be "the height of foolishness."

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Bloomberg's sentiments were echoed in the opening statements by 9/11 Commission members Lee Hamilton and Slade Gorton. But the strongest complaints about homeland security pork barrel spending so far today have come from Bloomberg.