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Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland Security Spending in U.S. Cities
"American cities have long been symbols of strength, freedom, progress and ingenuity, representing some of the best our nation has to offer. The threat of an urban terror attack, however, has made many feel less safe than they used to. While most of our cities have never been struck from the weapons of terrorists, we know the possibility is a real one. In 1995, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which killed 168 people and injured more than 800, showed our nation the horrors of a terror attack in a major city. In the years that followed, attempted terrorist attacks like at the Seattle millennial celebration in 1999 were thankfully disrupted by law enforcement authorities. Of course, everything changed when New York City and Washington, D.C. were attacked in 2001. Americans understood that an organized enemy was plotting and attempting spectacular terrorist attacks in American cities. For the past ten years, Americans have struggled to know just how to respond--including our leaders and elected officials. Sensing that many major cities were not fully prepared for another September 11th style attack, Congress gathered more than 20 agencies into a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS was tasked with managing several grant programs, including the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI). UASI was one of several new federal programs aimed at ramping up preparedness and closing security gaps in major cities that were most at-risk. […] This report examines the UASI grant program, including a detailed review of 15 cities that have received funding through the program. It is intended to assess whether spending on DHS antiterrorism grants like UASI have made us safer, and whether the taxpayer dollars that have been spent on these programs have yielded an adequate return on investment in terms of improved security."
United States. Congress. Senate
Coburn, Tom A.
2012-12
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Washed Out to Sea: How Congress Prioritizes Beach Pork Over National Needs
"In light of infrastructure failures in the past five years, many have questioned Congress' ability to prioritize federal funds wisely and ensure national needs are addressed. […] Several years ago I was surprised to learn that 'beach nourishment' projects, which seek to maintain or enhance beaches by pumping sand-type sediment onto beaches, are one of these diversions that siphon funding from other infrastructure priotities [sic]. Roughly $100 million every year in federal funds is appropriated to ensuring coastal towns benefitting from lobbying and political influence on Capitol Hill maintain picturesque beaches for property owners and tourists. Congress has subverted the Corps [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] by pushing its own parochial initiatives such as beach projects to the front of the line even as major infrastructure in our county deteriorates and continues to fail. As part of my commitment to question how Washington spends your money, this report is one in a series of ongoing oversight reports on federal spending and management by government agencies. I hope agencies and other congressional committees alike will welcome this oversight and work with us to help identify even more areas of waste, fraud, and abuse, as well as new ways to better prioritize our nation's limited financial resources."
United States. Congress. Senate
Coburn, Tom A.
2009-05
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Department of Everything
"Defending our nation and protecting the inalienable rights of every citizen guaranteed by our Constitution are the primary responsibilities of the U.S. federal government. Over the past decade these missions have faced challenges due to both terrorist threats abroad and out-of-control spending in Washington. While defense spending increased over the last ten years to combat the threat from abroad, domestic spending--including non-defense spending at the Pentagon--has also increased to unsustainable levels. A former Joint Chief of Staff even warned 'the single, biggest threat to our national security is our debt.' Our nation's $16 trillion national debt is the new red menace, posing perhaps a greater threat to our nation than any military adversary. The threat of our national debt can be defeated by reviewing every department, every program, and expenditure within the federal budget, including at the Department of Defense (DOD). We must eliminate waste and duplication to refocus the Pentagon to its true mission: fighting and winning the nation's wars."
United States. Congress. Senate
Coburn, Tom A.
2012-11
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Chemical Insecurity: An Assessment of Efforts to Secure the Nation's Chemical Facilities from Terrorist Threats
"This report identifies fundamental problems in the design, implementation, and management of the CFATS [Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards] program, finding: (1) CFATS is not reducing our nation's risk of a terrorist attack on domestic chemical infrastructure. The program focuses on the wrong threats, shifts risk to other parts of the chemical sector and supply chain, and is unable to determine if it is improving security at the facilities it regulates. […]; (2) DHS does not know whether some dangerous chemical facilities exist. Because of the way the program is structured, facility's initial reporting to DHS is largely on an honor system, with little way for DHS to identify facilities that do not report. […]; (3) CFATS regulates the wrong facilities. Designed to focus on the chemical plants at high risk of terrorist attack, the success of CFATS depends on an accurate understanding of facilities' risk. […]; (4) The CFATS program is failing to meet key deadlines, validate security plans, and conduct compliance inspections. According to the GAO [Government Accountability Office], it may be seven to nine years before CFATS catches up with a backlog of reviewing facilities' security plans and conducting inspections to verify compliance with security requirements. […]; (5) CFATS creates a massive regulatory burden for the companies it covers. Despite doing little to reduce risk, CFATS is costly to the companies it regulates, forcing them to dedicate time and money they don't have to fulfill onerous administrative requirements that dwarf those of other agencies. […]; (6) DHS is not transparent about how the CFATS program works and creates an adversarial relationship with the companies it regulates. DHS makes the process of working with companies adversarial, assuming the worst about the private sector -- that left to their own devices companies would eschew security and ignore the threat of terrorism just to increase profits."
United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Governmental Affairs
Coburn, Tom A.
2014-07?
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Review of the Department of Homeland Security's Missions and Performances
This report is by Senator Tom Coburn, Ranking Member, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, U.S. Sentate, 113th Congress. From the Executive Summary: "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the result of the largest reorganization of government in more than half a century. The reorganization included the consolidation of components and offices from 22 different agencies to create a unified department focusing on homeland security. In 2015, DHS will employ roughly 240,000 people, and spend nearly $61 billion. It is the third largest cabinet agency in government. Since 2003, the Department has spent approximately $544 billion on its programs. Congress has assigned to DHS some of the federal government's most important responsibilities related to securing the nation, including terrorism prevention and protective security, transportation security, border security, immigration enforcement, cybersecurity, and disaster recovery. This report presents the findings of Senator Tom Coburn's oversight of DHS. Since 2005, Dr. Coburn has been a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He served as the Committee's ranking member during the 113th Congress. The report is based on a review of evidence and information obtained from the department, audits and investigations conducted by watchdogs, committee hearings, and open source reporting. Where evidence was lacking, the report suggests opportunities for additional oversight by Congress and other watchdogs."
United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Coburn, Tom A.
2015-01
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Friendly Fire: Death, Delay & Dismay at the VA
"Too many men and women who bravely fought for our freedom are losing their lives, not at the hands of terrorists or enemy combatants, but from friendly fire in the form of medical malpractice and neglect by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Split-second medical decisions in a war zone or in an emergency room can mean the difference between life and death. Yet at the VA, the urgency of the battlefield is lost in the lethargy of the bureaucracy. Veterans wait months just to see a doctor and the Department has systemically covered up delays and deaths they have caused. For decades, the Department has struggled to deliver timely care to veterans. The reason veterans care has suffered for so long is Congress has failed to hold the VA accountable. Despite years of warnings from government investigators about efforts to cook the books, it took the unnecessary deaths of veterans denied care from Atlanta to Phoenix to prompt Congress to finally take action. On June 11, 2014, the Senate recently approved a bipartisan bill to allow veterans who cannot receive a timely doctor's appointment to go to another doctor outside of the VA […] Good employees inside the VA who try to bring attention to problems or errors are punished, bullied, put on 'bad boy' lists, and transferred to other locations. These whistleblowers, who come forward to expose the problems, demonstrate many employees within the VA are dedicated to serving veterans and willing to put their livelihood at risk to ensure our nation's heroes are getting the care they were promised."
Office of Senator Tom Coburn, M.D.
Coburn, Tom A.
2014-06?
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Back in Black: A Deficit Reduction Plan
"To assemble the hundreds of spending reductions and cost saving reforms proposed in Back in Black, the Office of Senator Tom Coburn spent thousands of hours thoroughly reviewing department and program missions, performance evaluations, budget justifications, and grant awards, as well as reports and audits issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Inspectors General, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the recommendations of a variety of budget and public policy experts, and oversight reports and investigations conducted by Senator Coburn's staff on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs. For the discretionary savings estimates, cost estimates were derived from multiple entities, including CBO, OMB, and CRS."
United States. Congress. Senate
Coburn, Tom A.
2011-07
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