Hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs - The Department of Homeland Security's Budget Submission for Fiscal Year 2009

Statement

SEN. LIEBERMAN: We'll come to order.

Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary. I'm pleased to welcome you this afternoon for what has become your annual appearance, or the secretary's annual appearance, before our committee to discuss the Department of Homeland Security's budget request -- in this case for fiscal year 2009.

The Department will have reached an important milestone at the end of this month. As you know, on March 1 the Department of Homeland Security will have completed its sixth year in existence. And as we examine your budget request for the coming fiscal year, naturally we -- it's appropriate to take a moment to assess how the department has fared over the five years since it was established and what more we have to do to get it to where we want it to be.

I would say that the record has a lot of encouraging developments about it. Important measures have been taken to improve aviation and maritime security, to address vulnerabilities at our borders, to train and equip law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency medical workers -- the first responders and -- as we on this committee like to call them -- the first preventers across our country. These are the people we depend on, as we've seen time and again, at the outset of every disaster.

I also want to note with appreciation that every day you and the more than 200,000 other employees of the Department of Homeland Security across the nation and indeed in some cases outside the nation single-mindedly work to keep the American people safe in the post-9/11 '01 world -- and for that you do have our thanks and appreciation.

The fact that we've not had another terrorist attack on our homeland since 9/11 is not an accident. There is obviously in life good fortune and grace. But the Department of Homeland Security and all that you and the department have done has surely helped make that so. We grow safer every day, but the war of Islamic extremists and terrorists against us and us with them goes on, and I know we would all echo the words of the 9/11 Commission Report that we've come a long way since then, that we are safe -- in fact I'd say we're safer today than when we were when the 9/11 report came out, but we're in a war against an enemy that has no normal humanitarian "civilizational" norms that it follows, and therefore we are not yet safe enough.

The department obviously, in my opinion and others, still has a way to go before it comes -- gets to the point we want it to be, which is to be a well-integrated operation, the kind we envisioned when we created the department back in 2002, even acknowledging that we knew that it would be difficult to bring the many agencies, many subcultures together quickly.

We are in some ways not yet as safe, as I've said, as we should be -- for example, for a variety of threats -- to me the variety of threats which if successfully carried out could inflict damage on our country. I'm thinking of the security of our vast computer systems and databases, which the department is just beginning to address seriously. I'm also concerned that we lack adequate plans to prevent and respond to an attack using weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, which is why Senator Collins and I have launched an investigation into that subject. Significant work remains also to be done to secure our critical infrastructure and of course our borders.

An array of management challenges also continues to impede the success of the department. We've commented before in this committee about morale of the DHS work force, which on surveys that have been done is much lower than we would like it to be. More active supervision is needed of several large, costly procurement projects, such as SBInet, Deepwater and the Advanced Spectroscopic Panel -- Portal program, to prevent wasteful and inefficient spending and to ensure therefore that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. The security of many of the department's own IT systems is in my opinion not yet what we want it to be. And the lack of consolidated headquarters makes many of these challenges that much more difficult to overcome.

Two and a half years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we are reminded that the department is still rebuilding its preparedness, response and recovery capabilities. Improvements required by the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act I'm pleased to note are beginning to take hold. FEMA is making progress, but it too has a way to go before it's where we want it to be.

Obviously, leadership is a key to getting this work done, and I thank you for your leadership and those on your team who work with you, Mr. Secretary, but adequate funding is also an essential element of making this department what we want it to be. I'm therefore disappointed about some of the areas in which the proposed budget in my opinion shortchanges potential success in key areas.

I'd say the most significant deficiency comes in the area of grants for state and local governments. For the fifth consecutive year, the administration proposes to cut funding for those grants that communities across the country depend on most to pay for their homeland security needs. Without these grants, the nation's first responders cannot capably partner with the federal government to prevent attacks or respond effectively when disaster strikes.

The administration's 2009 budget proposal calls for an overall 48 percent cut to state and local homeland security grant programs, including a 60 percent cut to firefighters, a 56 percent cut to transit security grants and a 48 percent reduction to port security grants. Those are not just budget trimmings. They put us in danger of being out of the business of supporting state and local homeland security efforts, and this obviously in the context of a continuing threat. I know that members of this committee on a bipartisan basis will do what we have done before, which is to oppose these proposed cuts and to work to restore fundings to full levels authorized by last year's 9/11 II legislation.

This will be a critical year for the Department of Homeland Security. In November we will elect a new president, and no matter who is elected the department will undergo a transition in leadership. We know -- that is, I assume that you've retained enough sanity not to want to continue in this position, Mr. Secretary -- we know from experience that al Qaeda launches attacks at precisely the moment of greatest vulnerability, and one of those times can be, in their perception, during transitions of leadership. That's why the transition next year from one administration to the next must be well planned and executed. I note with appreciation that serious efforts are already under way under your leadership to achieve that result, and the plans we are now setting in place I hope will be fully and effectively implemented.

Mr. Secretary, you know as well as anybody that the terrorist threat is as serious today as it has been at any time since September 11, 2001. I have heard you talk about what keeps you up at night, and that is the threat of a WMD attack. And the fact is that there's no shortage of possibilities of the ways in which this might happen in our open society. The challenge of confronting and overcoming these threats can seem overwhelming. But you and your employees cannot afford to let down your guard and we cannot afford to let down our guard, which is why I believe we must invest in you, the people who work at the department, to provide better training and better workplace conditions so that the department can attract and retain the best and brightest employees.

We on this committee understand the responsibility you have taken on and again appreciate your leadership and hard work. We will continue to work with you as we work to fulfill our oversight responsibilities in ways that strengthen the department -- more important, strengthen the security of every single American. I look forward to your testimony today and a discussion about the work ahead of all of us to secure our homeland.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Thanks, Mr. Secretary.

I would suggest we do a six-minute round of questions, because we've got a lot of members here. We'd like to get people involved.

Let me just say first that I totally support the request for the DHS headquarters to be consolidated at St. Elizabeth's, and I regret that that wasn't included in the omnibus budget. As you know better than we, DHS is now spread throughout 70 buildings across the National Capitol Region, and that makes communication, coordination and leadership very difficult. So I hope we can do that this year.

Let me ask you about the formaldehyde, since it's in the news today. The news -- this is a CDC report that says that fumes from 519 trailer and mobile homes in Louisiana and Mississippi which they tested were on average about five times what people are exposed to in most modern homes. In some trailers, I'm reading from the report, the levels were more than 50 times the customary exposure levels, raising fears that residents could contract respiratory problems. A gentleman named Mike McGeehin, director of the CDC division that focuses on environmental hazards, recommends that FEMA move people out quickly, with priorities to families with children, elderly people or anyone with asthma or other chronic conditions.

So I wanted to get your more detailed response, and though the report just came out today, whether you have anything new to say about what FEMA intends to do to get people, including along this priority list, out of these trailers.

SEC. CHERTOFF: You know, let me say that last summer FEMA announced, and I personally announced, when I was down in New Orleans, a program -- not only an invitation, but frankly encouragement to anybody in a trailer who not only suffered physical symptoms but had anxiety of any kind about physical effects of formaldehyde or simply wanted to get out of trailers, we invited them to raise their hands so we could move them out. And a number of people did. Frankly, fewer did than I expected would.

And it has in fact been our policy and our intent over the last three months to move as many people out of trailers as we possibly can. That's particularly true with respect to people who are in these group shelters, or group trailer parks. I actually earlier said we move 800 out a month. I'm sorry, we've been moving 800 out a week over the last three months. And we're at the point now that there are about 38,000 households on private sites and about 7,400 in group commercial or industrial sites. I would urge people to get out of the trailers.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Right.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Now, I recognize the reality is there's not a lot of housing in the area, and that may mean for some people they will have to move some distance away. That's been, frankly, one of the reasons why I think some people have been reluctant to move out of trailers. But from any number of standpoints, whether it be formaldehyde or just the fact that these trailers are not designed as permanent residences, I think that people would be much better served if they bit the bullet and moved out. And we will do everything that we can certainly to facilitate that. I guess a question we will have to wrestle with is whether we will compel people to move out.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah, I was just going to ask that question. I mean, as I looked at a little more detail at the report, which just came out from CDC, they said average levels of 77 parts formaldehyde per billion parts of air was what they found, significantly higher than the 10 to 17 parts per billion concentration seen in newer homes. Levels in some homes were as high as 590 parts per billion. So I know this just happened today, but I think you raise an important question which I hope you and FEMA will consider, whether the risk of public health is -- based on the CDC report -- so real that you will want to compel people to leave the trailers, particularly if they've got kids and elderly people, or anybody with asthma or chronic pulmonary condition.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Now, let me -- I mean, I think that's a very serious question, so let me just lay a couple of other items on the table on this.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Mm-hmm.

SEC. CHERTOFF: One way we could do this, of course, would be to charge rent for the trailers. You know, one of the reasons people stay is because they're rent-free. But I want to put on the table the fact that when we have tried in the past to remove people, even if it's for their own good, there's a great deal of complaining, and in fact we wind up getting sued over this. So this decision is not going to be an easy decision.

Let me make two other quick observations. FEMA is in the position of the consumer, in a sense, in having acquired these trailers. It has been an enormous source of dismay and disappointment that housing products that for years have been bought by FEMA turn out to have formaldehyde levels. We're like everybody else who buys on the open market.

And we're a little bit at sea, because there is no standard for trailers that is safe or not safe. Moreover, I was somewhat surprised to see in the report that came out that mobile homes, which are designed to be more or less permanent housing, which, again, we buy on the open market like everybody else, also had higher levels of formaldehyde than expected.

There's a lot we don't know and we're frankly not in a position to answer as an agency. We don't know what is the baseline for mobile homes across the country. Is this a problem that is unique to the trailers that we purchased, for some reason, or is it something that's prevalent in general? What is safe? What is safe for individual populations? So while we are going to work very diligently to move people out of the trailers, I want to be clear that we are in a position, like any other consumer, to be uncertain about what is a safe level, if any, with respect to these residences.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I want to say to you that looking at this summary of the CDC report today, it has a real sense of urgency to it. I mean, they say these conclusions support the need to move people quickly or relocate trailer residents before the warmer weather of summer. Again with the priority list they've suggested FEMA consider necessary assistance to Louisiana and Mississippi health departments to ensure adequate follow-up, included medical needs, for trailer residents, and that FEMA should consider establishing a registry and long-term health monitoring of children and others who resided in FEMA-supplied trailers. So I think they're really -- this report puts a kind of -- a direct responsibility on FEMA and on the department, and I think there's a concern implicit here about liability, future liability.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Well, I certainly hope that CDC will work with us on any medical follow-up, because I want to emphasize, we are not medical personnel.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Sure.

SEC. CHERTOFF: We have to rely on others, just as we have to rely on other agencies to set standards for what we buy in the marketplace.

Let me make this clear, and I've directed FEMA about this, we are not -- we are out of the trailer business. We are no longer going to provide trailers for people in disasters. I say that upfront because I will guarantee you that in the next disaster I will be besieged by requests for trailers. So in light of the uncertainty I think the only safe course is to stop trailers.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

SEN. LIEBERMAN: (Off mike) -- come to order.

Thanks, Mr. Secretary, for your patience.

I wanted to ask you a few questions about border security, which obviously is much on the minds of the American people, and I wanted you to -- I want to invite you to speak a little more about this chart, which reports that the apprehensions are down 20 percent nationwide from fiscal year 2006 to 2007, down from 1,089,000 to 876,000. It looks like the numbers for the first quarter of fiscal year '08 suggest an even lower number in the full year '08.

So I know there's a lot of -- obviously we don't know how many are coming over illegally. But we do know how many apprehensions there are. So explain why the reduction in the number of apprehensions suggests that there's also fewer people coming over illegally. And though I know we can't know the number illegally, what are the latest estimates about how those trend lines are going?

SEC. CHERTOFF: As you observe -- first of all, we estimate -- and these are really estimates -- that roughly 40 percent of illegal -- illegal workers or illegal people in this country come in through overstays. That is to say, they have visas. They never leave. So this figure does not address that issue. This figure addresses the people who are coming in between the ports of entry, illegally sneaking across the border.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Right.

SEC. CHERTOFF: The -- we've talked about this -- the reason we think apprehensions is a pretty good approximation is, once we put a lot of people at the border, if we -- we have a pretty high percentage chance of capturing people that we see, and we typically put them in the areas where the highest traffic has been. And then we try to validate this concept of apprehensions by looking at the number of times we catch people who are recidivist efforts to come across the border.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Right.

SEC. CHERTOFF: They do to some degree count -- literally count footprints to get a sense of what the traffic flow is. They look at what is going on in the staging areas south of the border. And they even look at things like the price it costs to pay a smuggler. The figures coupled with the anecdotes support the notion that this reflects, but I say reflect as opposed to precisely measures, a downturn in the number of people coming across the border. Now, what I can't tell you is whether the people that we don't get, whether it's an exact correlation or just a rough approximation.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Sure.

SEC. CHERTOFF: So it tells us kind of what direction we're moving in, but until we get all of this technology across the border it's not going to tell us with certainty.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Are there estimates that the department makes of the number of illegal entries there are?

SEC. CHERTOFF: Well, we -- last time we asked, there was a general view that for every two we catch one gets through. But I've been told that it may be now somewhat better than that. But, again, that's only --

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Higher multiple -- or, in other words, a lower --

SEC. CHERTOFF: A lower -- that there's even a lower ratio now.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah.

SEC. CHERTOFF: But that's only, again, people coming between the ports of entry.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Right.

SEC. CHERTOFF: It's not people coming through the ports of entry.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Right. So we can assume from these numbers -- though in a sense they're counterintuitive, but you've made the argument -- that there are fewer people coming over --

SEC. CHERTOFF: That's right.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: -- illegally between the ports of entry, and that's the key.

Okay, let me ask you about the -- some of the programs. I appreciate that you've -- the budget requests $775 million for traditional fencing, infrastructure and technology to protect the border, including creating a so-called virtual fence area of sensors and surveillance. As you know, we have been concerned about how so- called Project 28, or SBInet, are doing. Senator Collins and I sent you a letter in January expressing our concerns about SBInet and asking for detailed information from the department to help us better understand the technological component of this initiative, frankly, before we commit another large chunk of money in fiscal year 2009, although we are inherently inclined to do that. So the question is, what's the status of P28, and have the problems that you've had been resolved?

SEC. CHERTOFF: I'll ask your indulgence to take a little bit of time to explain it.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Go ahead.

SEC. CHERTOFF: SBInet is broader than P28. It is really all the technology we use at the borders.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Right.

SEC. CHERTOFF: So it includes, for example, our unmanned aerial systems. We've got three. I think the fourth one is about to come online. We anticipate with the budget this year in '08 that we're going to go from I think a half a dozen ground-based vehicle radars, which we call mobile surveillance sensors, to 40. And that's technology, although it covers -- I think they generally cover about six miles each way, depending on the terrain, whereas P28 is designed to give you 28 miles.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: So these are moving along.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Correct.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: They're constantly in movement.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Well, no, they're not constantly in movement. They can be repositioned.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Got you.

SEC. CHERTOFF: So they're stable in one place. The downside is to cover -- if you do the math, to cover 28 miles with that you need four agents as opposed to one, so it's more manpower intensive.

P28 is a solution that allows us in certain areas to actually have a broader situational awareness by connecting up the radar and the camera, so that when the radar hits something coming across the border, we can (slew ?) the camera and allow us to determine what we're looking at. When it was originally let, it was let to kind of see whether we could a basically operating system. That was P28.

And there were some problems with the equipment. We were disappointed over the summer, and I had a frank conversation with the CEO of Boeing, and he replaced the team that was on it. I think at this point, although we haven't finally signed off on it, all of the equipment-related issues that are material have been cured. There are four what I would characterize as not material issues for which we will get a credit. It's not -- it's basically not worth trying to cure them. We'll just get a reduction in the price.

But there's a second issue, which is how does this work operationally in terms of the kind of day-to-day activities of the Border Patrol? And to understand this, the Border Patrol needed to be able to work with the equipment itself over a period of some months, because there are two things that flow from that. One is that we come to see there are certain features of this that either are suboptimal -- the way we actually work with it in the real world -- or in some cases there may be some things that we don't need that we'd just as soon get rid of and not waste time with. And at the same time, the Border Patrol may want to adjust its operating procedures because it's not working in a way that fully exploits the real promise of the system.

So let me give you a concrete example, because I was there a week ago. The system -- and I saw them do this -- does identify a radar hit, and the camera goes and fixes on the location, and we are able to characterize the people coming across so that we can intercept. One of the challenges was taking what we call the common operating picture, which is the map and the video feed, and getting an exact duplicate of that in the cars and the trucks that were actually out in the field. And it's a problem partly because you have to stabilize it when you're driving along, and there are some issues involving the wireless and the satellite.

But when I was down there last week we were talking about it, and one of the agents said to me, "You know, we're not sure that we really need to have all of this data on our screen in the car. We clearly want to have the map. But in terms of sustaining the video feed, it may actually turn out to be more of a distraction than a help, and we may rather just have somebody tell us there's six, you know, people coming with backpacks or guns or whatever it is." So they may make a determination that operationally it's a waste of time to fully develop the cop in each car. At the same time they may determine that back at headquarters they want a better capability than the cop is able to provide.

So -- and this is what they call spiral development. This is now the next stage of development. The next thing we want to do is take the operators' inputs, adjust the software and hardware to the next level, and then make a judgment about how to make this work and in what areas it works. And some terrain may not be suited for it.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Okay. I appreciate that answer. In a way it anticipates what I was going to follow on asking, which is that I've heard that one of the concerns was that the P28 was initiated without previous operational requirements from Customs and Border Patrol, and that as a result there was some dissatisfaction with it and some ideas about how it could be used better, and therefore that P28 itself would not be the model for the future.

SEC. CHERTOFF: See, I would say it is a partial model for the future. I think that it was a concept. We wanted to make sure A, does the basic concept functionality work, and B, the thought was to give the contractor an opportunity to present something that essentially thought out of the box, that wasn't just a follow-on to the traditional way of doing business. But I think we all agree at this point certainly we now need to -- and we've done this over the last few months -- we now need to integrate that with the operators' --

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Right.

SEC. CHERTOFF: -- real-world functionality, and all the development from now will be guided by what the operators want to do now that they've gotten to see the system.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Okay. So obviously it's real important to keep us and the appropriators informed so that we have a feeling of confidence, because -- as we go to the next stage of appropriations for the virtual fence.

Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Thanks, Senator Collins.

I want to ask you one question just before we close, Mr. Secretary. As I mentioned in my opening statement, I'm very pleased to see that you're focusing on cybersecurity -- it's one of your top four priorities -- because obviously this is an area of potential vulnerability to enemy terrorist attack. Not really comparable, but just a couple of days ago the RIM BlackBerry network went down for several hours, and it was quite interesting to see how many people were disabled. Now, that wasn't final, because they actually could pick up the phone and call people, but -- or go to their computers -- but -- and you're requesting an additional ($)83 million for this year, including the ($)115 million that was awarded in FY 2008 omnibus appropriations. That would mean tripling the amount of money spent for cybersecurity, and I'm very glad to see that.

I know a lot of this is classified. I wanted to -- and I hope that I can get a classified briefing out soon -- I want to ask you in an open setting generally what you can tell us about what the department is trying to do to defend our cyber systems, and since most of -- I know the cybersecurity initiative deals with the government systems -- since most of the cyber networks are -- in our country are in the hands of the private sector, what's the department doing beyond the cyber initiative to work with the private sector?

SEC. CHERTOFF: Well, you know, what we currently do with the private sector is we deal with individual sectors of the economy through our Sector Coordinating Councils. Financial, telecommunications, we have worked with various councils in the past, and we've identified cyber vulnerabilities. We have U.S.-CERT computer emergency response team, which I think identified something like 37,000 intrusions last year. And we work with the private sector in helping them to identify intrusions and disseminate warning information and information to cure it.

Because so much of the discussion is classified, where we want to go at the next level is in two places. We want to find a way to better protect federal assets. There we have greater authority, frankly. And that may mean reconfiguring the federal systems so that we can use some of these tools in a more effective way to detect and respond to intrusions more quickly, and also to make sure that all of the agencies are operating 24/7 watch operation centers. It's no good detecting something and making a call at 2:00 in the morning and nobody's home. So we've got to get that up to speed.

And then the second piece with the private sector, which is more delicate, because we don't want to be seen as in any way trying to regulate the Internet -- we're trying to be very careful about that, and we don't want to create any alarm that we're trying to do here what is done, let's say, in China, where people are sitting there and censoring --

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah.

SEC. CHERTOFF: -- we want to see if there are things we can do with our partners in the government to help enable the private sector to protect itself better. And I think that's probably the limit of what I can say in an open session.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah.

SEC. CHERTOFF: We will -- we do look forward to briefing you very soon on this.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah, I think would be good if Senator Collins and I could do that. I urge you to be as aggressive as you can be, obviously within the normal constitutional protections.

I thank you very much. It's been a good exchange of ideas. We look forward to working with you, as always.

We're going to keep the record of the hearing open for 15 days if you want to add anything or any of the members want to subject you to further interrogatories.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Always a pleasure, and I look forward to working with you on all of these issues during this coming year.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Thank you.

Hearing is adjourned.

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