Promoting resilience in the event of an attack or disaster

The Homeland Security Committee held a hearing on “The Resilient Homeland – Broadening the Homeland Security Strategy,” where Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) defined resilience as “the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” Thompson said that “since 9/11 this Administration has focused solely on preventing the next attack as opposed to how best to recover should an incident occur.”

Hon. Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, said “we must make every effort to prevent an attack, but we must do more.” He said when faced with disaster, citizens, businesses, and other institutions will help rescue themselves and others. He said the government also plays a crucial role to create “conditions that allow the creativity and ingenuity of individuals and businesses to flourish.” He said information is important for citizens to respond to events and make informed decisions, and referred to the example of Reverse 911, a program that sends evacuation messages to communities at risk.

Dr. Yossi Sheffi, professor of engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said “the first and most important step in dealing with disruptions is working to avoid them.” He said the next steps in building resilience are implementing a detection system, and focusing on redundancy and flexibility. Mary Arnold, vice president of government relations for SAP, said to ensure resiliency and recovery, “we must develop public-private partnerships that utilize the resources of both sectors and play to their strengths.”

Sheffi said there is a wide variety of preparedness and resilience among companies, but that the good news is most large corporations take resiliency seriously. He said he was struck by how uncoordinated volunteer efforts are, and that the government needs a mechanism to capture and coordinate volunteers.

Baker said the Department of Homeland Security works closely with states in emergency situations, since state and local authorities are the first to respond to disasters. He said the federal government needs to allow creativity for local planning. He said that practicing for such events is the most important thing the news administration can do in terms of planning and exercising for emergency situations.

CAP panel discusses the "State of Homeland Security"

The Center for American Progress held a discussion today on “The State of Homeland Security” with guest speaker Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the first ever Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. A panel discussion with other guests who are knowledgeable about homeland security followed his remarks.

Thompson outlined eight primary challenges that the Department of Homeland Security faces, including an effective border protection plan, an adequate budget, chemical security measures, communication with small companies and various departments, employee diversity, stabilizing management, reducing reliance on contractors, and maintaining national security without infringing on civil rights. He stated that there are currently 86 subcommittees with jurisdiction over the DHS, which is “too many” to maintain efficiency. Thompson called for bipartisan solutions to these problems, stressing that “when the bad people show up,” meaning terrorists, they are not going to ask about party affiliations.

Panelist Philip Crowley, CAP director of homeland security, explained growing pressure on the DHS to not only prevent attacks on the U.S., but also to anticipate and respond to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. He also said that the notion of a “War on Terror” should be retired because it is misleading and cannot be successfully waged or won. He noted that at the federal level, America spends twice as much defending Iraq than its own country and ten times more on offense than defense.

Department of Homeland Security House Oversight Hearing

At the House Judiciary Committee Oversight Hearing, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said there are many issues with undocumented aliens and workers in the United States. A large problem, he said, is in simply finding them.

There is such a large cost involved with prosecuting illegal aliens and smugglers, that it is preferred to just send them back where they came from. Within Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, there is the idea to eliminate paperwork that doesn't add value to the program, in regards to undocumented workers. Once caught, Chertoff said, the likelihood that illegal aliens are actually being deported is high. Unfortunately, he said, there seems to be as if they were fighting a legal headwind. Within the budget for 2009, they are seeking an increase to expand the program. The idea is to give people more incentive to turn in employers that are using undocumented workers.

In response to questions about illegal alien gang members, Chertoff said we need to be able to help local jurisdictions enforce the laws, and it's a terrible dilemma because it costs money to send people out of the country. The solution, he said, is to make it difficult, if not impossible, for people to come back across the border illegally.

Two Representatives asked about FEMA trailers, and Chertoff said the FEMA trailers that were purchased for use by the hurricanes were standard trailers that anyone could buy. People don't want to leave the trailers, he said, and there is no "medically safe level" of formaldehyde. Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) suggested that we start to charge the inhabitants rent and maybe that would motivate them to get out.

Chertoff said in regards to our threat level rising due to some sort of spring counter offensive in Afghanistan, he felt we were safe. His assessment was from three points: there has never been a drop in the determination of the enemy to attack us in the homeland; they have not succeeded in doing it since 9/11 largely because of the strategies we have taken in making it harder to get into the country and do the attack; and we are having a success in Iraq again AQI that is largely unnoticed and is very embarrassing to them. In his view, he said, that ultimately makes us safe.