King slams homeland security fund-cut plan

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans Thursday proposed to slash federal Homeland Security grants for states and local agencies by more than half, a move that Democrats and House Homeland Security chairman Peter King said they would fight.

Republicans said they want to reduce the grants from $2.2 billion this year to $1 billion next year. President Barack Obama asked for $2.82 billion in his 2012 budget proposal.

The GOP said the bill includes "long-overdue reform" of a grant program "plagued by inefficiency" and "unable to demonstrate a measurable return on taxpayer investments."

But experts and New York lawmakers said Thursday a cut of that magnitude would deeply affect state and local homeland security efforts on Long Island, in New York City and across the country.

The grant money is used to train first responders, install cameras and provide other security measures around potential targets, and to buy equipment such as radios and radiation detectors, local officials said. In 2010, Nassau County won $5.5 million and Suffolk County $4.5 million in homeland security grants.

"The [grant] program is critical and cutting it is a real slap in the face to local police, firefighters, emergency responders and public health officials," said Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland.

King (R-Seaford) said he is urging GOP leaders to boost the funding in the final bill.

"It's 10 days after Osama bin Laden is killed and we're all agreeing that the threat is higher, and they are cutting the grants 50 percent," King said.

Noting that two men were arrested in New York City in a terror plot Thursday, Rep. Steve Israel (D-Dix Hills) said, "Republicans are slashing funding for homeland security but continuing tax subsidies for big oil companies."

The House GOP included the cut in its homeland security appropriations bill, which it made public Thursday and is to be debated Friday in the House Appropriations subcommittee.

The bill has a long road ahead of it and could be changed along the way.

It must be approved by the subcommittee and full Appropriations committee, and then by the House. It then must be reconciled with the version adopted by the Senate, where Democrats are in the majority.

Both chambers must approve a reconciled bill, and the president must sign it.

"We in the Senate are going to do everything we can to restore the funding," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a promise seconded by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat.

"Those people cutting this budget are back in a pre-9/11 mindset," Schumer said. There hasn't been another attack "because we've been vigilant and we've put money into the NSA [National Security Agency] and homeland security."

The GOP bill proposes a 3 percent overall budget cut for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes border patrol, the Coast Guard and airport passenger screening.

To justify the cut, the GOP majority on the House Appropriations Committee said states and cities haven't spent $13 billion in previous grants.

King said the bill does preserve $20 million for New York's signature Securing the Cities program, which deploys radiation detectors to help prevent a "dirty bomb."