Budget changes submitted for Homeland Security revamp

By Peter Cohn CongressDaily July 22, 2005

The White House sent to Capitol Hill Friday its formal budget amendment to accommodate Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's proposed departmental restructuring plan, in advance of weekend conference negotiations on a $30.8 billion fiscal 2006 Homeland Security appropriations bill.

With a filing deadline of Monday night, House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said Friday it would be difficult, but not impossible, to wrap up work over the weekend or early next week.

"It's a question mark, because I want to do this reorg in our bill," Rogers said.

He said staff would carefully scrub the request with the aim of avoiding the need to go back and change the agency's funding allocations after the bill is signed into law.

"I don't want to report out a sloppy bill, and I don't want to do it through reprogramming," he said.

The fiscal 2006 budget amendment tracks the recommendations made by Chertoff last week, which involve a reconfiguration of the agency's offices dealing with preparedness, policy, intelligence and operations. No new money is requested, but rather reallocated according to Chertoff's plan.

Major changes include the creation of a new Analysis and Operations account for intelligence activities, funded at $311.2 million, as part of the agency's reorganization of its old Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate, from where most of the money would come.

Another $473.9 million previously budgeted for the IAIP would go into a new Preparedness Directorate, which consolidates some IAIP functions and adds several other accounts, including the U.S. Fire Administration and Biodefense Countermeasures programs. The proposal also would move $689 million to fund Federal Air Marshals from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Transportation Security Administration. And $10.6 million intended for the office of the Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security would be parceled out to several other management accounts within the department.

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Budget changes submitted for Homeland Security revamp
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