National Guard anti-terror teams unfunded in Bush budget
The absence of funding for a critical National Guard program in President Bush's fiscal 2004 budget will leave 19 states without full-time military teams to respond to chemical attacks or other war-related emergencies unless members of Congress carve money out of the president's supplemental request.
Democrats in both chambers are trying to add funding for the weapons of mass destruction civil support teams, which were authorized in the 2004 defense authorization act Congress passed last year. Pentagon officials said they could not include money in the 2004 appropriations request because the act was not signed into law until last Dec. 2.
In the House, $160.2 million for the specialized teams is "near the top of the list" of projects for which Democrats will seek money when the Appropriations Committee marks up the supplemental Tuesday, according to a Democratic committee aide.
Similar attempts are being weighed in the Senate, with Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., planning to offer an amendment from the floor if the committee does not add the money at today's scheduled markup.
Four Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee-Sens. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Conrad Burns of Montana, Robert Bennett of Utah and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire-represent states that are still waiting for Pentagon approval and funding of their emergency teams. Cochran also chairs the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee.
A fifth Republican, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, represents a state seeking a second team. California already has two teams.
"I'm not sure we're there yet in terms of funding," said an aide to one Republican on the panel. But if money for the teams is proposed, the aide said his boss and other GOP senators would probably support it.
Jamie Metzel, who follows homeland security issues for the Council on Foreign Relations, said members of Congress would be hard pressed to vote against money for the Guard units.
"Nobody wants to be seen as the person who voted against something that may be proven crucial at a time of need," Metzel said.
The Council, saying the United States "remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic terrorist attack" at home, has proposed boosting the number of civil support teams to 66.
The defense authorization enacted last December called for the Pentagon to certify teams in the 19 states that do not have them, but it did not provide funding or set a deadline. In January, 16 senators from those states asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to include money for the teams in the 2004 budget. Undersecretary of Defense David Chu, in a Jan. 31 letter, said the defense authorization came too late.
"We will ensure it is considered as part of the fiscal 2005 process," he wrote.
During a March 13 markup, the Senate Budget Committee adopted Feingold's sense of the Senate amendment urging the Pentagon to accelerate the timetable for funding the teams.
Further details of the Pentagon's plan are expected in a June 2 report to Congress. Chu said that report will include "a schedule for the establishment, manning, equipping and training of these teams and a discussion of whether the mission of the WMD-CSTs should be expanded."
The full-time National Guard teams are designed to work with first responders to detect and react to the use of chemical or biological agents or other weapons of mass destruction on U.S. soil. The Clinton administration proposed the first teams in 1998. Ten teams were certified in 2000 and 22 others have been added since then. Each team has 22 members and is outfitted with detection equipment, mobile laboratories and command posts.
The 19 states without certified teams have part-time units, but do not have the money for the equipment, full-time salaries and the 800-1,200 hours of training that the Pentagon pays for, according to the National Guard.
Some of the teams responded to the World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They have also been called to high-profile events such as the World Series and the Super Bowl. Five teams helped secure and test debris in Texas after the space shuttle Columbia exploded in early February.
Because Wisconsin does not have a certified, full-time team, Minnesota's unit had to be deployed for baseball's 2002 All-Star game in Milwaukee, Feingold said.
Besides Wisconsin, other states without federally funded emergency teams are Rhode Island, Delaware, North Carolina, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Connecticut, Indiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont and Wyoming.