In a Pig's Eye

With his 1978 classic, Home Style: House Members in Their Districts (Longman, 2002), political scientist Richard F. Fenno Jr. altered the way scholars view Congress by chronicling the extensive care and feeding that members provide to their constituents. Fenno's book didn't exactly break news, but his methodology and analysis proved so persuasive that afterward no one could dispute the primacy of the home district in the life of the ordinary congressman.

The House of Representatives is a very different institution today than it was when Fenno first published his work 26 years ago. But the way Congress makes homeland security policy confirms that Fenno's assessment still holds true. From the battle over where to locate the Homeland Security Department's headquarters to the calculation of fiscal 2004 homeland security appropriations, the relentless, single-minded focus on the folks back home is proving to be a congressional instinct that cannot be easily overcome.

Take Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., for example. Porter represents a congressional district that covers the south end of the tourist-dependent Las Vegas Strip. Naturally, he's calling for creation of a tourism advocate position in Homeland Security. Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., each represent jurisdictions that lobbied to host the planned DHS headquarters. When it became apparent in 2003 that the new department would be located in Northern Virginia, neither took the news very well. Hoyer decried the decision as an unconstitutional "power grab," while Norton suggested the deal was a "sweetheart lease."

To single out parochial-minded House members, however, is to overlook the chamber that has done the most to localize homeland security policymaking-the U.S. Senate. There, rail security legislation is spearheaded by Senate Democrat Tom Carper of Amtrak-dependent Delaware. Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican who represents the second-largest airport cargo hub in the country, closely monitors air cargo security issues. Chemical plant security is the focus of Democrat Jon Corzine, who represents chemical-producing New Jersey, while the 2002 Maritime Transportation Security Act was crafted by Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., who vigilantly protects the Port of Charleston's interests.

The Senate's approach to homeland security spending is likewise seasoned with home-state flavor, which explains the cockeyed formula for the allocation of first-responder grants. The formula, inherited from language written into the USA Patriot Act by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is designed to guarantee each state a minimum amount of funding-regardless of risk or need. This heavy-on-the-pork, something-for-everyone approach is not much different from the way federal highway dollars are doled out, which is precisely the point: Rural and less populated states don't get shortchanged at the expense of urban areas. Indeed, bucolic Vermont, Leahy's home, turned out to be one of the winners in the mad dash for homeland security dollars-it ranks third in the nation in fiscal 2004 per capita funding for first responders.

Last year, Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., chairman of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, introduced a bill that would put an end to that kind of pork-barreling by awarding first-responder grants to places facing the greatest likelihood of danger from terrorist attack. The measure passed his committee by a unanimous vote, but its prospects for becoming law are grim.

Several high-ranking legislators-from small and rural states-have expressed their distaste for a change to a threat-based formula because they recognize that it likely means fewer dollars for their constituents. In the Senate, where these states hold considerable sway, the outlook isn't any better.

Fenno could have predicted all this. Like any other issue before Congress, homeland security begins at home.