The Proposed Department of Homeland Security
On June 6, after months
of resisting calls from Congress to create a Cabinet-level department
to oversee homeland security and coordinate counter-terrorism activities,
President Bush announced his proposal to create a consolidated Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) out of existing government programs currently
scattered among a dozen federal departments. [The new department would
have a vast operational reach, a budget of up to $35 billion, and up
to 170,000 federal employees.]
On June
18, the Administration delivered to Congress draft legislation to establish
the new DHS. [Congress quickly responded by stating its intention to
pass the legislation by the end of the year; this July, both the House
and the Senate are rushing to draft their own versions of legislation,
incorporating the President’s proposals as well as congressional modifications.]
While the idea of creating DHS is no longer controversial and enjoys
bipartisan support, there will be intense debate over the numerous details.
Creating the DHS will require the most extensive reorganization of the
executive branch since World War II, and could involve the elimination
of some agencies, the mergers of others, the transfer of authority over
up to 170,000 federal employees, the physical transfer of an unknown
number of civil servants, and the meshing together of nearly two dozen
federal units into a new organizational structure. Complicating matters
is the urgent need to accomplish this restructuring without any loss
of effectiveness in current efforts to combat terrorism and make U.S.
borders more secure.
The DHS R&D Portfolio
The proposed
DHS would fold in R&D programs from five existing departments (HHS,
DOE, Commerce, USDA, and DOT). Below is a brief overview of the R&D
programs proposed to be transferred to DHS in the draft Administration
legislation. Precise R&D funding figures
are not available because of the vague and continually shifting parameters
of the proposal. The legislation offers only the broadest outlines for
the new department, and offers little detail over how the new department
would operate. While the original June 6 announcement suggested that
DHS would have a $3.4 billion R&D portfolio (AAAS estimate) out
of a $37.5 billion budget, making it the sixth-largest R&D funding
agency, the legislation suggests a portfolio of $2.3 billion or less
(AAAS estimate) [out of a slightly smaller $35 billion budget], nearly
all from programs currently in the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
[The current House version of the legislation (HR 5005) would have even
less R&D, approximately $500 million.] DHS would be divided into
four divisions, corresponding to its four main missions:
- Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection: This division’s
primary responsibility would be to integrate and analyze intelligence
from various agencies, including the CIA and FBI (which would not become
part of DHS). Although R&D would not be a large part of this division,
the legislation would transfer the Department
of Energy’s (DOE) National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC) to DHS. NISAC is a partnership between two of DOE’s national laboratories, Los Alamos
and Sandia, both in New
Mexico. NISAC has a budget of $20 million in
FY 2002 and performs R&D to analyze critical infrastructures and
their vulnerabilities, and simulate infrastructure or biological attack
scenarios. The Department of
Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
would contribute its Computer Security Division, part of the NIST laboratories,
to DHS. [The House Science Committee has reported legislation that would
keep this division within NIST; the full House’s draft legislation (HR
5005) concurs with the Committee. The Senate has not acted yet on this
proposal.]
- Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures: This
division would have primary responsibility for setting research priorities
and conducting an integrated R&D program to enable the U.S.
to respond to attacks using weapons of mass destruction. This division would contain most of the R&D proposed for the new department.
The original June 6 announcement proposed that all of DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL),
with a proposed budget in FY 2003 of $1.2 billion, would move to DHS.
Most of LLNL’s work deals with maintaining
the safety and reliability of the nation’s nuclear stockpile using science
rather than testing. In the draft legislation, only parts of LLNL such
as its Advanced Scientific
Computing Research program and its Intelligence program and other programs
as needed would move to DHS, perhaps as a DHS office within the larger
laboratory. Among other DOE programs, the Biological and Environmental
Research program’s microbial pathogens activities, and the national
security and nuclear smuggling and other homeland security-related programs
within Nonproliferation & Verification R&D would move to DHS.
Because these programs are embedded within larger programs, it is unclear
how large these transfers would be, but combined they could total around
$100 million. The only DOE laboratory that would be transferred in its
entirety to DHS would be the small Environmental Measurements Laboratory
in New York City. [The House
legislation would follow the Administration proposal for DOE programs.]
The largest part of DHS’ R&D spending would go to civilian biological
defense research programs currently operated by the Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS). The June 6 announcement suggested that
all National Institutes of Health
(NIH) bioterrorism-related R&D along with some R&D at the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; both are HHS agencies)
would be transferred, with a proposed budget of $2.0 billion in FY 2003.
But the legislation would not transfer any employees or laboratories
to DHS. Instead, DHS would transfer R&D funds directly to NIH and
CDC for distribution through their existing grant and laboratory infrastructures.
DHS would have the authority to set the bioterrorism
research agenda in consultation with HHS. Nearly all of the NIH R&D
funds would go through the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) except for
funds for construction of biosafety laboratories in Buildings and Facilities. [The
latest House version of the legislation would keep bioterrorism
R&D funding in HHS, only specifying that DHS would have input into
setting the research agenda.]
The other
affected department under this mission would be the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Its Plum Island Animal
Disease Center off Long Island,
New York, with a budget of $25 million
and 124 federal employees, would be transferred to DHS. It is currently
funded by USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. [The House legislation
would concur with the Administration. The House version of the legislation
would also transfer some activities of DOD’s Chemical and Biological
Defense Program to DHS.]
- Border and Transportation Security: This division would be by far
the largest of the four in terms of budget and personnel, and would
integrate federal government operations aimed at securing U.S.
borders and transportation systems. It would fold in the Immigration
and Natural Service, the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, the Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of USDA, and the recently
created Transportation Security Administration (TSA). This division
would inherit these agencies’ small R&D programs, including the
Coast Guard’s ($24 million in FY 2003), the TSA’s
aviation security R&D (a preliminary estimate of $95 million in
FY 2003), and APHIS’s R&D portfolio ($29
million in FY 2003).
- Emergency Preparedness and Response: This division would coordinate
all federal assistance in response to disasters (including natural disasters)
and domestic attacks. There would be no R&D programs within this
mission, although DHS would gain the authority to fund construction
of terrorism-related R&D facilities at HHS through direct funds
transfers. The $185 million in FY 2003 NIH
Buildings and Facilities
funding for biosafety laboratories could originate
here; the resulting facilities would be NIH-operated laboratories. [The
latest House version of the legislation does not contain this NIH provision.]
Although
the proposed DHS would have enormous impacts on the federal government
and especially on goods and travelers crossing U.S.
borders, the impact on scientists and engineers would be minimal. Few
federal scientists and engineers would be affected except the small
number of USDA, NIST, DOT, and DOE or DOE contractor employees proposed
to be transferred. The new priority-setting powers of DHS, however,
would mean that NIH bioterrorism research
priorities would be set with strong input from DHS.
Next Steps and Possible Impacts
[The draft
legislation must now be approved by Congress; both the House and Senate
have set up expedited procedures for considering the proposal; both
chambers hope to have their versions of the legislation approved before
a month-long August recess, after Congress revises it and probably expands
it to provide greater detail. The goal is to have final legislation
to the President’s desk on or soon after September 11.]
One major
issue not addressed by the draft legislation is how to fund the new
department, or how much money it will need. [Although the Administration
claims that the $35 billion proposed in February in the FY 2003 budget
request for DHS’ component programs will be sufficient for the FY 2003
DHS budget, others are skeptical that there will be enough savings and
elimination of duplicative functions to pay for the increased managerial
costs of such an enormous organization, not to mention the transition
costs of moving thousands of employees to a new organization and/or
new physical locations, installing compatible information systems, and
merging chains of command. It seems likely that the DHS budget will
need to be substantially larger than the sum of its parts, especially
in the first few years. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that
the department could require more than $200 million annually in extra
administrative costs, not counting one-time costs of buying new computer
equipment and other set-up costs.]
There is
little doubt that the proposal will change as it moves through Congress.
In just two weeks from the initial announcement to the draft legislation,
major changes in the proposed DHS R&D portfolio (the removal of
LLNL from the transfer list) have already happened. Congress is likely
to give serious thought to keeping bioterrorism R&D funding within NIH and CDC instead of
moving the funds to DHS. If that happens, then DHS would be left with
a far smaller R&D portfolio. [The House legislation, because it
does not transfer NIH and CDC R&D to the department, would result
in a DHS with an R&D budget of less than $500 million.]
[Another
likely change is that Congress may approve the creation of a central
Office of Science and Technology within the new DHS, led by an Under
Secretary for Science and Technology, to coordinate the department’s
science and technology programs and to oversee its R&D funding.
The House Science Committee recently approved draft legislation creating
an Under Secretary for S&T, which was incorporated into the House
version of the legislation. The Under Secretary would be assisted by
a Homeland Security Science and Technology Coordination Council composed
of top DHS officials. The legislation also authorizes the department
to set up its own R&D programs as necessary, with a budget that
could be $300 million a year if appropriated, including up to $50 million
for university research centers. These provisions will most likely be
included in the final Senate legislation.
DHS could also designate a national laboratory to be a headquarters
laboratory for homeland security under the House legislation.]
AAAS will
continue to monitor the DHS proposal and its implications for federal
R&D as it moves through Congress, and will update this analysis
as events warrant. (Further AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the
AAAS R&D Web site
will provide up-to-date information on R&D in FY 2003 appropriations,
including the eventual fate of the Department of Homeland Security proposal.)
-
June 21, 2002 (revised July 24)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
American Association for the Advancement of Science
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
science_policy@aaas.org
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
(new URL)
