Federal Emergency Management Agency (fema)

Needed Reforms

FEMA is the lead federal agency in preparing for and responding to disasters, but it is overtasked, overcompensates for the lack of state and local preparedness and response, and is regularly in deep debt. After passage of the 1988 Stafford Act,12 the number of declared federal disasters rose dramatically as most disaster costs were shifted from states and local governments to the federal government. In addition, state-friendly FEMA regulations, such as a “per capita indicator,” failed to maintain the pace of inflation and made it easy to meet disaster declaration thresholds. This combination has left FEMA unprepared in both readiness and funding for the truly catastrophic disasters in which its services are most needed. Reform of FEMA requires a greater emphasis on federalism and state and local preparedness, leaving FEMA to focus on large, widespread disasters.

Under the Stafford Act, FEMA has the authority to adjust the per capita indicator for damages, which creates a threshold under which states and localities are not eligible for public assistance. FEMA should raise the threshold because the per capita indicator has not kept pace with inflation, and this over time has effectively lowered the threshold for public assistance and caused FEMA’s resources to be stretched perilously thin. Alternatively, applying a deductible could accomplish a similar outcome while also incentivizing states to take a more proactive role in their own preparedness and response capabilities. In addition, Congress should change the cost-share arrangement so that the federal government covers 25 per- cent of the costs for small disasters with the cost share reaching a maximum of 75 percent for truly catastrophic disasters.

FEMA is also responsible for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), nearly all of which is issued by the federal government. Washington provides insurance at prices lower than the actuarially fair rate, thereby subsidizing flood insurance. Then, when flood costs exceed NFIP’s revenue, FEMA seeks taxpay- er-funded bailouts. Current NFIP debt is $20.5 billion, and in 2017, Congress canceled $16 billion in debt when FEMA reached its borrowing authority limit. These subsidies and bailouts only encourage more development in flood zones, increasing the potential losses to both NFIP and the taxpayer. The NFIP should be wound down and replaced with private insurance starting with the least risky areas currently identified by the program.

Budget Issues

FEMA manages all grants for DHS, and these grants have become pork for states, localities, and special-interest groups. Since 2002, DHS/FEMA have provided more than $56 billion in preparedness grants for state, local, tribal, and territorial governments. For FY 2023, President Biden requested more than $3.5 billion for federal assistance grants.13 Funds provided under these programs do not provide measurable gains for preparedness or resiliency. Rather, more than any objective needs, political interests appear to direct the flow of nondisaster funds. The principles of federalism should be upheld; these indicate that states better understand their unique needs and should bear the costs of their particularized programs. FEMA employees in Washington, D.C., should not determine how bil- lions of federal tax dollars should be awarded to train local law enforcement officers in Texas, harden cybersecurity infrastructure in Utah, or supplement migrant shelters in Arizona. DHS should not be in the business of handing out federal tax dollars: These grants should be terminated. Accomplishing this, however, will require action by Members of Congress who repeatedly vote to fund grants for political reasons. The transition should focus on building resilience and return on investment in line with real threats.

Personnel

FEMA currently has four Senate-confirmed positions. Only the Administrator should be confirmed by the Senate; other political leadership need not be con- firmed by the Senate. Additionally, FEMA’s “springing Cabinet position” should be eliminated, as this creates significant unnecessary challenges to the functioning of the whole of DHS at points in time when coordinated responses are most needed. CYBERSECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY (CISA)

Needed Reforms

CISA is supposed to have two key roles: (1) protection of the federal civilian government networks (.gov) while coordinating the execution of national cyber defense and sharing information with non-federal and private-sector partners

U.S. COAST GUARD (USCG)

Needed Reforms

The U.S. Coast Guard fleet should be sized to the needs of great-power compe- tition, specifically focusing efforts and investment on protecting U.S. waters, all while seeking to find (where feasible) more economical ways to perform USCG missions. The scope of the Coast Guard’s mission needs to be focused on protecting U.S. resources and interests in its home waters, specifically its Exclusive Economic Zone (200 miles from shore). USCG’s budget should address the growing demand for it to address the increasing threat from the Chinese fishing fleet in home waters as well as narcotics and migrant flows in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Doing this will require reversing years of shortfalls in shipbuilding, maintenance, and upgrades of shore facilities as well as seeking more cost-effective ship and facility designs. In wartime, the USCG supports the Navy, but it has limited capability and capacity to support wartime missions outside home waters.

and (2) national coordination of critical infrastructure security and resilience. Yet CISA has rapidly expanded its scope into lanes where it does not belong, the most recent and most glaring example being censorship of so-called misinformation and disinformation.

CISA’s funding and resources should align narrowly with the foregoing two mission requirements. The component’s emergency communications and Chem- ical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) roles should be moved to FEMA; its school security functions should be transferred to state homeland security offices; and CISA should refrain from duplicating cybersecurity functions done elsewhere at the Department of Defense, FBI, National Security Agency, and U.S. Secret Service.

Of the utmost urgency is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis/disinforma- tion efforts. The federal government cannot be the arbiter of truth. CISA began this work because of alleged Russian misinformation in the 2016 election, which in fact turned out to be a Clinton campaign “dirty trick.” The Intelligence Commu- nity, including the NSA or DOD, should counter foreign actors. At the time of this writing, release of the Twitter Files has demonstrated that CISA has devolved into an unconstitutional censoring and election engineering apparatus of the political Left. In any event, the entirety of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be dismissed on Day One.

For election security, CISA should help states and localities assess whether they have good cyber hygiene in their hardware and software in preparation for an election—but nothing more. This is of value to smaller localities, particularly by flagging who is attacking their websites. CISA should not be significantly involved closer to an election. Nor should it participate in messaging or propaganda.

New Policies

The Coast Guard’s mission set should be scaled down to match congressio- nal budgeting in the long term, with any increased funding going to acquisitions based on an updated Fleet Mix Analysis. The current shipbuilding plan is insuf- ficient based on USCG analysis, and the necessary numbers of planned Offshore Patrol Cutters and National Security Cutters are not supported by congressional budgets. The Coast Guard should be required to submit to Congress a long-range shipbuilding plan modeled on the Navy’s 30-Year Shipbuilding Plan. Ideally this should become part of the Navy plan in a new comprehensive naval long-range shipbuilding plan to ensure better coherency in the services’ requirements. Outside of home waters, and following the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, the Coast Guard should prioritize limited resources to the nation’s expansive Pacific waters to counter growing Chinese influence and encroachment. Expansion of facilities in American Samoa and basing of cutters there is one clear step in this direction and should be accelerated; looking to free association states (Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands) for enhanced and persistent presence, assuming adequate congressional funding, is another such step.

The Secretary of the Navy should convene a naval board to review and reset requirements for Coast Guard wartime mission support. To inform and validate these updated requirements, the Chief of Naval Operations and the Coast Guard Commandant should execute dedicated annual joint wartime drills focused on USCG’s wartime missions in the Pacific (the money for these activities should be allocated from DOD). An interagency maritime coordination office focused on developing and overseeing comprehensive efforts to advance the nation’s mari- time interests and increase its military and commercial competitiveness should be established.

Given the USCG’s history of underfunded missions, if the Coast Guard is to con- tinue to maintain the Arctic mission, money to do so adequately will be required over and above current funding levels. Consideration should be given to shifting the Arctic mission to the Navy. Either way, the Arctic mission should be closely coordinated with our Canadian, Danish, and other allies.

Personnel

USCG is facing recruitment challenges similar to those faced by the military services. The Administration should stop the messaging on wokeness and diversity and focus instead on attracting the best talent for USCG. Simultaneously, consis- tent with the Department of Defense, USCG should also make a serious effort to re-vet any promotions and hiring that occurred on the Biden Administration’s watch while also re-onboarding any USCG personnel who were dismissed from service for refusing to take the COVID-19 “vaccine,” with time in service credited to such returnees. These two steps could be foundational for any improvements in the recruiting process.

U.S. SECRET SERVICE (USSS)

Needed Reforms New Policies

USSS should transfer to the Department of Justice and Department of the Treasury all investigations that are not related to its protective function. It should begin the logistical operation of closing all field offices throughout the country and internationally to the extent they are not taken over by Treasury or Justice. USSS agents stationed outside of Washington, D.C., should be transferred to work in Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices where they would continue to be the “boots on the ground” to follow up on threat reports throughout the country and liaise with local law enforcement for visits by protectees.

The U.S. Secret Service must be the world’s best protective agency. Currently, the agency is distracted by its dual mission of protection and financial investigations. The result has been a long series of high-profile embarrassments and security fail- ures, perhaps most notably its allowing of then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to be inside the Democratic National Committee office on January 6, 2021, while a pipe bomb was outside. Despite the great size and scope of the January 6 inves- tigation, this high-profile incident of danger to a protectee remains unresolved. The failures of the USSS protective mission are too numerous to list here. A December 2015 bipartisan report from the House Oversight Committee listed dozens of such incidents as well as needed recommendations for reform.14 This chapter adopts those findings and recommendations in whole, especially the finding that USSS’s dual-mission structure detracts from the agency’s protective capabilities.

At the time of that report, USSS agents spent only one-third of their work hours on protection-related activities as opposed to investigative activities. USSS was established initially to investigate counterfeit currency, but its mission has evolved over the decades to prioritize electronic financial crimes. For example, as this chap- ter was being written, all 15 of the USSS’s most wanted individuals were wanted for financial crimes, many of them international in nature. Notably, the last head of the agency left not for a protection-related job, but to be the Chief Security Officer of social media company SnapChat. This is a pattern that has developed over the years, with agents seeking to burnish their online financial crimes credentials to secure corporate security jobs. Coupled with some of the lowest morale in the federal government, the agency has completely lost sight of the primacy of its protective mission.

The only investigations not related to USSS’s protective function that agents should pursue would be directed by HSI and relate to tracking the financial crimes associated with illegal immigration. This should include tracing remittances, any funds that are used to pay coyotes or the cartels, and payments by businesses to illegal aliens and all other crimes associated with illegal immigration. USSS should keep visitor logs for all facilities where the President works or resides. The Biden Administration has evaded such transparency with President Biden spending a historic amount of time for a President at his Delaware residence. This has left the American people in the dark as to who is influencing the highest levels of their own government.

Budget The suggested reforms would result in a significant USSS budget reduction, primarily because the agency would relinquish dozens of physical offices through- out the U.S. and internationally. Some amount of savings should be used to fix the personnel problems and for recruitment initiatives aimed at individuals who are inclined to join a protection-focused agency.

Personnel

As documented extensively in the above-referenced 2015 bipartisan congressio- nal report, low morale and high turnover are key drivers of USSS problems. With their mission focused on protection, agents would no longer spend the bulk of their time developing unrelated skillsets. Instead, USSS agents could hone their protection skills and pursue a protection career path in the agency rather than quickly leaving USSS for high-paying corporate security jobs. The Uniform Division (UD) of USSS requires a significant staffing increase. As documented in the bipartisan report, understaffing results in unpredictable and long hours, which in turn result in high turnover, which only compounds the problem.

Another key issue is that UD officers lack the ability to enforce criminal laws outside the immediate vicinity of the White House. As the District of Columbia is a federal jurisdiction and currently is beholden to the trend of progressive pro- crime policies, UD officers should enforce all applicable laws. The result would be to allow UD officers to gain more law enforcement experience—an attractive credential that would improve morale.