Homeland Security Funding Commission

hold regional meetings to solicit public input prior to making its recommendations. History has shown that the use of an independent commission and public meetings make the process as open and fair as possible. The Commission forwards its recommendations to the President for review and approval, who then forwards the recommendations to Congress. Congress has 45 legislative days to act on the commission report on an all-or-none basis. After that time, the Commission's realignment and closure recommendations become binding on the Department. Implementation must start within two years, and actions must be complete within six years. The important factors for consideration with regard to a new Homeland Security Funding Commission is the fact that the Commission's vote will be an all or nothing affair. The Commission's findings must be approved as is, or rejected, without any alterations by Congress. This eliminates some of the horse trading that goes on with major funding programs. If State A says that they need something, they'll get State B to vote for it even though it may not be in State B's interest, in exchange for something in another bill or the insertion of provisions into the existing bill that provide something to State B. The new Commission would eliminate this aspect, and eliminate the need to fund all 50 states equally in order to ameroliate the needs of individual members of Congress to show that they've brought home the bucks to their districts.

The overwhelming need addressed by the Commission must be securing vulnerabilities in transportation, major attractions, and sensitive locations. Emergency response after the fact must be addressed, but prevention and detection must be the primary consideration. The Commission would take into account risk assessments along the lines of what companies like AIR Worldwide have assembled, which can assess the risk and weigh the cost of protecting potential targets, like the Port of Los Angeles and Prince William Sound. According to AIR, the company

... can estimate the cost of an attack on a port in Los Angeles vs. an attack on a port in Prince William Sound. We can calculate where a nuclear blast of a given force would kill 500,000 people as opposed to 50,000. These are the logical estimates that insurers and investment banks are seeking as they try to quantify the risk they face.

But while all this strategic thinking is going on in the private sector, the government has responded to

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