DHS Budget Up 6 Percent

President Bush’s fiscal year 2007 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) represents $42.7 billion in funding, an increase of 6 percent over the previous year.

Central to the department’s budget are five themes: increasing overall preparedness, and strengthening the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); strengthening border security and reforming immigration; enhancing transportation security through more efficient and secure system controls; improving information sharing; and strengthening the department’s organization in order to maximize performance.

Here are some of the budget particulars:

• An increase of $50 million for the National Preparedness Integration Program, which provides funding to execute medical preparedness coordination, catastrophic planning, emergency communications improvements, and command and control alignment.

• A total of $17.7 million in funding will support the Radiological and Nuclear Attribution and Forensics initiative, which will enable DHS to combine information on potential capabilities of terrorist organizations and develop and deploy threat agents with laboratory-based forensics techniques that determine the source of nuclear and radiological materials or devices.

• An increase of $5 million to fund FEMA’s Emergency Alert System (EAS) upgrade, which provides a convenient and reliable means of emergency communications when other national communications resources have been damaged or compromised.

• An increase of $10 million to establish the Chemical Security Office, which will conduct outreach with the chemical industry on potential or enacted regulations, rulemakings and related items, as well as review and verify initial facility consequence screening and vulnerability assessments.

• A request for $458.9 million to increase by 1,500 new Border Patrol Agents, bringing the total number of agents added to 3,000 since 2005.

• A request for $100 million for Border Technology that will enhance electronic surveillance and operational response capability.

• A request for $30 million to complete construction of the San Diego Border Infrastructure System project that includes multiple fences and patrol roads to enable quick enforcement response.

• An increase of $62.9 million for total funding of $399.5 million for US-VISIT, to allow border personnel to access immigration, criminal and terrorist information.

• $139 million for the Container Security Initiative (CSI) to pre-screen inbound cargo at more than 40 foreign ports and $55 million for Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) to review and enhance the security of partner organizations throughout the cargo supply-chain.

• $135 million to expand the current Employment Verification pilot program to support a national electronic employment authorization verification system.

• A total of $4.7 billion to support aviation security efforts. Of this amount, $692 million will support the deployment and maintenance of Explosive Detection and Electronic Trace Detection Systems, which provide a higher probability to detect a range of explosives.

• $30.3 million to fund the Cargo Advanced Automated Radiography Systems (CAARS) development initiative. The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office will execute a program developing advanced active-imaging radiography systems for cargo inspection at the nation’s ports of entry.

• Funding of $157 million for the Radiation Portal Monitor Acquisition initiative to secure next-generation passive detection portals for deployment at ports-of-entry to expose nuclear explosive devices, fissile material, or radiological material concealed in cargo or conveyances.

• An increase of $36.3 million for information security and infrastructure to support the IT Infrastructure Transformation Program (ITP). ITP integrates the IT infrastructures of the 22 components of the department into “One Infrastructure,” which includes the creation of one secure network.