The Bush administration has announced that it is reducing the amount of funds being given to New York City through the Department of Homeland Security in favor of increasing funding for the protection of cities like Louisville, Kentucky, Omaha, Nebraska, and Charlotte, North Carolina, all of which received large increases from the DHS.
Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff has used transparent excuses to explain the almost 40 percent reduction in funds to New York City, saying the city's proposals were too vague or saying that there would be a new 'risk-based' formula instead of basing funding on population.
The Bush administration has also made the laughable claim that New York City does not have any 'national icons' that needed protecting and therefore, funding has been cut.
There are 16 million people in the New York metropolitan area. The eight million living in the city itself exceeds the population of more than half of the country's states. Monuments such as the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty and the New York Stock Exchange are just three of the major landmarks that would make great symbolic and practical targets for terrorists not to mention the city's many connecting bridges and tunnels.
Unfortunately, the new, lower funding for New York City is merely a thin cover for the Bush administration to spend more dollars in 'blue' states rather than in 'red' states like New York. The emphasis is now being placed on rewarding political supporters rather than on protecting the American people.
The proposal by Mr. Chertoff and the Bush administration has accomplished something many New Yorkers never thought they'd see after the U.A.E. ports scandal: it has united Congressman Peter King, a pro-Bush conservative House Republican leader, with Democratic Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
King, speaking at a news conference in West Babylon this past week, said, 'What Secretary Chertoff did is absolutely disgraceful and inexcusable. This is a department that is out of control. It is leaderless and there have to be dramatic changes made.'
King later told 'Newsday,' 'When they say New York is the number one target, their job is to find a way to get the money there, not to tell us why they can't.'
Clinton added, 'I am just beyond understanding how Secretary Chertoff with a straight face could defend this decision.' She later explained, 'Our threat level has not dropped 40 percent in the last year. If anything, we remain at the very top of the terrorist hit list.'
The Senator is most certainly right about that. For maximum loss of life and maximum news impact, terrorists would place a higher value on attacking New York's many landmarks and financial centers than a cornfield in Nebraska.
But once again, as they did with the outing of Valerie Plame, the Bush administration has place partisan politics over national security. It appears more important to this group to reward those politicians that voted with them in the past than to maximize our protection against terrorists.
'As far as I'm concerned, the Department of Homeland Security and the administration have declared war on New York,' said King. 'It's a knife in the back to New York, and I'm going to do everything I can to make them very sorry they made this decision.'
Bush may have alienated King, one of his biggest Congressional supporters by making this mistake. But more than that, he may end up costing us thousands more lives.
