Posted on 07/04/2014 9:08:40 PM PDT by PieterCasparzen
The Department of Homeland Security’s long-delayed new headquarters is running into trouble in Congress again, with Republican lawmakers seeking to end funding for the troubled project and Democrats recommending cuts.
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The final amount of funding for the decade-old project — billed as critical for national security and the revitalization of Southeast Washington — is unclear.
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Construction of the massive centralized headquarters is already running more than $1.5 billion over budget. The complex on the grounds of St. Elizabeths — a onetime mental hospital with a panoramic view of the District — was to be finished as early as this year, but funding shortfalls and other problems have pushed the estimated completion date back to 2026.
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It was the George W. Bush administration that called for a new DHS headquarters, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to strengthen the department’s ability to coordinate the fight against terrorism and respond to natural disasters. DHS agencies are still scattered in more than 50 locations across the Washington area, which officials said has slowed the government’s response to incidents such as a 2006 terrorist plot to blow up transatlantic airliners with liquid explosives.
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Built in 1852 on a 176-acre hilltop site east of the Anacostia River, St. Elizabeths was the first federal psychiatric institution. Its placid grounds were once home to patients including poet Ezra Pound and John W. Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
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(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Construction of the massive centralized headquarters is already running more than $1.5 billion over budget.
That money had to go somewhere.
How about we get rid of this useless department altogether?
I guess martial law will just have to wait because 0’s new brownshirt army headquarters isn’t going to be built any time soon.
GW never should have created it; the CIA and FBI should have been ordered to cooperate more and should have been collaborating. The Dept. Homeland Security was the worse idea he had after 9-11.
Now, the agencies are compromised with MBs and shake and bake converts to Islam, and I'm not sure they would be effective in protecting American interests.
yes. and the patriot act was gwb’s version of obamacare. and i was against it then.
It might be simpler to abolish the IRS and give HS a “slightly used” building.
DHS agencies are still scattered in more than 50 locations across the Washington area, which officials said has slowed the government’s response to incidents ... ********************************
What? Are they using soup cans with string or pony express to communicate? I think we have hi-tech methods of communication now. The agency doesn’t need to have all factions in one location; it needs to be defunded and dismantled along with many other Executive branch agencies.
Oh they must be ready to spend money for the fence on the border.
/s
I suspect that idea was ready to go long before Bush “thought” of it, just like invasion that has been ongoing for over 25 years. They are all in cahoots to install their old world order cleaned up and painted like new.
DHS needs to be totally defunded and shut down. It never should have been allowed to be created.
” a onetime mental hospital”
I love irony.
I suggest the Sheriff Arapaio method
Pink uniforms, on a campus of traps and tents
Dineing cafeteria serving peanut butter sandwiches, with bologna sandwich alternative
The former psyciatric grounds are almost too appropriate !
After 8 years of Clinton it was pretty obvious to the clued in that a crisis was coming.
The first World Trade Center bombing in '93, the Cole disaster, Somalia, Embassy bombing, the Wall between intel agencies, etc. And the sense that Clinton was not following up on any of it.
It was pretty much inevitable that a disaster was in the making.
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