Schumer Calls for a Bigger Government
The Washington Post carries an Op-Ed piece by New York Senator Charles Schumer called Big Government Looks Better Now. Although he makes the case for increased security at a number of transportation and utility facilities:
To ask each town and village to guard all the power lines, gas lines and aqueducts is too much; to ask large private-sector companies such as airlines and food processors to be wholly responsible for the security of their products is also too much. It is not just that Washington is the only entity with the ability to raise the resources our new situation requires; the notion of letting a thousand different ideas compete and flourish -- which works so well to create goods and services -- does not work at all in the face of a national security emergency. Unity of action and purpose is required, and only the federal government can provide it.
... he doesn't make the case for the nationalization of these security functions that he hopes to. There are already too many agencies with overlapping missions. Left to their own devices, Congress will further dilute the "unity of action and purpose" that Schumer demands.
In our view, Congress would be best served by consolidating the federal agencies with security-related roles first. By this we mean agencies like The FBI and The ATF. Congress can do this while imposing beefed-up security standards to be implemented by private, state, and local police and civil defense forces.