At a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Ed Case (D-HI) spoke to Sec. Kristi Noem about her time at the head of DHS.
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00:00Madam Secretary, I appreciate your rosy report on the Department of Homeland Security.
00:05I have a different view on where the Department is today and where you, and by you I'm going to refer to the President, the Administration, and you as Secretary, are taking it as reflected in your actions and budgets, not just in your words.
00:19But I think it's important that we start by some points of agreement.
00:23First of all, I think you would agree, I hope you would agree, that the 270 or so thousand members of the DHS workforce, if that's what the figure is now, and we would like to find out what the figure is at some point, spread across your 22 departments, all deserve our praise for their dedication, for serving our country every day, and they also deserve our professional respect.
00:44I think we would also agree that the efforts to legally reduce illegal immigration and illegal drugs of the past couple of years across our borders are paying off and should be continued.
00:57So I agree with you on those things.
00:59Overall, however, and focusing on the budget, because this is the Appropriations Committee, what little you have shown us thus far of your FY2026 budget,
01:10it looks like you are definitely overfunding some efforts, mainly for messaging purposes, at the expense of some other efforts that are really critical, such as cyber security, disaster prevention and mitigation, transportation security.
01:24And you're using budget gimmicks to misdirect and conceal your intent.
01:28On your budget gimmicks, you claim a 65% increase in DHS's overall budget, targeted at the border, drugs, and the Coast Guard.
01:37But all of that increase or more is loaded into your separate reconciliation bill.
01:43You have essentially, for the purposes of this committee, level-funded DHS and loaded all of the extra money into reconciliation.
01:52First of all, aside from completely sidetracking this particular committee, which is supposed to be doing that funding,
01:59you should know, if you don't already, that this is not an appropriate use of reconciliation.
02:04It's intended to maintain the illusion of responsible budgeting.
02:09It certainly is holding needed DHS increases, which many of us would support in other situations, hostage to your overall reconciliation plan of continuing tax cuts for billionaires and slashes in critical programs like Medicaid.
02:24So the question I have, and it's a rhetorical question since I'm making a statement here, is why don't you just come into this committee and say it straight?
02:32We need a 65% or more increase in DHS to actually protect our national security.
02:39Your increase is also heavily skewed to the border generally and CPB specifically, some 20 billion, all of it in reconciliation.
02:47And nobody disputes that CPB needs help.
02:50I've been to the border three times myself.
02:52I've spent time with the agents, and certainly personnel and equipment costs are necessary.
02:58But a question that I have from an oversight perspective is, if you are claiming such success at the border,
03:04which without spending all of this extra money, which you're there for, which you're now asking for,
03:09do we need to do that at the expense of other programs?
03:12And I mean the non-personnel stuff.
03:15You're also loading half of your reconciliation increase into the U.S. Coast Guard, $21 billion.
03:20And everybody agrees that the Coast Guard needs help.
03:23It's critical in the Indo-Pacific where you have actually withdrawn from the Indo-Pacific, which I think was a tremendous mistake.
03:30Why don't you just ask for that in your base budget rather than trying to hide and extort it in reconciliation?
03:36Your budget also ignores and even attacks other critical functions of DHS, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA,
03:46which I think we would all agree is critical to direct national defense, but also civilian infrastructure,
03:52which is the most exposed right now, and the reliance of foreign countries on our expertise to help them with their cybersecurity.
04:01And yet you propose to reduce CISA by 20% in your base budget.
04:06And I don't think that you can claim that that's all somehow Biden misdirection.
04:11FEMA, another example of misbudgeting in my view.
04:16You, first of all, collectively have directed very incorrect and outright mean criticism at FEMA,
04:25which is just undeserved by FEMA.
04:28And it's time to put the political campaign behind us and acknowledge that FEMA is doing a good job.
04:33They did an outstanding job on Maui, and I sat with them on Maui when they were trying their very best
04:39and did their very best while their president was criticizing their work.
04:43We don't need this.
04:44And further, we certainly need to fund them adequately.
04:47Transportation Security Administration, same basic observation, a critical agency which you have not adequately funded.
04:56So fundamentally, my time is running short.
04:59Obviously, this is a critical agency.
05:01It deserves to be led responsibly and transparently.
05:05It deserves to be budgeted for transparently and responsibly.
05:09And until we get there, I do not feel safer under your leadership at DHS.
05:14Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, if I can respond quickly.
05:19Thank you for your comments, and I'd like to respond to you.
05:23If I don't have time today, I will in writing or in answers to other questions.
05:26But we have focused on making sure that we're going forward with a Department of Homeland Security
05:31that focuses on what our mission is, and that is to secure America's homeland
05:36and do that while being accountable to taxpayers.
05:39So every single component I have, 23 different departments, we have gone back to their mission statement
05:45on what they were intended to do and put them back on mission.
05:48So in CISA, instead of doing censorship, misinformation, disinformation, they're back to securing our critical infrastructure.
05:55TSA, all we're doing there in the reductions is reducing empty FTEs that were never filled
06:01or don't have TSOs in them now, and asking for TSA officials to do work that they were intended to do,
06:07not to do unskilled technical work by monitoring exit lanes.
06:10So I could go through all of them that you mentioned.
06:13FEMA as well, the President has indicated he wants to eliminate FEMA as it exists today
06:16and to have states have more control over their emergency management response.
06:21He wants to empower local governments and support them in how they respond to their people.
06:25So thank you for identifying what you're concerned about, and I look forward to having conversations with you
06:31so that I can answer the questions that you have and reassure you that this Department of Homeland Security
06:35is accountable, but it is also going to fulfill the mission for which it was created
06:40after the horrific events of 9-11.