Once the Presidential primaries start you can almost feel the air going out of any current administration. As the Obama Administration prepares to submit its last budget (perhaps forever) in this term in late January the likelihood is that it will reflect the need of the President to reflect the current fiscal constraints that will have been developed and fleshed out over the next month. Budget always reflects policy and it should be of interest that large scale recipients of federal disaster relief are not represented very well on the Special Committee that reports out on November 23rd.
So the STATE and LOCAL gravy train that is FEMA and DHS could well end because the new arrangements will minimize aid to STATES and their local governments even as Harrisburg, PA and an Alabama county surrounding Birmingham go bankrupt.
Most Governors should be streamlining their local governments now to make each unit ones with general taxing authority and sue or be sued authority and eliminate all others. Where any city and county are overlapping contiguous areas that should be eliminated by expansion of one or the other. WE don't need 90,000 local jurisdictions each acting as claimants on the STATE and Federal fiscs.
But it is now clear after almost three years of this Administration that Obama really cares little about HOMELAND SECURITY or EM. And Janet N. has really become an absentee landlord as she probably realizes she needs to have fun and/or focus on her next job as she trapses off to Norway and Sweden to discuss her portfolio. Another failed DHS leader IMO. This critical budget time is not the time to be out of pocket as crucial decisions are made by the Congress and OMB and she may be presiding over a deeply scarred operation in 2012 before she departs.
I now am pretty much willing to believe a Republican win in 2012 means the demise of DHS and perhaps FEMA and that prediction will be discussed at some length over this blogs next several months.
And it was definitely a Christmas gift to DHS that Rick Perry's 53 second gaffe did not end with a reference to DHS as the third Cabinet department to eliminate should he be elected.
