Congress Punishes Secret Service With...A Raise?

The agency's budget nearly doubled this past decade. It's about to get even bigger

Nearly a month since the near-miss assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump and it looks like Congress has finally decided who to punish: the taxpayer.

This week, senators from both parties — Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) — proposed exactly what I predicted they would, more funding. Forget the simplest of explanations, that the gazillion dollar intelligence community failed to detect the shooter, the communications failures on the ground, and the general bumbling of the agents, particularly the head of the Secret Service detail. These powerful senators have decided that the troubled agency needs more money.

Murphy and Britt are respectively chair and ranking minority members of the  Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service’s budget. In a letter to the Secret Service, the two offer more money to better safeguard the President and presidential candidates. (I include a copy of the letter at the bottom of this article.)

Astoundingly, the two senators describe the agency’s protective work as just “one of its core responsibilities.” Even the Secret Service says it is their primary and “no fail” mission. The two acknowledge that the organization “has taken on a number of other important missions over time,” including many that have nothing to do with protecting presidents, as I detailed recently.

Congress recently added $22 million more than the $190 million budget President Biden requested specifically for protection requirements related to this year’s presidential election. (The agency’s budget has almost doubled over the past decade.) It’s so much easier than taking something away or punishing the service. Taking a mission away, or closing something down, is near impossible in the ways of national security Washington. Firing people, even holding someone accountable is seen as being too disruptive or unfair, especially when we are constantly told how hard everyone works and how magnificent they were in reacting to something they are charged with preventing.

Per the senators’ letter:

“Our subcommittee is currently drafting the Senate's Fiscal Year 2025 Homeland Security Appropriations bill, and we believe it is critical to understand the Secret Service's needs for the remainder of the 2024 presidential campaign as we consider appropriate levels of funding. Following the assassination attempt on former President Trump, President Biden announced that Secret Service protection will also be provided to presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Two vice presidential candidates will now also require protection. As a result, the Secret Service is assuming new protection costs related to the campaign at a time when it already appears to lack sufficient resources to fulfill its protective mission.”

Washington’s answer to every national security failure I can remember, from 9/11 to January 6th, is to shower more money on the very organizations who so miserably failed to prevent them from happening. It reminds me of how I am with houseplants. Whenever one is dying, I have a nasty habit of just giving them more water. This usually makes the situation even worse, leading to root rot as bacteria take advantage of the excess of water. But I do it because I want to feel like I’m doing something. I imagine that’s where Congress is at, but instead of water, it’s your tax dollars. If we extend the metaphor a bit more, the plant is our democracy. I’d like to hope it won’t get root rot, but we just can’t seem to stop watering the damn thing.

I have yet to see a single criticism by Congress of the Secret Service’s sprawling mission, which includes its financial crime responsibilities from when it was under the Treasury Department as well as a host of new counterterrorism ones it was given when reassigned to the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11. There’s also a bloated list of protectees, including not just American officials like the U.S. Trade Representative but foreign heads of state and foreign dignitaries as well. 

Congress assumes as legitimate all of these sundry protectees, as Sens. Murphy and Britt seem to say in their letter:

“Given the 2024 election will take place in Fiscal Year 2025, do you believe additional resources above those requested in the President's FY25 budget request, will be required to adequately meet the Secret Service mission, including, the protection of presidential candidates, existing protectees, the election certification, and the Inauguration?”

In Washington, the Secret Service basks in the saintly glow of law enforcement officialdom, a light that glows only slightly less bright than that of our beloved troops. The members of Congress willing to criticize the agency (mostly Republicans) are too busy chasing their tails in pursuit of small-bore tactical questions like which agents were posted where, or partisan obsessions like what role DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) played in lowering Secret Service standards.

None of the critics have asked the most obvious and devastating question: what percent of the Secret Service’s budget is actually spent on protecting current and former presidents? It’s a live grenade of a question because I guarantee you the answer is a minority of their budget. And if the American people knew that, they’d know exactly what the solution is. Watering the plant it is not.